By Steve Rhodes

As I was saying about Aroldis Chapman . . . but man, that was reckless.
Also, Chapman’s eight-out performance on Sunday night has made everybody forget his failure to cover first base on a ground ball to Anthony Rizzo. Not me, I remember!
In fact, Respect 90 seems to have gone out the window this postseason.
The list of players who have violated this central tenet – Joe Maddon’s only rule! – is growing, from Willson Contreras to Jorge Soler to Jason Heyward (lollygagging a throw to second) to Chapman and even Rizzo, who didn’t run hard out of the box on a double that by all rights he should have been dead to rights on.
“Anthony thought it was going out, he did not run that hard,” Pat Hughes said. “A good throw would have had him.”

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Posted on October 31, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

Joe Maddon left a note in the Cubs clubhouse Sunday night that players are encouraged to wear Halloween costumes on their flight to Cleveland for the final game/s of the World Series.
We have some ideas.

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Posted on October 31, 2016

By Jim Coffman

How should a baseball fan react when desperation works?
Given that I am most desperate to not sound like Dusty Baker, I wish I could just take a deep breath and move on. But I can’t.
Baker capped off his season at the helm of the Nationals earlier in the playoffs by insinuating that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was endangering the long-term health of pitchers Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen by pitching them so much in the National League Divisional Series.
He hadn’t seen anything yet.

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Posted on October 31, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

A World Series championship will be won at Wrigley Field today for the first time since 1945. Unfortunately, then it was won by the Detroit Tigers and now it will be won by the Cleveland Indians. Wrigley Field has never seen the Cubs win a World Series on its field.
Or, the Cubs will send the Series back to Cleveland. Who knows. But it certainly feels like it’s over.

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Posted on October 30, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

Bats go cold, team goes down 2-1, one of the best pitchers in the universe looms. Oh, and Jason Heyward is getting the start in right. What, us worry?
Coco Puffs
“Down the steps of the visitors’ dugout at Wrigley Field, a drain cover littered with used gum and sunflower-seed shells and tobacco spit and the other various detritus that finds its way into baseball players’ orbits greets those who walk by it. To the left, in a small alcove, is a urinal, a sink, a foamy-soap dispenser and a small cupboard, home to a rosin bag and a pump-spray bottle of Bullfrog sunscreen, which when combined make for a tacky substance pitchers use to get a better grip on the ball. Grimy does not begin to describe the entirety of the scene,” Jeff Passon writes for Yahoo! in “How The Indians Spoiled The Cubs’ Special Night.”

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Posted on October 29, 2016

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

First Beachwood World Series podcast since 1945. Including: Coffman Returns To Cubs Fold!; Wrigleyville Security State; Corey Kluber Introduces Self To Nation; Bam Bam Is Back!; Matchup Mania!; Schwarber, Schwarber, Schwarber!; Jay Cutler Blah Blah Blah; Coach Qalm Down; and Bulls Opener Actually Compelling.

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Posted on October 28, 2016

By Dan O’Shea

Random observations from a week in which it was difficult to care about what happened with my fantasy football teams:
Hoyer done, Miller fading. Cutler? Nah . . . : With Brian Hoyer having suffered a broken arm at the height of his value, there are few Chicago Bears worth owning for fantasy.

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Posted on October 27, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

The Cubs are right back in it!
Look, we sort of don’t know how to behave going this deep into the playoffs. So suddenly every game has become like a Bears game – win and we’re going all the way, lose and everybody should be fired. Or, not that exactly – that’s where the analogy breaks down – but lose and the season is an epic failure.
The Score’s exasperated on Jason Goff had it right on Wednesday when he said “We just went through this, just a week ago!” and no lessons were learned. That’s when losing 1-0 to Clayton Kershaw spelled certain doom for the boys in blue. And yet, it didn’t.
Learn, dammit!

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Posted on October 27, 2016

By Carl Mohrbacher

I have two critiques of Brian Hoyer’s performance as a Bear: He is 30-years-old and his bones are susceptible to injury.
If he can overcome those two shortcomings, he should be an unstoppable force in 2017.

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Posted on October 26, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

Let’s face it: Jon Lester choked.
Sure, the Cubs’ bats (and Joe Maddon’s managing) went cold again, but the game’s winning runs were scored in the first inning, when the tone was set.

“It comes down to the first inning,” Lester said afterward. “The first inning was tonight’s game.”

Of course, the other big inning was the seventh, when the Cubs loaded the bases with nobody out and failed to push even one run across the plate.
This is where Maddon – and the (controversial) rostering of Kyle Schwarber – came into play.

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Posted on October 26, 2016