The announcer left for good, the slugger left early and the Cubs just plain, left. On what should have been the relaxed, get ready for the long playoff grind, final game of the season, the Cubs packed things up and headed for home. In a way, the end of the season feels good. In the same way that it feels good when you stop hitting yourself in the head with a hammer.

You know things are bad when Sammy Sosa’s defense to the allegation that he left before the game even started was that he was there “until the seventh inning.” In street clothes. In the clubhouse. Well, that’s just so much better.

The Sun-Times sports page today is downright funny. Toni Ginetti has a piece on Chip Caray’s departure and the headline writer decided to go with the absurd “Bad news from Wrigley: Cubs lose Chip Caray.” That’s akin to the headline “Bad news from the Sun-Times: Paper loses Jay Mariotti.”

Mike Kiley has an article on Sammy and check out this quote from Sosa.

”I’m tired of being blamed by Dusty Baker for all the failures of this club,” Sosa said. ”I resent the inference that I’m not prepared. I live my life every minute every day to prepare for combat.”

Who here thinks Sammy knows what ‘inference’ means? Anybody? That quote wouldn’t hold up in court.

In Sammy’s mind he wasn’t in the lineup because he told Dusty he was hurt, so he wasn’t going to play. So leaving early (whether it was at 1:15 p.m. or 4 p.m.) wasn’t any big deal. Honestly, it’s like Sammy and Frank Thomas have the same travel agent.

What Sammy should have been around for was the show that Jason Dubois put on in right field. But that’s for another time. Because now we have all sorts of announcer news to sort out.

I got what I think is the real “skinny” on Steve Stone’s Friday afternoon meeting with Andy MacPhail, Jim Hendry and John McDonough. I tend to believe it, so I’ll pass it along for your consumption.

Stone found out on Thursday from his pal Chip that Chip was going to take the job in Atlanta, and Steve was angry because he didn’t feel the Cubs tried very hard to keep Chip (can you blame them?) and that WGN had decided not to exercise the option it had to match any offer Chip got. That, coupled with another Cubs late inning collapse sent Steve into a tizzy. He upset Dusty during the postgame interview so much that Dusty didn’t finish the interview. He just took off his headset and left. Then he went on Sports Central that night and went off on the Cubs again, this time infering that there was going to be a blockbuster change right after the season and that “the person who is leaving will be blamed, but it’s not his fault.”

MacPhail told McDonough the three of them needed to meet with Steve to “clear the air.” Hendry was included because he had publicly taken issue that morning with Steve’s remarks, claiming they were “personal” and not professional.

The meeting apparently went well, with Stone not backing down from his criticism of the players or Dusty and him not being told he couldn’t be critical. Hendry’s concern was that Steve’s charge that a “blockbuster” move was coming would make it sound like either Dusty was leaving or that Sammy would be traded, when in fact, the blockbuster was that Caray wasn’t coming back. That’s a blockbuster much in the way that your neighborhood video store is.

Odds are that there is no trade market for Sammy. The Mets rumors are, at least for the current time, without any merit. Just because Omar Minaya is supposedly in charge of player moves for the Mets now doesn’t mean he’s really going to be calling the shots. The Mets as an organization make the Bears’ operation look seamless. The Mets have at least four men who fancy themselves to be making the personnel decisions. Current “GM” Jim Duquette, owner’s son Jeff Wilpon, Minaya and meddling scout Al Goldis. Goldis apparently has the ear of Jeff Wilpon and a the support of Mets’ pitching coach Rick Peterson. Peterson holds a nearly absurd amount of influence with the Mets.

Minaya has the title to get the job done, and is technically Duquette’s boss, and is also expected to fire Goldis (who you may remember as Larry Himes’ lackey with the Cubs and the man who gave us Pat Cline), so things may clear up pretty quickly. But as for now, any Sammy to NY rumors are just sportswriters having fun.

Caray’s departure yesterday was actually very classily handled by the Chipster. He avoided several attempts by Stone to discuss it during the broadcast. Stone at one point seemed on the verge of tears and at the end, in the most uncomfortable moment in a season of uncomfortable moments, Steve told Chip he loved him.

As for the reasons behind Caray’s departure, Stone blames them entirely on the Cubs and their unwillingness to curtail players’ criticisms of Chip and Steve. A source familiar with both “Mercker incidents” claims that several Cubs’ players knew Caray’s contract was up and hoped that making Chip uncomfortable would be incentive enough for him to move on.

It’s hard to defend either of Mercker’s outbursts. The first, on a Cubs’ charter flight, consisted of Mercker calling Chip a motherf@#$er on at least six occassions, while no one from the Cubs’ organization had the sac to tell Kent to sit down. It could be that they agreed with him, but still, after the second MF, you can tell your exploding-headed-reliever to lighten up.

The second is the legendary phone call to the booth Mercker made during the Cubs’ August 28 loss to Roy Oswalt and the Astros during which an intern in the press box answered the phone, told Stone that Kent Mercker was on the phone for him and Stone now legendarily replied, “Who the f@#$ is Kent Mercker?”

And so, the question now becomes, “Who the f@#$ is the Cubs’ TV announcer?”

This is interesting because in the more than 50 years that WGN has been the Cubs’ primary TV outlet (and even though they share the coverage with ComCast Sports Net, WGN still hires the announcers with Cubs approval), this is the second time the lead play-by-play job has been open. Jack Brickhouse inherited the job at the beginning and only one time, the winter of 1981-1982 has the job ever been open. That’s when they hired Harry Caray away from the White Sox. You’ll remember that when the Cubs hired Chip in the 1997-98 offseason Harry was still pulsing, and Chip’s job was to work a limited number of games with Harry and do road games, while doing his Jeanne Zelasko job at Fox Sports. Harry died, Chip got the job and nobody ever got to apply.

The Cubs’ TV job is one of the most visible in the nation, therefore it’s very attractive. Rumors have persisted for years that Bob Costas has an interest in doing four or five years as a play-by-play man for a Major League team. The reason those rumors persist is because Costas is the one who brings them up.

It is not clear however if his current deal with HBO Sports (which includes his limited run talk show and 20 week run on Inside the NFL) would allow him to even negotiate with the Cubs on a full-time deal. It does however, seem likely that the Cubs and Costas will have conversations about the opening.

Other names sure to merit consideration include some of our mid-season suggestions for Chip’s replacement.

Pat Hughes: WGN Radio is loathe to break up Pat Hughes and Ron Santo, especially considering they promote Cubs’ games as the Pat and Ron show. Pat also has a face lovingly made for radio, and has almost no chance of even being seriously considered for the job.

Josh Lewin: He already impressed WGN and John McDonough enough to get hired by the Cubs once before. However, Harry Caray was upset that Chip didn’t get the job and set out to make Josh’s life miserable in his short stint with the team. Harry refused to allow Lewin to work the number of games and innings that Lewin was promised and the Cubs allowed Josh out of his contract after a year to go be the lead play-by-play announcer in Detroit. Lewin has since moved on to the Texas Rangers and is believed to have a contract that the Cubs could very easily buy out. Lewin is also over the dental problems he had last fall which gave him that hilarious lisp that we enjoyed during this post game interviews during the NLCS.

Thom Brennaman: Like his father before him, Thom never knew a bridge he couldn’t completely engulf in flames upon his departure. Thom has the same shot at the Cubs job as your or I do, but he doesn’t care. He’s got a cake gig in Arizona and with Fox, and if he’d really wanted a shot at being the lead Cubs play-by-play guy he would have never left in the first place. Harry was dying in front of his very eyes. Besides, Thom’s move was a great one for him. He left because WGN Radio wouldn’t give him time off to do NFL work for Fox. The year he left, Fox got baseball and Thom was set to become it’s secondary lead analyst.

DeWayne Staats: Staats left before Brennaman in a cash grab with the Yankees. He has since moved on to Tampa Bay where he and Joe Magrane are one of the best announcing tandems in the big leagues, even though nobody watches the Devil Rays. The bloom seems to be long off Staats’ rose. He doesn’t have much of a shot.

Daron Sutton: You’ve seen his name in both Chicago dailies, and we first touted him this spring. Coincidence? It’s not the first time something on Desipio has cropped up, unattributed in one of the Chicago papers. Sutton is very good, and seems poised to move on to a real market. This one has a real chance.

Matt Vasgersian: Vasgersian tried to torpedo his own career with a bad Fox Sports Net game show and the XFL, but he’s now in line to replace Ross Porter with the Dodgers. Amazing. Oh, and he’s the guy Sutton replaced in Milwaukee.

Ted Robinson: The Notre Dame alum is the former TV voice of the Giants and currently splits time between the Mets and NBC. Ted’s good, non-annoying and appears to be available considering the Mets are expected to increase…

Dave O’Brien‘s role on their broadcasts. You remember Dave, right? The good news is that he doesn’t like Chip, though.

Sean McDonough: If I had my choice, it’d be Sean, who calls a great game and only works one game a week for the Red Sox where he and Jerry Remy are the Pat and Ron of Boston, only both are coherent. McDonough does college football for ABC (with former Bear Ed Cunningham) and might not be interested in doing more than one game per week. He seems to have a cushy gig with the Red Sox, that he likes.

Dan Shulman: If I had to guess who will actually get the job, I’m guessing Dan Shulman. He left the Blue Jays after the ’03 season to increase his work at ESPN (where he’s a frequent Dick Vitale partner) in both college basketball and baseball. He was widely considered the best “young” broadcaster in the game while in Toronto and left to try and position himself for a prime gig like the Cubs. ESPN is grooming to replace Jon Miller as the Sunday Night Baseball announcer when Miller finally decides to hang it up, but that could be a looooong time. Besides, why would Shulman want to work with the Anti-Christ, Joe Morgan?

Jim Tocco: Fresh off a stint with the Montgomery Biscuits, this cloying little assbag would be the perfect replacement for Chip. It’d be almost like Chip never left.

Whoever it is, it can’t be any worse than Chip. But that’s not saying much.

Seabiscuit’s Jockey says the Cubs took “a rollercoaster to nowhere.” Where do most rollercoasters go?

Greggie was looking forward to the playoffs.

For chrissakes, how hard is it to sit and watch a baseball game? Even if it is the Cubs.

Dave van Dyck on the last day of the 2004 Cubs.

I’m just amazed anybody else actually wanted him

Ed Sherman with a half-assed list of potential replacements for Chippy.

Scott Skiles wants the Bulls to be in shape. That’d be nice.

Jonathan Quinn’s not good.

Nate Vasher was up and down. Aren’t most rookies?

Terrell Owens is an ass.

Qasim has had better days. Right

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to rip on Sammy. Sammy deserves it today. But Mariotti’s a dope if he think that the Cubs can save $17 million by trading him. If they trade Sammy they’ll pay at least that much over two years to be rid of him.

Moises wants to come back. Please no.

Nomar would like to stay. Maybe. I’ll bet he does. The Cubs seem to want to pay him.

The Wizard of Roz says this can’t all be Sammy’s fault.

Woody Williams is pitching game one? Really?

Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback.

Gary Payton has decided to get paid.

Greg Ostertag tripped, fell down and broke his hand. Typical.

Doesn’t Brett Farvuhruh always exhibit concussion like symptoms?

Paris wants new boobs. Isn’t Nicole enough?’

Hey they’re going to have an entire lingerie football league. Why do they need this, exactly?

The world’s greatest newspaper says Laura Bush is voting for Kerry.