Dave Wannstedt’s second reign of terror in the NFL is apparently over. This time, he took a job gifted to him by his helmet headed sugar daddy Jimmy Johnson and ineptly ran the Dolphins into the ground. They had approximately 127 times the talent Wanny’s teams had in Chicago (largely because unlike the Bears, the Dolphins wouldn’t let him draft his own players) and they never won a playoff game.

Wanny can blame this year’s 1-8 disaster on Ricky Williams’ pachuli scented dreadlocks, but the reality is that if you think you’re going to win with Jay Fiedler and AJ Feeley, well, you’re a dumbass. The Dolpins are such a mess right now that Dan Marino skipped out on the president’s job after just a couple weeks because he was told he wouldn’t have the authority to do what he wanted to do…fire Wannstedt. Now it’s said they might be considering bringing in Steve Spurrier. This, is like a network firing Tony Danza from a talk show and replacing him with Rick Dees.

Many people in Chicago are happy today because Dave Wannstedt lost his job. Does that make us mean, callous, unfeeling? Probably. But come on, it’s Dave “Frickin'” Wannstedt here.

Every meaningful job he’s ever had has been because of his role as a male succubus to Jimmy Johnson. What’s he going to do now? He can’t very well “Aaaaap!” his way through stuff on the Fox pregame show. Though, come to think of it, that would be funnier than anything Frank Caliendo has come up with in a year and a half.

That’s not to say that Wanny’s tenure was a complete wash. It was here at Desipio that I learned that he had a “hare lip” and not a “hair lip” as I’d always thought it was spelled. So there.

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The Cubs are apparently set to hire Bob Brenly to replace Steve Stone’s incessant know-it-allism in the TV booth. For the record, I enjoyed Steve’s time in Chicago much more than any of the host of permanent and part-time announcers they employed while he was off lung fungusing or whatever. But I look forward to mocking a new set of announcers because frankly there are so many “visibility” and Craig Biggio jokes you can make.

Also for the record, we had at least a dozen more.

A couple of important things here. We’re going to be making fun of Bob Brenly’s mustache a lot. In fact, I think I may shift the Omniscient Mustache monkier from Phil Garner’s upper lip hair to Bob’s. It’s also important that we settle on an official Desipio spelling of mustache.

Your local dictionary says you can spell it moustache or mustache. Moustache looks fancier, but what’s with an extra letter for no real purpose? So here’s how this goes. If we ever refer to Shawon Dunston’s moustache we’ll use the superfluous ‘o’. Everybody else gets the more streamlined mustache.

So that’s settled.

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My favorite article of the day is this one from Peter Gammons about how he knows Sammy Sosa won’t be traded. You see Peter knows this because Sammy’s agent, Adam Katz told him so. This is the same Adam Katz who insisted that Sammy didn’t leave the last game early and that Sammy didn’t know there was cork in his bat. OK, guys, you win.

Here’s the thing about trying to trade an overly sensitive superstar like Samuel Peralta Sosa. You can’t just talk like it’s going to happen. The first time Jim Hendry will be able to say the team is trying to trade him is at the press conference to announce he’s been traded. It’s just how it works. So over the next few weeks you’ll see lots of trade rumors and they’ll all get pooh-poohed by Hendry and Katz. And who doesn’t enjoy a good pooh-pooh? But one of them isn’t going to be a rumor, it’s going to be the truth.

Stay strong, Pony Boy. Sammy’s on his way out.

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OK, you say. But Andy, you are Mr. Kiss Ass Sammy Apologist. You’re the one who has “Sammy Saves” tatooed across your forehead! You’re the one who was sure that Sonja Sosa’s “Advil” overdose was an accident and that Sammy has never hit anybody in the head with a rum bottle. How can you turn on him now?

I’m not turning on Sammy. I still like Sammy. I like the ridiculous sprint out to right field to start home games, I like the home run hop and the ludicrous heart tap and kissies thing to the camera after home runs. I eat all that crap up. I like Sammy. I hope he goes somewhere else and has a good year. But at this point, I want him to go somewhere else. We all know how churlish he gets when he’s criticized.

Take a look at these:

1998 – 66 HR, 158 RBI, 1.024 OPS
1999 – 63 HR, 141 RBI, 1.002 OPS
2000 – 50 HR, 138 RBI, 1.040 OPS
2001 – 64 HR, 160 RBI, 1.174 OPS

Steroid fueled or not, those are the four greatest consecutive offensive seasons we’re likely to ever see in Chicago. But think about 2000. He was at the height of his greatness and his numbers went in the tank in July. Why? Because the Cubs were trying to trade him to the Yankees. As it turned out, Ed Lynch screwed the pooch on the trade and Sammy went on an August tear to pretty much hide all evidence of just how lousy he’d been in July, except for the homer drop. But those of us who were there remember it.

If you thought last year was bad for Sammy, with being dropped in the order, booed at home and swinging like an 800 foot homer was worth double, 2005 in Chicago will be a nightmare.

He’ll get booed from opening day on. Only a huge season will quiet the fans and the media. Does he have one of those left in him? A “good” season, .275, 35 HR, 90 RBI for most people, won’t be enough to stop it.

If the Cubs and Sammy part now, the happy amber-colored memories of Sammy will creep back into our memories in a couple of years. Hell, Sox fans revere Dick Allen and the crap he pulled was a 1,000 times worse. But the longer he stays the more ingrained his demise will be. He needs to go for him, for us and for the Cubs in general.

Jim Hendry and Andy MacPhail know that. But contrary to what Captain Obvious, Phil Rogers, wrote in today’s Tribune (can you believe he gets paid for this crap? 20-1 on Sammy going to the Royals and 5-1 to anybody else? Huh?), this is going to drag on all winter. Sammy’s likely to be the last one out the door. Not the first.

Even if it’s the stated reason, should a run at Carlos Beltran come up short, it won’t be the truth. Having Sammy on the payroll does not preclude signing Carlos. In fact, they’ll have Sammy on the payroll with no guarantees of his departure when the time comes to make the offer to Beltran. But if Sammy stays the Cubs “only” have to pay him $23 million (18 for 2005 and his five million dollar buyout). If they trade him, they may actually be on the hook for more money when the cost of the dead weight they’ll get back is factored in.

So what they’ll try and do is backload Beltran’s money. Have him try and scrape by on $10-12 million in 2005 and then get PAID in 2006+. It won’t be the real reason if they fail to get Carlos. Though it might be the excuse.

My gut feeling is that Sammy ends up in Anaheim’s left field/dh spot next year. How it will happen, I’m not sure. But they’ve got an owner who makes it a priority to go after available Hispanic ballplayers (Bart Colon, Kelvim Escobar, Vlad Guererro and Jose Guillen last year alone), they’re not bringing back Troy Glaus and Tim Salmon has retired so there’s a hole in the lineup and Guillen’s late season meltdown all but sealed his fate.

You watch, Sammy will accept the trade, he’ll play left, he’ll bat sixth and he won’t piss and moan (at least not until 2006 anyway). It’s what happens when you get a new start.

Think of it this way. Think of how you act when you get a new girlfriend. The little stuff she does doesn’t bother you like it did with the old girlfriend. You can actually remember her birthday and say nice things to her. It takes a while to fall back into the rut. It’s the Honeymoon period. Whoever trades for Sammy will get “good” Sammy for 2005. “Pain in the ass” Sammy only shows up in 2006 if he thinks he’s not going to get another big contract.

But if the Cubs keep him, “Pain in the ass” Sammy shows up for spring training. It won’t be pretty.

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For chrissakes Groucho, stop with the Eddy Curry-trade-rumor-of-the-day crap! You’re not entertaining anybody with this. Could the Tribune sports page be any more irrelevent these days?

By the way, Ed Sherman apparently stopped by Desipio yesterday and started making some phone calls based on what he’s read here. We knew John Jackson stopped by to steal stuff, so now we just need Ted Cox and we’ll have the trifecta! Hi Ed! How come you never e-mail?

Sherman says Brenly’s a done deal (but based on the “accuracy” of the rest of this, who knows?). Bob’s good. He’s got an actual sense of humor and he won’t be saddled with a hackneyed idiot like Chip. In fact, we’re feeling pretty good right now about our prediction last week of a Bob Brenly-Dave O’Brien booth.

Fred Mitchell called Kerry Wood to chat about a fundraiser and this is what we got. In fact, intrepid reader Mike Donohue is even more fired about this than I am. So let’s let him take it.

Don’t know if you tried to slog through the apparently senile Fred Mitchell’s column today, but I felt compelled to drop you a line, in case you ever discuss it at Desipio. For one, Mitchell can’t write coherently and gets no assistance form the editing staff. For another, the article tells us nothing. It’s a complete waste of time.

Check out this paragraph and the incompetently awful second sentence.

“The Cubs finished with 89 victories and back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 1971-72. Yet the star-studded Opening Day roster did portend a postseason berth following the 2003 season in which they came within five outs of making it to the World Series.”

WTF???

“Yet the star studded Opening Day roster did portend a postseason berth…..”

The word Yet would imply that Mitchell would then break from the previous sentence and proceed to talk about how disappointing the following year was. But he didn’t. He doubled back further and discussed their high expectations. So why would you use the conjunction “Yet” and not “And”? The second sentence was congruent with the first—it expressed a similar thought. There’s no need for “Yet”! But even that is moot since the first sentence already has describes the result of the ’03 season. Why go back to what the expectations on Opening Day were in the next sentence? AHHHHHHH! Why do I bother?

The totally unnecessary emphatic drop-in of the word did is just silly, also.

It’s just a horribly written paragraph that makes me embarrassed for the Tribune that they couldn’t catch that mess on Fred’s computer while cleaning the pudding mess off of his face.

B.C. probably liked it.

Don’t they have editors at the Tribune? Especially considering that Mitchell had to be woken from a nap to write this sludge? That’s not even getting into the fact that Wood says NOTHING controversial in the article, and that several paragraphs were wasted on Sarah Wood giving a plug for charity bowling and the Wood family’s thoughts on the Red Sox (who F-ing cares?). Lazy Fred even gets Wood to mention the silly word “curse”. Bully for Fred. He can go have whiskey sour with Rick Telander now.

That whole story was nothing bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

At least the Huskies got a good writeup by Teddy G. I’ll be out there tonight. Go NIU.

I was just going to comment that Cheap Trick is playing at the Wood fundraiser? Cheap Trick? Rockford’s hometown heroes? What, Kerry couldn’t get the Fabulous Janes?

Look, I love Cheap Trick as much as the next guy, and my favorite Simpsons episode of all-time includes Apu singing “Dream Police” and washing his Firebird (with the t-tops off), and this spring, ironically enough, I used the song “Everything Works If You Let It” with the Kerry Wood SI cover so…hey, maybe there’s something to this!

Suckers!

The AP has the Flyin’ Illini ranked fifth.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to boldly proclaim that the Bears won’t make the playoffs. Gee, ya don’t say?

Roz thinks the Cubs can still screw up the Brenly hire. Hey, Boras hasn’t written Rozner’s column for like a whole week now!

The Red Sox want Carl Pavano more than he wanted Alyssa Milano.


Check out Alyssa’s “take” on monogamy. I thought it was a kind of wood they make chairs out of!
“What about men’s “quirks” with monogamy?
Monogamy is important because my ideal relationship is my parents, who’ve been married 37 years. But if a man has decided to cheat on me and he can keep it from me—and live with himself—then I’m fine maintaining the relationship. But if he’s going to be an idiot and I find out about it, I’m against it!”

Bruce Miles on potential Sosa trades.

The Post on the winter meetings.

The White Sox and Satanic Fowl are after the Pituitary Freak.

The Yankees want Pavano, too. Hey, more Alyssa Milano!

The Marlins are digging through the discount rack.

Roch Kubatko (not making that up) says the Orioles aren’t after Sammy. Sure, Roch.

But they’re after Carlos Delgado?

The Mets aren’t shopping Piazza, just like the Cubs aren’t shopping Sammy.

Jim Bowden will try and screw up the Washington Nationals (hey, that’s what they’re going to be called) before he even gets a boss.

Mark Grace doesn’t know what the Diamondbacks have in store for him. I’m sure there are a lot of things a guy with his talents can do. I think a minor league managing job would be perfect. He could get all of his 19 year old players drunk and screw a whole new level (lower) of ballpark skanks.

Arafat is dead.

Or, maybe he’s alive.

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