Houston Astros (38-78) vs Chicago Cubs (44-69)
August 13-15, 2012
Wrigley Field
CHICAGO (SnS) – Just another road series for the 2012 Houston Astros, in their season-long day’s journey into night. The only notable thing about this one is that it is in Chicago, specifically on the north side.
I hate to say I’ll miss the FTCubs after this year; but I will, in a way. The Astros have other spirited and even bitter rivalries, but the FTCubs were always reserved a special place in hell by some of us, I think because of the unique combination of a mostly bullshit, lackluster franchise, and a spectacularly offensive and dumbass fan base.
SCHEDULE
Monday – 7:05 CDT (FSH)
Tuesday – 7:05 CDT (FSH)
Wednesday – 1:20 CDT (FSH, WGN)
One of the greatest eruptions ever of SnS anti-Cub bile came from Rebel Jew (nee Joey Trum) several seasons ago. It was beautiful and very intricate. Me describing it would not do justice, so here’s an excerpt:
… loveable losers loveable losers loveable losers. there’s a certain personality flaw in certain people that just happens to be manifested in the concept of cub fan. it’s analogous to a recent article in the SF weekly about how retarted people are drawn to Huey Lewis and the News. there’s just something comforting about the cubs to certain personality-challenged individuals across our great nation. it’s not unlike the congregation of a joel osteen or that weird lady with the big hair, the cubs give the weak-willed among us a sense of empowerment. the cubs offer an excuse for the helpless idiocy demonstrated in the dumbfuck daily lives of so many. the cubs give an identity (even an outfit) to these people, a way of life through which they can feel special. the cubs offer an endlessly comforting message to its followers, “it’s okay if you’re an idiot. it’s alright if you’re a poser. we’re here to help you celebrate your meaninglessness. you may be a loser, but you’re loveable too.”
Go do a tour of the 2006 TZ Hall of Fame to read the rest of this masterpiece.
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Monday – Armondo Galarraga (0-2, 4.70) vs. Jeff “The Mullet” Samardzija (7-10, 4.21)
Tuesday – Lucas Harrell (9-8, 3.97) vs. Chris Volstad (0-8, 6.94)
Wednesday – Bud Norris (5-9, 4.93) vs. Justin Germano (1-2, 4.26)
Cubs series previews are always great place to find anti-Cubs venom, just about anytime. Here are a few several selected poisonous posts:
Ron Brand (May 21, 2012)
I hate the Cubs.
I should clarify that. I hate what the Cubs represent, the personification of the culture that celebrates losing. You can see the result anytime you scan the stands of a Cub home game – the men, bald, flabby, weak, most of them drunk and boorishly stupid; their women are ugly, demihuman breeding stock for a legion of ineffectual fools whose purpose in life is to throw all their available money at a towering god who eternally mewls and coughs for more sacrifice with no hope of reward.
I hate the Cubs, and their insipid fans. The people who aren’t strong enough to want to win, who have abandoned all hope and entered the domain of Suck for Suck’s sake. Those who applaud at the barest hint of mediocrity, who celebrate the nearness of victory but would spit out its sweetness at first taste for the familiar bitterness of Loss and the comforting blanket of darkness it provides.
Craig
(September 16, 2011) But these guys are still the Astros and I’ll still root for them to bitch-slap the stupid fucking Cubs. Because no matter where you are in the pecking order, there are some constant truths. Number One being … Fuck the Cubs.
(June 4, 2010) Which brings me to my main point, which is fuck the Cubs. They’re five games under .500 and won’t be going anywhere this year.
(September 14, 2008) Of all the idiotic bullshit moves dreamed up by Bud Selig, this one takes the urinal cake. The fucking pussified Cubs, who were so stoically brave during a tornado and lightning storm when they were behind in a game, wouldn’t get on a goddamn plane to Houston. So Selig tells Drayton McLane, “Hey I know, let’s you and him fight. At my house. I’ll sell tickets.”
Now Cecil Cooper and the Astros, many of whom are still without electricity at their own homes, where, you know, they might be needed, have to travel to Bud’s shitty suburb of Chicago and play a crucial “home” series in front of two fanbases that have a huge interest in seeing the Astros lose.
Jane Doe (April 11, 2011)
What is the difference between Wrigley Field and a cactus?
With a cactus, all the pricks are on the outside.
GreatBagwellsBeard (July 27, 2009)
I haven’t been this torn about a subject since realizing the Scarlett isn’t a good actress as much as she is a good whisperer. I love the city of Chicago almost as much as I hate the Cubs. The fucking Cubs. If they resided in a city that I despised (like Jacksonville), my hate would multiply and increase in power like motherfucking Voltron. As is, I’ve spent plenty of time in Chicago (even visiting Wrigley once), and I find the people to be friendly, the weather pleasantly brisk, the restaurants fantastic, and it tops the list of cities to which I’d move if Harris County is finally swept out to sea by a God angry at us for tolerating Joel Osteen’s pseudo-Christian pap. Still, I haven’t come to praise Chicago, but to bury the Cubs.
MRaup (June 8, 2009)
The Astros are starting to play some decent baseball. They’ve won a few series in a row, things are starting to look up as a few of the important bullpen parts are close to returning fairly soon, and there might just be a small light at the end of this early season tunnel… Or that light might just be the oncoming train full of drunken, shirtless cocksucker Cub fans on their way to Minute Maid to out-cheer, out-drunk, out-obnoxious, and out-asshole the Houston fans. It could be either one.
(July 18, 2008) … Hordes of Goddamn Cub fans all over Minute Maid Park, and me doing battle with every single one of the pasty faced douchebags that I hear chanting “Lets Go Cubbies” while slopping smuggled Old Style in a flask all over themselves …
(April 3, 2008) The Astros and Cubs are both slopping around at the bottom of the Central standings. Hopefully not a sign of things to come… Well, at least for the Astros. I hope the Cubs lose the rest of their games this year.
(September 11, 2007) The moral of this preview is… Fuck the Cubs.
Dark Star (May 18, 2008)
The Shit-head Cubbies – the favorite team of such luminaries as Warren Buffet, Bill Murray, Jim Belushi, Pat Sajak (I must say), and John Cusack, as well as George Will, Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney, and many, many other similar nitwits, drunks, deluded freaks, and just plain losers …
(April 8, 2007) On Tuesday, the Puppies of North Chicago are giving away their version of a magnet schedule to the Wrigley faithful. I’m not sure why. The hard core Cub fans – which is to say the drunkest louts of all the drunken louts in the stands – don’t need a schedule. They are pulled to the park, rain or shine, win or lose, by a force they cannot understand or explain; a primal force, the same sort of thing that sends salmon backwards up a spillway, brings the swallows back to Capistrano each spring, and compels the lemmings to go ahead and jump headfirst off the cliff, en masse. All CubFan really needs is a big, square magnet he can stick on the ice box that says, “Every Fuckin’ Day!!”
Or, to quote the gifted soliloquist (and former Cub manager) Lee Elia, “Fuck those fuckin’ fans who come out here and say they’re Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you rippin’ every fuckin’ thing you do. . . The motherfuckers don’t even work. That’s why they’re out at the fuckin’ game. They oughta go out and get a fuckin’ job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a fuckin’ living. Eighty-five percent of the fuckin’ world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A fuckin’ playground for the cocksuckers. . . ”
:sigh: Greatness like that just doesn’t come along every day, folks.
Taras Bulba (August 31, 2007)
Chicago is a mediocre 5-5 over their last ten games but appear to be feeling their oats and spouting off a lot of cocky drivel about being in a pennant race, etc. Perfect timing for the annual summer rite whereby the hopes and dreams of pathetic Cubs fans everywhere are brutally eviscerated by that mean ass son of a bitch, the God of Baseball, in the guise in the next three days of your Houston Astros. It’s coming a little late in the season, but nevertheless, it’s here. Allah, akhbar!
One of my proudest achievements ever at AC/OWA/SnS was inspired by the FTCubs, back when the whole Fuck The Cubs thing was in its fullest flower. I wrote a take off of T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, sometime late in the 2004 season. I called it the The Love Song of John Q. Cubfan and, though it is highly topical, I still have a fondness for it.
This was the season after the Cubs (and Steve Bartman) folded up against the Marlins in the NLCS. In 2004, the Cards had taken over 1st place in the Central in early June, and led the rest of the way. The Astros and Cubs battled neck and neck for 2nd place and what would be the Wild Card slot. Then there was an infamous 4-game series in late August at Wrigley. By that time, the FTCubs were still in 2nd, but fading (and panicking), while the Astros, among others, were making a charge at them. The Cubs won the first game of the series without incident, but the Astros came back and stomped the Cubs 15-7 the next day. The Astros hit 5 HRs that game, and Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt were hit by pitches, in retalition. The Astros won a close one on Saturday (Clemens beating Zambrano), more or less without incident. They won again on Sunday, 10-3 … by then the Cubs’ and manager Dusty Baker’s frustrations were showing, and a beanball war of sorts ensued. The highlights were Astros rookie reliever Dan Wheeler dotting the Cubs Derek Lee, and Cub reliever Mike Remlinger throwing at Berkman’s head, which emptied the benches. And so on. The Astros eventually left the Cubs in the dust that year, and won the Wild Card.
Anyway, it was against this backdrop that I composed the poem/parody.
The Love Song of John Q. Cubfan
Vous pouvez connerie le boulanger
Et obtenir les brioches
Que vous pouvez soutenir de chaque affaire
Excepté une
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a Cub fan drunk and passed out in his seat;
Let us go, through certain Wrigleyville streets,
The muttering retreats
Of idiots who believe they’re cursed by goats
Who drink old fashioned beer that tastes like oats:
Streets that follow like a tedious interview
Of a whiny manager with a fucked-up world-view
That leads to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, “What the hell?”
Let us head for Wrigley on the El.
In the stands the vendors come and go
Selling their swill for six bucks a go.
The yellow journalists who just can’t rant enough
The yellow piss that makes the hands so tough
Get mixed together on some lost afternoon
When Sammy the rightfielder, who is a buffoon
Hops around like a bunny at the sight of a long, lazy drive
And gets gunned down at second by four feet or five,
And sensing another sign of the gods’ disdain
We order up another nasty brew to drain.
And indeed there will be time
For the wild card lead to disappear,
Onrushing giants and spacemen getting near;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare to face the nagging fear;
There will be time to whine and moan,
For the umpires to conspire, the announcers to berate
As after another loss we head for home;
Time for beanballs and ejections,
Time for the sunshine to wear out the whiteys,
And time for Steve Stone to call us un-mighty,
As pointless as a lonely, Viagra-fueled erection.
In the stands the vendors come and go
They sell that shit for six bucks, you know?
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “What the fuck?” and “What the fuck?”
Is it The Curse? Is it lousy luck?
Or just that our bullpen really sucks?
[They will say, “Your bullpen blows.”]
Borowski’s hurt, so the one we chose
LaTroy, to come in late and close
[They will say, “You cut off your face to spite your nose!”]
Do we dare
Take the Almighty’s name in vain?
In a minute there is time
To curse a blue streak, and go down in flames.
For we have known them all, already, known them all: —
Have known the games pissed away by errors, wind-borne flies, blown saves,
We have measured out our lives by the games we gave away;
We have lost must-win games to chumps, and have been appalled.
From the second deck falls a chunk of concrete, about half a ton
Should I try and run under one?
And we have known the indignities, already, know them all —
Beat out by a team in McDonald’s uniforms back in ’84,
Or ’89 Will Clark went all Babe Ruth on us (“It’s gone! It’s gone!”)
And how could we forget Brant Brown (Brant Brown?!) dropping that fly ball?
What the hell is going on?
Cincinnati (Cincinnati?!) beats us three of four
Should I go and get a gun?
And we know how this ends, already; we must remember –
Confident in a solid lead held almost up to the end,
[“Oh, don’t be silly!” they say, as the inevitable descends]
How will it be this time? Like the ’69 Mets?
Another incredible mind-fuck we will never forget?
Our hopes as dead as the ivy in November.
Could I sneak a knife in, nice and neat
Commit Harry Caray right in my seat?
. . . . .
When Ruth stood pointing out to Waveland Ave., was he really calling his shot?
Or just showing us the way to the exits, saying,
“This thing’s all over, boys; why’n’t you just head on home?”
I should have been a ragged old glove
Scuttling across the floors of silent dugouts
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
As smoothed by several rounds
Asleep…tired…slowing down,
Stretched out on the bar next to my ratty blue cap with the “C”.
Should I, after another shot ‘n’ a beer
Have the strength to walk on out of here?
But though I have wept and fasted, blown up balls and genuflected,
Though I have longed to see Dusty’s head [the stupid toothpick in its mouth] brought in upon a platter,
Truth is, I can’t do shit—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of our greatness flicker,
And I have seen the Base Ball Gods shake their heads, and snicker,
And in short, I’ve seen my own impotence reflected.
And was it all worth it, after all,
After elimination, the acrimony, the accusations,
Bitter doubt entering our conversations?
Was it worth raising the payroll to $100 million
Just to bring the types of players with the skills in
When one skill is not holding onto the fucking ball?
The skill to wear sunglasses and still not see,
The can of corn come wafting out,
While our pitcher grins on the mound with glee,
Saying, “I know you’ll catch that ball.”
“I know you’ll catch that fucking ball!”
And was it all worth it, after all,
Worth all the money, care, and time spent,
Putting together a team which only wasted all its promise?
Which would rather initiate, and then retaliate, than win the game –
Rather kick a wall and get a knee sprain –
And get 15 days on the DL,
While the whole season goes to hell.
Was it worth it, all the discontent?
When, with our backs up against the wall,
Against the lowly Redlegs and the Braves,
They say, “You lost them all.”
“You lost them all!”
. . . . .
No, we are not championship material, nor were meant to be,
We are lovable losers, lots of fun,
Someone to get well against, if you’ve been on a bad run,
Come to the ballpark, the ‘Taj Mahal’, and get drunk out in the sun.
We’ve got great starters, but our bullpen sucks,
Our offense has its moments, but is full of holes,
And just when you think they give a fuck,
They blow a lead and lose control,
And the whole damn season comes undone.
We can’t take it. . . we can’t take it. . .
When our Sammy starts to jake it,
Shall we keep our hopes alive? Shall we go into the breech?
We shall play the Reds at home, and watch their offense be unleashed.
I have heard the fat ladies singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing for me.
We have seen them at night wearing too-tight slacks
Stumbling out of the bars in Lincoln Park
Looking for their SUV’s double-parked.
We have lingered in the dream world of fantasy
Sustained by our collective hysteria, and a whole lot of booze
‘Til reality sets in, and we lose and lose
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Astros lose the series, 0-3.
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