By Eric Emery

Every team enters the season with one goal: Win the Super Bowl. It’s much like the unrealistic expectations that parents have of their children. Picture Mom and Dad cooing over their child, believing that slightly strong grip means the little one is destined to become a linebacker or an Olympic gymnast. Unfortunately, when little Johnny learns to walk, he has a better chance of becoming a professional crash test dummy than a professional athlete.
After week one, it’s clear already, then, that some teams are doomed. That means millions of fans should use their time this fall doing something other than uselessly rooting on their teams. Here’s who.
*
Team: St. Louis Rams
Week 1 Result: Lost by 35 points
Alternate Activities:
– Congratulate Cardinals on being the best team to not make the playoffs.
– Learn Belgium to accommodate the news owners of Anheuser-Bush.
– Send letters to the Arizona Cardinals begging for them to return.
– Use Google to discover that the Bowling Hall of Fame is in town; visit.

Read More

Posted on September 11, 2008

By Ricky O’Donnell

This isn’t the first time Ozzie Guillen has seen his best player suffer a season-ending injury while fighting for a division title. It was 2004, Guillen’s first year as a manager on the South Side, when Magglio Ordonez was lost for the year after colliding with Willie Harris on the field. That injury happened in the middle of May, and without Ordonez, the Sox simply didn’t have enough offense to beat out the Twins for the division.
Could we be headed down the same road again, now that MVP candidate Carlos Quentin is likely done for 2008? Possibly, but as the Sox enter the week with a 2.5 game lead over the Twins and just 20 games left to play, they’ll have no excuses this time. There’s still enough offensive firepower to make the playoffs, but to do it, some of this year’s most expensive dead weight will have to start hitting.
It comes down to three players: Paul Konerko, Ken Griffey Jr., and Nick Swisher.

Read More

Posted on September 9, 2008

By Jim Coffman

That deliriously diehard Bears fan? The one who has high hopes, high as a pie in the sky hopes no matter how bad the vast majority thinks his team will be? Even that guy was blown away by the Bears Sunday night. Even that guy didn’t envision the Monsters absolutely manhandling the Colts and delivering a “We Are Back” statement that reverberated through the NFL.
So many highlights!

Beachwood Baseball: The Cub Factor The White Sox Report will appear on Tuesday this week.

* Olin Kreutz screwed up his first snap of the game and fans had to be thinking here we go again – Rex Grossman took all the heat for all the messed-up snaps from Kreutz over the past several years when the center deserved much more scrutiny. Later, Kreutz was caught holding. In the fourth quarter, he was caught holding again. Oh, and in between all of that, he had a hell of game. As the absolute leader of the offensive line, the veteran takes extra heat when the Bears struggle and deserves extra credit when they shine. Even when the offense didn’t score (which it usually, amazingly, did), it almost always churned out a couple first downs to keep the Colts’ high-powered offense off the field. Matt Forte had a huge debut but most of his runs were primarily a matter of taking what the line gave him. He had his biggest play on a beautifully blocked draw, something analyst John Madden noted the Colts have long been susceptible to, and a couple great cutbacks. Oh, and one final thing about Kreutz: the rest of his snaps were flawless.

Read More

Posted on September 8, 2008

By Marty Gangler

The collapse is on! What, did you really think this was gonna be the year? Just arrive on Planet Earth? We here at The Cub Factor have consulted our auxiliary Curses and Plagues Affairs Desk and this is what we have to look forward to down the stretch.
* Lou Piniella and Matt Sinatro find the ballpark just fine but Mark DeRosa gets lost because Ryan Dempster gave him a joke map.
* Kosuke Fukudome makes it to the park just fine.
* Mark DeRosa gets an emergency pitching start and comes up with a dead arm.

Read More

Posted on September 8, 2008

By Eric Emery

With the 2008 season upon us, I have a very important question to pose: Do you realize that my record on the Over/Under for team wins last season was 6-3-1? That means that I was correct two out of three times. If I was a Major League Baseball player, my batting average would be .667! If I ran for President, I would have won 370 Electoral College votes! If I was on American Idol last season, I’d have received 65,000,000 votes! Unfortunately, I can’t hit for average, I’m too honest to run for president, and a restraining order taken out by Paula Abdul have kept me off American Idol. My only option is to improve on last year’s Over/Under performance. Here we go.
–
Team: Jacksonville
Line: 10 wins
Prediction: Over
Comment: Even though the Jaguars have enjoyed regular and post-season success, professional football comes fourth to the people of Jacksonville after college football, NASCAR, and noodling. So they have something to prove.

Read More

Posted on September 3, 2008

By Jim Coffman

It didn’t rival doing the Tomahawk Chop in celebration of the Braves rallying to knock off the Brewers late last year and move the Cubs that much closer to a division title. But my fellow upper-deck reserved fans and I did enjoy some scoreboard watching on Monday. It was the highlight of a game otherwise memorable only for a depressingly dominant performance by Astros ace Roy Oswalt.

Beachwood Baseball: The Cub Factor The White Sox Report

My all-time favorite scoreboard-watching scene played out during the last the week or so of last year’s Cubs regular season. I don’t even remember if the home team won on the evening in question, but I do recall that Milwaukee lost to Atlanta. It took a while (at least for me and my fellow Slowskis) to figure out what the vendor in our section was doing when he busted out The Chop. My first instinct was to just dismiss the guy as yet another sufferer of getting-attention-deficit-disorder who needed to be ignored. Then it finally began to dawn on us that this was a better-than-average way to express our appreciation for the Braves playing the role of spoiler. And every time a new, promising number went up on the scoreboard indicating Atlanta was that much closer to a win, we started in again with the Chop’s distinctive arm motion and moderately melodic chant.

Read More

Posted on September 2, 2008

By Marty Gangler

In the back of everyone’s mind there lives an angry little man who just doesn’t believe. He’s the little voice who tells you things. Sometimes it’s good to listen to him – like when he says, “You don’t have enough gas to get to DQ and back, you better get some or you’ll be screwed.” But other times he’s just a jerk. Like when you are up to bat for your work softball team in a big spot and he says, “Who do you think you are? You’re not the hero, you’re going to tap out to the pitcher if you hit the ball at all, loser.” I think it’s safe to say that some people can tell the little man to screw off more than others, but as Cub fans can we ever tell that little man he’s wrong when he says, “They are going to blow it, they always do. Now go eat another Eskimo Pie, fatass.” And although personal favorite junk foods differ, all Cub fans can’t turn off that little voice in their head. And sure, there are actual people who tell Cub fans this every day in real life, but tell them to stick it too. At least until October, because they will be in the playoffs. Then I’m afraid it’s going to be a give-and-take death match with the little angry man inside your head. Because this is the best Cubs team since 1908 and the best chance they’ll ever have in anyone’s lifetime (unless you are >100) to win this thing.

Read More

Posted on September 2, 2008

By Ricky O’Donnell

Like most Sox fans, Gavin Floyd didn’t have high hopes for himself heading into this season. Why else would he make a bet with teammates that he would shave his head if he won more than 12 games in 2008?
But since grabbing that razor after an August 10 win over the Red Sox, hair is the only thing Floyd has lost. In four starts following the haircut, Floyd is 3-0, never allowing more than more than three runs in any start.
Really, Floyd’s recent success shouldn’t be all that surprising – he has been consistently good the entire season. What’s weird is that most Sox fans, myself included, still don’t believe what they’re seeing.

Read More

Posted on September 2, 2008

By Rick Kaempfer

Now that September has arrived and the Cubs and Sox both begin the final month of the season in first place, questions about the inevitable Cubs-Sox World Series have begun arriving in the e-mail box of our Cubs Answer Man, Rick Kaempfer.
Rick has kindly consented to answer a handful of your questions below. If you have any other questions, e-mail him at amishrick@yahoo.com, and he’ll answer them in a future column.
*
Q: I know everyone is worried about the upcoming Cubs-White Sox World Series and predicts it’s a sign of the apocalypse, but they met once before and nothing terrible happened. Isn’t that true?
A: Well . . . if you don’t count the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Naples, or the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco, or the tsunami in Hong Kong that killed 10,000 people, or the 8.2 earthquake that killed 20,000 in Chile, or the birth of Bugsy Siegel, Adolph Eichman, and Leonid Breschnev, then yes you’re absolutely correct – nothing terrible happened in 1906.

Read More

Posted on September 1, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Is Michael Cooke insane?
Just months after signing Jay Mariotti to another humongous contract, the editor of the Sun-Times is now marketing the controversial sportswriter’s resignation from the paper as the greatest thing since the Mirage.

Read More

Posted on August 28, 2008