I've already worn out my welcome in two cities!  In 12 months!  Buddy!In today’s Chicago Tribune Rick Morrissey has a column about a guy who e-mailed him to tell him that Rick’s “don’t let the door hit you in the ass” column about Sammy Sosa’s departure to Baltimore didn’t reflect the reader’s feelings. That’s fine. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. Unless you live in St. Louis. You are entitled to suck on a tailpipe.

In Morrissey’s column he says he got an e-mail from this fan, a “guy” named Zak Chesson, at 2:29 a.m. on January 30. Zak revealed that when he found out Sammy had been traded to the Orioles, he cried…no, sobbed, for 45 minutes. He said he hadn’t cried since the Cubs beat the Pirates to clinch the NL Central in 2003.

So let me get this straight. When the Cubs traded a 36 year old outfielder, one who has cashed checks made out to him by the club over 13 years for the equivalent of the Gross National Product of Denmark, Zak cried? He wept? For 45 minutes?

I was hoping there was more to the story, like, “I cried for 45 minutes, of course, my girlfriend had just accidentally dropped a bowling ball on my scrotom, so that could have been why.” But there wasn’t.

Here’s a grown man, a guy who is 28 years old, and when Sammy orchestrated his escape to Baltimore. A move made so that neither he nor the Cubs organization would have to deal with the moment he would be forced to face the teammates he had annoyed and abandoned. And some closet case in Minnesota couldn’t stop crying?

Unless we find out that Zak Chesson’s dad is Dick Vermeil, there’s just no explanation for this.

Here’s the kicker, though. He actually admitted to this.

Look, nobody wasted more time over the past eight years defending the Gladiator than I did. In fact, I still like the guy. I can care less if he’s a phony and if his teammates have wanted to beat him to death with a fungo bat for the better part of a decade. Sammy always played hard and for a six year stretch he just, plain, lit it up. It was great. But as Gob Bluth would say, “Come on!” It was over.

I found myself worrying the last few weeks of the Sosa era this January, that in fact, the Sosa era wouldn’t end. It was going to be ugly. It wasn’t going to work.

When I found out he’d been traded, I didn’t even care who the Cubs got in return. If they had traded him for Jerry Hairston SENIOR, I’d have been happy. If the two minor leaguers had been former Yankees and Cubs lefty Ray Fontenot and “Shining” star Scatman Crouthers, I’d have been fine with it.

And yet, up in Minnesota, there was a real-live, adult Cubs fan, sobbing and feeling so bitter that a day later he would stumble home from his job as a bartender (nice use of the Poli Sci degree, by the way) to write an e-mail to a talentless hack at the Tribune?

You know how you could have spent that time just as productively? You could have slammed your head in the refrigerator door repeatedly. That would have been just as good.

But Chesson wasn’t done. He told this story to Morrissey.

He talked about how he brought his now, 14-month old son, Sajan (huh?), to Wrigley last August to see the Cubs. Let’s do the math. If the kid is 14 months old now, he was five months old in August. I’m sure every five month old treasures his first trip to Wrigley. Just like they treasure a trip to Home Depot or Dominick’s. Who takes a five month old to a ball game? A five month old?

Remember the scene in “Mr. Mom” where the TV repair lady looks over and sees the baby in the high chair hugging a can of Hormel and yells with much indignation, “You fed the baby chili?” If you take an infant to a baseball game you should have “You took the baby to a ballgame?” yelled at you every six seconds until your ears bleed.

Anyway, Zak claims he told Sajan that Sammy would hit a homer and on the next pitch, Sammy hit one. That’s why he loves Sammy.

He told a slightly more than inanimate object that Sammy would homer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve predicted an upcoming athletic feat to my cat, and after all these years, the cat is still unimpressed. The best I can get out of him is something like this.

“Watch this, Dave. Ben Gordon’s going to take the game winning shot and drill it!”
Ben Gordon floats home the game winner. Andy jumps around like a crazy man in the living room for approximately nine seconds. The cat tucks a leg behind his ear and begins to lick his butt hole. Andy looks at the cat and wishes humans were that flexible. Andy changes the channel to avoid listening to Luke Stuckmeyer or Stacy King.

That’s as good as that gets. And it ain’t that great.

To be fair, in a quote in Morrissey’s column, Zak at least seems to assign part of, but not much of, the blame for the “divorce” to Sammy.

Sammy wanted out of there as badly as the Cubs wanted him out, Chesson said. To me that’s hardheaded. They couldn’t sit down. They couldn’t get along. They couldn’t figure something out. The fact he didn’t want to retire a Cub, the fact he was willing to not hit his 600th homer in a Cubs’ uniform—I’m just shocked. I’m absolutely shocked.

Oh, come on. Shocked?

In today’s Tribune, Seabiscuit’s Jockey reports that the Cubs actually had to call Sammy at home the day of the last game against Atlanta to even get him to show up at all. Sammy said he was sick.

Well you know what, Sammy…and Zak…and Sajan? We’re sick, too. Sick and tired of this crap.

Sammy’s in Baltimore and I don’t wish him anything but luck. But the truth is, he’s in the perfect place. He’s in the American League, he’s in a hitters’ park and he’s on a team that won’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of sniffing a playoff spot for the next decade.

Boo freakin’ hoo.