Sox + Cubs = fun

God I hate this series.

And man, Rick, you really shouldn't have linked back to (and stood by) last year's article. It's almost like you wrote that directly to piss me off, and it worked.

The quick hits:
-Ron Santo is among the top 5 offensive 3B in the history of baseball. Oh yeah, he was pretty good with the glove, too. I'll let you spend a couple of minutes on baseball reference to familiarize yourself with the third basemen actually in the Hall of Fame. (Hint: it's not pretty.) White Sox tinted glasses and mindless fucking acceptance of the garbage much of the mainstream media aside, there's no way you can honestly tell me that you believe what you wrote there. I have more respect for you than to actually buy that you believe what you wrote for any other purpose than to get a rise out of Cubs fans, in which case, well done. You got one. Otherwise, I could point you in the direction of plenty of literature, by both contemporaries of Santo as well as baseball experts, such as James and Gammons, supporting Ron Santo's candidacy for the Hall of Fame.

-Reed Johnson has, at no point, received a fraction of the love that White Sox fans immediately showed to players like Joe Crede and Scott Podsednik. Did you know, even that one season Scott Podsednik carried the White Sox to a World Series, he was below average on offense, and only stole bases at a 72% clip (break even is often considered 75%, often 70%, but either way you look at it, nothing to write home about), and defensively, again, he's nothing to write home about. But hey, he made things happen. And Joe Crede? Career OPS+ several notches lower than Johnson's. But hey, those are South Side heroes. These three gentlemen do have something in common, though, folks (as they do with AJP, Rowand, and a host of other characters from Sox folk lore. Question: is one allowed to play grinder ball if one is not white?).

-Wasn't there traditionally a gong playing on the P.A. when Shingo came in to pitch? Now, this is clearly a step down from Horry Cow t-shirts, which are simply embarassing, but playing a gong when your sole Japanese player comes in to pitch can be looked at in a similar light. I'm not so sure the two can be entirely separated.

-It's a fucking baseball game. They sell beer there. People often enjoy drinking beer at a game, especially if they have taken a day off of work to attend said game. Some even report that alcohol consumption is a good way to "let loose" "relax" or "take the edge off". I wouldn't know. But all the hard-hitting in-game and statistical analysis going on at White Sox games I went to last week was refreshing. You're absolutely right.

-There's plenty of evidence that supports the idea that your best hitter should bat first, second best second, and so on. I read it. In a book. Maybe Lou Pinella read the same book. The logic is pretty simple. You want your best hitter getting the most at bats. In almost any given year (not this one), Alfonso Soriano is either the Cubs best or second best hitter. Makes sense, then, that you would want to get him more at bats than, say Theriot, Johnson, etc.

-The songs is where we can agree. Both the Cubs song and the Sox song suck. Although some European-soccer-game style of singing would undoubtedly make games pretty fucking intense.

oh oh and P.S. LOL at cutting down Cubs announcers when the Sox have employed (and embraced) Hawk Harrelson for over 20 fucking years. My god, has it been that long since you guys have had to endure that fucking hillbilly and all of his nonsensical hillbilly catchphrases. And you talk about Cubs FANS not paying attention to the game. Harrelson's in-game routine includes leaving for 3 innings to go take a dump or a nap or let his dog out or whatever the fuck it is. But then again, I guess it's better for all parties involved that those long silences continue, so the rest of the world does not have to be subjected to his inane fucking ramblings and archaic opinions.

nvrmnd i ♥ this series

You really cinched it up and hunkered down for that post.

Doooooooyle!

Ok first of all, that post was written in response to an anti-Sox post at another blog. I think that's important to note. Now, onto your points.

- I will not go waste a bunch of time on baseball reference to compare Ron Santo's stats to other Hall of Fame third basemen's. If you say they compare favorably, I believe you. But it is kind of curious, then, that he's not in. We know he has a media friendly personality, so it's not like this is a Jim Rice case or anything. Really, I wasn't trying to argue that Santo shouldn't be in the Hall. That doesn't interest me to be honest. What I stand by is the last part:

"This old Cub should realize that he doesn’t need such recognition to validate his career, but that won’t stop him from crying in front of television cameras every time he gets passed over year after year by the Hall."

I just think that whole routine every year is pathetic. The guy has is a true Cubs hero, has the love of everyone in the fanbase, and even has his number retired. I get that the Hall is a big important huge deal, but it's sort of embarrassing how he acts in front of TV cameras every time he gets passed over.

- Cubs fans were all about sucking off Reed Johnson last year. I'm not saying you were - or that other reasonable, intelligent Cubs fans were - but the idiots loved him. I used to approve comments for the the Sun-Times' Full Court Press blog where idiot commenters ran wild - I'd compare them to the majority of the people who call into The Score - and I can't tell you how many times people lobbied for Johnson in the lineup every day over Soriano. So there.

- Comparing Johnson - who was in his first year with the Cubs at the time - to Pods and Crede makes no sense. NO SENSE. Sox fans loved Crede and Pods? Well maybe it's because those two guys helped them win a World Series. Sometimes when something like that happens, ties run deep. You wouldn't know (hey now!). And, to be fair, I didn't hear many Sox fans complaing when Pods left after 2007, and no one was all that pumped up (especially me) when they signed him this year (even though it has worked out so far).

- I totally forgot about the Shingo gong. That's pretty bad. I'll give you that one.

- As for Soriano, this is a tired subject that probably doesn't needed to be argued over anymore, but I still think it's crazy that he bats first - particularly when he was doing really well last year. I get that you want to give him the most at-bats, but don't you want those at-bats to come with runners on-base? It's even crazier - in my opinion - to bat him first in the NL. You want people to score on those doubles, and for those homers to count for two or three, not one.

- Hawk rules. He should be a stand up comedian.

The Pods comp absolutely makes sense if we look at it in terms of 2005 only. Yes, they won, but Podsednik's contributions were entirely overstated. Just as Reed Johnson's were last year. Both players did contribute, yes, and both fan bases had large amounts of fans gush over them disproportionally to what they actually deserved. In both cases, meathead fans vehemently stated the cases of Reed or Pods over a better player. In Reed's case, it was Soriano. Completely and utterly laughable, indeed. But just as laughable is that there was a (not insignificant) portion of White Sox fans who felt that Podesednik was a more valuable baseball player than the man he replaced, Carlos Lee.

Now, don't get me wrong, without the Lee deal, the Sox probably aren't able to acquire several other players that contributed to the championship season (AJP? Iguchi? El Duque?). But that's not what these White Sox fans argued. They argued, both during and after 2005, that the White Sox were better off, one-for-one, with Pods than Lee. In no world is this true. All mythological offensive "concepts" or "strategies" aside (grinder ball, small ball, Ozzie ball, smart ball...am i missing any of these ingenious offensive approaches?), that was a mediocre offense that would have been better off with Carlos Lee in the lineup than Scott Podsednik. To argue otherwise is equally as absurd as arguing that Soriano should be replaced by Reed.

As far as the Santo thing goes, he was pretty hated by many of his contemporaries and by New York media because he was a cocky player, and has suffered because of it. The other major knock is that many believe that a team that never made the World Series shouldn't have 4 HOF players on it. And yeah, the whining is pretty unprofessional, but hey, I'd be a bitter old man too if I had those career numbers, but it was somehow decided that Bill Mazeroski and Gary Carter are more worthy HOFers than me

What's more heated? Sox-Cubs or the abortion debate?