Happy Friday Chicago!
Thank you for reading the newsletter. I would love to have a couple dozen more subscribers by football season, so if you could recommend this to someone you know today, that would be great.
Speaking of, football season is less than six weeks away.
In every young Chicagoan’s mind are two philosophies fighting for the floor.
One is that summer is precious, that summer is good, and that summer will be missed dearly once the weather turns.
The other is simple: that football is six weeks away.
Summer weather offers you flexibility — lakes, golfing, outdoor activities and the ability to go on a walk with some degree of lust for life. But, that’s mostly on two days of the week, if that.
The other five days of the week are generally the same as they are in colder months, and those are dragged down by an increasingly frustrating Cubs team or a Sox team that is only entertaining when they lose in a new way you didn’t think was previously possible. This is getting old quickly.
I can feel one side of my brain starting to win the argument already. My DraftKings account — which has been dormant — is hungry for cash. And I’m hungry for some weekday college football and an NFL Sunday where I only move my fat ass to pick up the food downstairs or go to the bathroom.
Sundays in the summer are tougher. There’s nothing to watch, and if you’re hungover, it feels like you’re stuck in purgatory. The sun is shining in the windows and I can just hear my mother saying, “It’s so nice outside and you’re laying in here!” as she aggressively rolls up the blinds.
That situation is about 60% my fault, 30% baseball’s fault and only about 10% summer’s fault, but nonetheless, it’s something to consider.
The summer weekends do hit differently. On the right side of every Thursday, there’s a wonderful plan waiting for you on the other side. A trip with friends, an outdoor concert, a dip in the lake.
But! At least for me, there’s so much less spontaneity. My calendar is booked up for weeks out. There’s no “let’s do this tonight” in summer. My brother, I can’t get beers with you, I’ve had this [insert event] planned for this Friday for six months.
I know I’ll miss summer once it’s gone. But I watched Kung Fu Panda when the Cubs went down big this week. Kung Fu Panda is an animated movie about, well, a panda who does Kung Fu (Jack Black is fantastic as Po The Panda).
I love baseball. But I never wake up with butterflies in my stomach because the Cubs are playing at 1:20 that day. No. I wake up with the butterflies in my tummy when the Iowa Hawkeyes are taking on Minnesota in a 6-2 vs. 5-3 matchup at 11 a.m. To be totally honest, sometimes it’s hard to sleep on Fridays because I’m so excited.
Football could never exist in the summer, though. If summer and football season overlapped, the sensory overload would make everyone clinically depressed during the rest of the year. Okay, maybe not for everyone. But for me, at least.
This past week, on a flight to New Orleans for work, I sat next to my first plane chatter of all time. Worse yet, she was talking to me about Jesus Christ returning.
Because I’m in the content game, I did have a brief exit from misery as she talked at me, hoping it would make for a good newsletter intro. Ultimately, it was me just saying “yeah” and lying about how religious I was as she talked to me about Christ returning and the books she’s read about, again, Christ returning.
The only thing that I did draw from that conversation, for the purpose of this newsletter, was that as she was rambling on and on and on, I started daydreaming about the Bears having a breakout year, about Week 1 at Soldier against the Packers and Week 2 in Tampa Bay.
That bliss was interrupted by her asking what denomination I was, but it did make time go faster for a minute or two.
I think it’s fair to say one philosophy, one side of my brain, is winning out right now. I wasn’t thinking about the MLB trade deadline during our rapture discussion, after all.
But I don’t want to feel guilty about my autumn dreams. Therefore, I think I’m going to go pedal to the metal on the summer for this remaining month and a half.
Concerts, golfing, picnics at the fucking lake, watching movies outside at Gallagher Way, baseball games, and any other dumb shit that people consider fun summer activities — those are a “go” for me from here on out.
That way, when Navy and Notre Dame kick off on August 26th, I’ll sit back with a smile on my face knowing that, in my heart of hearts, I gave summer everything I had.
Credit: DreamWorks Animation, “Kung Fu Panda”
I know baseball isn’t exactly like football or basketball, where a collective team can come out “focused” and “driven” on a given night when they really need it.
But my God, every time the Cubs could use a win they get one, and every time they need a win they shit the bed.
(They’re currently down 7-1 to the Cardinals in a game Marcus Stroman started. If they come back, I may have to push back my self-set deadline back. Edit: Final — Cardinals 7, Cubs 2.)
The back-and-forth is killing me, especially when Jed Hoyer has a gun at all of our heads, whispering “if they lose this one, we may just have to sell,” even though he’s the one that’s been constructing the team for the last three years.
That proverbial gun-to-head feeling is exhausting me, and thought I’m vehemently against selling, I feel myself after bad losses now just giving in to the inevitability of it all — like Matt Damon in the elevator at the end of The Departed.
Not all of the players are playing as well as they could be. But what I hate about that argument is its suggestion that any MLB team has all of its players playing their absolute best baseball at the same time. That’s the goal, sure, but an unrealistic one. Like that light in The Great Gatsby, or whatever.
Instead, what really drives me nuts is the people in charge of it all. David Ross has gone Tony La Russa on us, in that the best performing position player from the previous game is almost guaranteed to not be starting the next night.
Take today, for example.
Mike Tauchman was 3-4 with a homer and two doubles last night. He’s nowhere to be found in tonight’s lineup. Instead of putting Cody Bellinger at first and him in center, we have Trey Mancini at first who 1. can’t play first 2. can’t do much of anything right now.
Miguel Amaya regularly has big games and is benched the next day. I get that some catchers work better with some pitchers (I hate that shit), but the National League does have a DH spot now, Rossy. But I at least reluctantly admit sometimes you can’t put the best player behind the plate.
What makes no sense is the amount of at-bats Miles Mastrobuoni gets. I don’t care about his single and bunt Wednesday night, I do care that he regularly finds his way into the lineup while slashing .200/ .297/.238.
The August 1 trade deadline is nearing, and now I’m hearing murmurs that Kyle Hendricks may be traded. Is nothing sacred anymore?
The last remaining Cub from 2016 — who is pitching great — really needs to be dealt?
Please stop the nonsense.
“It’s a business!” Yeah, yeah, I know.
That business is driven by braindead, inappropriately invested fans like me, though. And I think trading Kyle Hendricks for some 18 year-old prospect would be enough for me to not tune into the Marquee Network for maybe a day or two.
Check that — four days — there are four Kung Fu Pandas, apparently.
Four days off from watching the Cubs is basically the death penalty from me. And I’m about to lay the hammer down if they trade Kyle.
As that August 1 date nears, the “If They Get Hot” whispers have really died down for the White Sox. They are a whopping 16 games below .500, and somehow — but still — nine games out of first place in the AL Central.
Let’s address these rumors, I believe started by Jon Heyman, that the only four players not available at the deadline are Luis Robert Jr., Eloy Jimenez, Andrew Vaughn, and Dylan Cease.
First takeaway: that’s not exactly Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, Combs, Koenig, and Lazzeria there. When you label players “untouchable” you want them at least to be awesome players. When they’re not, it’s a good indication of how devoid of talent your overall team is.
Robert should obviously not be traded. He actually hit a home run last night, and I missed it. Jake Burger was hitting, so it couldn’t have been him that hit the home run, and I was still dumb enough to ask my roommate who went yard. Deductive reasoning should have been applied.
Dylan Cease, I can see being untouchable, but not because he’ll become a star for the White Sox. Instead, because I know him and his 4.2 ERA will get traded to the Astros and immediately become unhittable. And that is just not the type of L that Rick Hahn and company can take right now.
Jimenez has all of the makings of a nice power hitter, but he cannot stay on the field and doesn’t seem to care much that he cannot stay on the field. A guy with a .776 OPS who can’t field doesn’t generally get the “untouchable” label.
This is completely irrelevant, because it was still a bad trade for the Cubs, but Cease and Jimenez, in five years each, have yet to eclipse Jose Quintana’s WAR in his 5.5 years with the White Sox. They’re not particularly close, either.
Finally, Andrew Vaughn has had — for my money — the most disappointing White Sox year. He’s playing far better than the majority of the team, don’t get me wrong, but I really thought he was going to take that “next step” this year. He’s hitting just okay and isn’t doing much else well.
I probably wouldn’t give up on Vaughn right now, either, particularly because of how low his value probably is in a midseason trade market.
But, if any of these players — sans Robert — were traded, would White Sox fans blink? None of them have endeared themselves to the fanbase like a Kyle Hendricks has, and none of them have even played as well as Hendricks this year.
It’s a sad state of affairs. And Sox fans will likely see an underwhelming trade deadline, no matter who gets traded. That much feels like a guarantee.
Colin Cowherd — you dork — get your Justin Fields Sucks segments in now. Because training camp opens next week, baby!
I want all expectations for this team set so low by the national media, and I want all of us morons to set them so high. That’s when we thrive.
Per Still Gotta Come Through Chicago policy, I will not be reporting on “Fields had a good day” and “Fields had a bad day” updates from camp. But we will begin talking football very shortly here.
And, as mentioned above, I cannot wait for that.
Have a wonderful weekend, readers! Thanks for coming back. I will see you all next week.
I was at the game last night. Awful! Has Wisdom not been taking infield while he has been sitting on his ass. Seemed like there were more than just two errors. With NFL Players reporting, I am pretty much moving on from baseball. Which means I will continue to watch every game and get inappropriately angry during each game.
I love reading your stuff. Why I feel I was meant to be Chicago born and raised I've never figured out, but reading SGCTC allows me to briefly vicariously live that life. For Christ's sake (*wink*) only been there twice but the second time was just last June when I got to see the Cubs beat the Cardinals twice! Thursday & Saturday. 2 of the best days of my life. Anyway keep up the great work, with all the pessimistic snark and giddy optimism you got. And GO BEARS!