Post #1908

[helloWorld]

Hmmmm, on one hand peace in the Middle East on the other Cubs win the WS, which would I prefer?

f@#$ that.  I live here.  Cubs WS without question.

Oh TW, I definitely agree.

A couple years ago, the Trib asked if you would take a new Cubs' ballpark if it meant they would win a World Series. I would personally take Wrigley Field apart, brick by brick.

Agreed, but I don't want to have to choose.  It's not the ballpark's fault that we haven't won, and I really like Wrigley.  It the afore mentioned players/manager/GMs.

[Slaky311]

I would light the place afire myself for one stinkin championship.

[CubFaninHydePark]

A thread with two '1908th posts' is the key to breaking the curse...

And speaking of Bartman, if you saw the Family Guy movie, you know it was Stewie's fault.  I think that's the first time I've not laughed at a Family Guy joke that everyone else thought was hysterical.  I threw shit at the TV.

[berserker]

A thread with two '1908th posts' is the key to breaking the curse...

And speaking of Bartman, if you saw the Family Guy movie, you know it was Stewie's fault.  I think that's the first time I've not laughed at a Family Guy joke that everyone else thought was hysterical.  I threw shit at the TV.

Re-enacting a memorable scene from "Cooley High"?

[rrdego]

Berserker- who is that as your avatar????????

[berserker]

Berserker- who is that as your avatar????????

It's Isaac Mizrahi fondling Scarlett Johannson

[Chuck]

So. This is good bye.

I chose 1989 as my "Farewell to Chuck" as it represented my favorite Cub team of my now middle aged life.

The 1977 team was one of the first I really enjoyed watching.  Big Daddy won 20 out of the team's 81.  Sutter was in his prime.  Jose Cardinal and his leaping fro.  George "he's due" Mitterwald.  Steve Swisher.  Mick Kelleher.  60-40 and in first place until August.  What wasn't to love?

1984 was senior year in high school and The Mother let me and some friends celebrate the clincher in Pitt with a bottle of Brut (Joe Namath was not invited).

But the 1989 team was the first team where I really knew the team.  I'd known of Dunston since they'd drafted him.  Maddux was becoming a brilliant pitcher.  Dwight Smith and the Anthem.  Sandberg was my first favorite player that I understood WHY he was my favorite player.  Andre Dawson.  Red Barron.  Lloyd McClendon's three run dinger.  2 outs in the ninth down 2 to Bedrosian.  Jeff Pico and Calvin Schiraldi blowing a lead in the Astrodome.  9-0 losing to Houston a few days later.  Mitch Williams.  Juice Walton.  Don Zimmer.  And that was a young team.  We all thought they'd be good for at least a few years.

So, in homage to my favorite Cub team that I knew, I bid you farewell.

Now, for a new moniker....

[tjbrown]

Before we close the book on "Chuck," let's at least remember his first post here.

What's so wrong with people saying, "F@#$ you, Chuck"?  It makes me feel popular that people care.

Or they don't.

One of those.

To that, let me give a hearty FYC.

[Huey]

Fuck you, Chuck.

I was a HS senior for the '89 season, which is why I don't remember it as well as the '84 team.  In '84, I was 12 and lived and died for the Cubs.  By '89, I had found girls, alcohol and a whole bunch of a other time-wasters that prevented me from following them as closely as I had 5 years earlier.

That said, fuck Jim Frey with his Mr. Magoo glasses for not being able to build upon his gidt-wrapped golden farm system and giving us more division titles.

[DwightKurtz]

I was a high school senior in '98.  But unlike Huey, I was a geek.  No girls, little alcohol, few time-wasters.  I probably watched or listened on the radio to 150 games that year. 

By the time the playoffs rolled around, I was a freshman at a community college.  I skipped a speech I had to make in order to watch the one-game playoff.  When I saw the teacher the next day - a huge Yankees fan, I might add - he asked me what happened.  I told him the truth, and said "we give speeches every three weeks.  The Cubs make the playoffs once a lifetime."  He looked at me, nodded, and said "I understand."  I got to make the speech up at a later date.

[Huey]

Bump.

So Fork I, perhaps cultivating a germ of thought by Apex or simply coming up the idea organically on his own, STFU after post 1908 which, as any number, as looked at as a Cub fan in 2007, is one of the most depressing numbers to consider.  I remember in the early 80’s when they first came out with merchandised shirts that had “1908” written on them.  As an 11-year old who had just begun to learn about Cub history and thus only began to barely comprehend the absurdity of such a drought, I knew to be embarrassed.

To me, 1908's the number.  Not 1945.  Not 1969.  Not 1984.  So I appreciated our Uptown-bred Brooklyn expatriate friend for stopping his post tally at that point to the point of trying to honor it by by emulating it myself.  And so I did.  Then CT followed suit, although he didn’t post his ultimate post here, mindlessly leaving it in some obscure thread, to be sure.  It was almost Slaky-like in it’s mindlessness.

And then there was TW.  Insolent bastard that he was, our friend went out and made the post about him and went to 1,984 posts, like it was his year.  Hey man, I love the ’84 team, too.  They’re my favorite team, too.  In fact, I sit here confident that I would, at this moment without an instant of preparation and no access to information but that which is housed in my skull, kick most everybody’s ass in a trivia contest on the ’84 Cub season.   I can tell you, without blinking, who the Opening Day starter was, and that it clearly was NOT Sutcliffe, Trout, Eckersley, or Sanderson.  Or Chuck Rainey, who in ’82 was one out away from throwing a no-hitter at Wrigley Field until Eddie Milner broke it up, the first of three times in my Cub lifetime (1979+) that a Cub pitcher was in that position, the other two being Jose Guzman in  ’93, and Frank Castillo in ’95 which was in a game that I had attended and, in a fit of nerves on account of the tension in the game, approached Turk Wendell in the bullpen (it was very late September and it was a night game and so the ushers must have been asleep) and asked him to scoop up some of the bullpen dirt for me so that I could “dip” it like I had hear he did at the time.  Oh yeah.  When Huey was 23, Huey was all sorts of crazy... But Chuck Rainey was not the Opening Day starter in ‘84.  It was Dick Ruthven who took the bump in Candlestick Park, Ruthven of course having bee acquired for Willie Hernandez the previous year, Hernandez of course winding up in Motown, having himself a very nice year in ’84, winning the Cy Young and MVP.  I can name the St. Louis ctarter in the "Sandberg game" in '84 (Citterella).  I can tell you who the Montreal batter was who hit the line drive that went off of Lee Smith’s back, up into the air, and into Larry Bowa’s glove and then over to Durham for an insanely unlikely 1-6-3 game-ending double play, prompting Harry to wonder of this was “our year” (hint:  CT hates this guy).  I remember that they wheeled out Jack Brickhouse in St. Louis to help out with clinching-of-the-tie and that Joe Orsulakâ€"who had the only two hits in Sutcliffe’s gemâ€"was the final out for the clinching, and that Harry was caught off guard, (“Wha?  Oh!  The CUBS ARE THE CHAMPIONS!”), and Jim Frey could be seen running out to the field and stuffing his cap into his shirt.  These things I've known since I first saw and heard them happen in '84.

After TW’s reckless 1908-smashing, every one else subsequently felt that dropping their handle should happen in a year that was unique to them.  Chuck prattled on about an ’89 team that he was probably watching through weed-colored glasses in Iowa City, as the commemoration of that team only merely belies the fact that Jim Frey was busy dismantling the whole thing that he had stumbled into, ass-backwards.

TJ decided to go all Dennis Miller on acid, and stop at a year that was only monumental in his mind.  Who else would pick a year from the decade of the 1870’s and not pick 1871, the year of the Fire?

Fork II, rose from the ashes and looked to restore normalcy to the number, but then inexplicably went past it to 1933.  Now, 1933 is the year that my dad was born, but who knows what Fork's thinking?  I suspect he was commemorating the year in which his football team from New York got their asses handed to them by the Bears in the first official, standard NFL championship which took place, naturally, in Wrigley Field.  

Bad Kermit hit 1908 and then ignited the “self-destruct button” and now no records prove he existed in the first place.

But I’m stopping here.  Again.  1,908 meaningless, self-absorbed examples of one moran's nonsense.  I’m even over my disappointment  at TW.   I thank him and everyone else here for making me laugh as often as I do while sitting at a computer, which is too much.  Thanks also to Andy for allowing this playground for cocksuckers to exist.

And Hoff's Puppies...I'll miss you most of all.

[KD]

Post #2006 can't come soon enough.  The Blueberry heads are going to burn my motel room down.

[Kermit]

God damnit.  I have to figure out a new guy's name again?  Plus, Fork's almost due for an oil change, too.  This place is confusing.

[Chuckosan]

I can tell you who the Montreal batter was who hit the line drive that went off of Lee Smith’s back, up into the air, and into Larry Bowa’s glove and then over to Durham for an insanely unlikely 1-6-3 game-ending double play

It was Dave Owen who made the putout and the assist, not Bowa.

Chuck prattled on about an ’89 team that he was probably watching through weed-colored glasses in Iowa City

Beer was a quarter.  Weed was a several bucks a bag.

I'll give you half a guess which way I went.

[Slaky!]

God damnit.  I have to figure out a new guy's name again?  Plus, Fork's almost due for an oil change, too.  This place is confusing.

I'm not even sure he's coming back...that would suck. I am, however, proud to be an adjective for mindless.