Loopin' Ella

...rrrRRRAAAAAAGGGHHHrrr...!!

(earmuffs.)









...f-f-f-F-F-FUCK 'EM !!

I mean it: I've had it. To hell with them.
I am sick, sick, sick and tired of bashing my head against the nearest door jamb over every plot twist in the Greek play that is the Chicago Underachievers and Bud-lighters Society.

The time has come, brothers and sisters, to rise up and take a stand.
Fed-up fans, unite! You have only your own naivete to blame.

I, too, was once like you: I thought that those upright, uptight, Bud Light Fat Cats at Tribune Ink and their hacky, tacky, smack 'em on the backie lackey, Jim Hendry, could never, never, never be so unutterably stupid as to fail to see what a bona fide bonanza, what a jacked up jackpot, what a sweet-corn-fed cash cow it would be if ye olde Chicago National League Baseball Club were to make a serious run at the 2008 pennant.

Obviously, I was wrong, for they have gone and hired Lou Pinella to be their new field manager.

The only promising gleam --the one, tiny, golden nugget in this whole, vast, stinking, rancid pasture of [male bovine manure]-- is that at some point, Pinheadella is going to go Mount Saint Helens in a way that is sure to surpass Lee Elia's famous tirade: "Eighty-five percent of the people in this country work. The other fifteen percent come here and boo my players. They oughta go out and get a [fudging] job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a [fudging] living!"

My greatest regret in all of this is that I'll have to hear about Loopy's meltdown second-hand. You see, I won't be paying much attention, by then.

Next season, I am officially switching my allegiance to another team. I haven't decided which one, yet, but it won't be these Chicago [Smegma-heads]. I will not be making any of my regular pilgrimages to Wrigley Field; I will not be buying no two or three Overpriced Styles and a bag of peanuts; I will not be purchasing any hats, jerseys, or other merchandise; and I will definitely not be watching anything, anything at all, on WGN-- which, by the way, Mr. or Ms. Programming Department, is not a sacrifice at all, but rather a blessing for which someone deserves a great big smooch.

No, I won't be doing any of those things: I won't be flushing any more of my hard-earned, disposable income down your toilet, Tribune Company, so go [coitate] yourself.

Instead, I'll be buying some other team's hat, some other team's jersey, tickets to some other team's ballpark, where I will gripe about their prices as I spend, spend, spend and, if I happen to think about your ball club at all, Tribune Company, I will whoop and cackle with glee over the few extra drops of red ink you'll have to use because of my economic boycott. What do you think of that, you Pinella-headed prigs?

I'll tell you one thing I won't be griping about next year: Losing.
No, this time I think I'll try something different, something revolutionary. Something like, oh, I don't know, rooting for a [conjugating] WINNER. Judging by my prognosticational performance over the years, the odds are about 3-1 in favor of my picking a playoff team to root for. So, while you and you and Lou are chasing your tails like a badly booted grounder, my happy [donkey] will be jumping and stomping and fist-pumping and cheering full-throated for a real baseball team, as it charges toward a division championship and/or a playoff berth.

Fed-up fans, unite! Join me on the anti-Cubs bandwagon. Root for a real team. Root for a winner. (Stay tuned to find out which one.)

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That high-pitched whine you hear is the worn-out fan belt on the Tribune Inkum Thinkum, the computer (manufactured by Uni-vac) that is trying to come up with just the right combination for the Chicago [Smegma-heads] to offer to the Yankees for shortstop/ third baseman Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez.

Try this one on for size...
The Pinstripers ship A-Rod to Wrigleyville in exchange for Carlos Zambrano, Jeff Samardzija, the Los Angeles Times, the planet Pluto* and dibs on hiring Joe Girardi as their next manager.

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...and speaking of the Yankees next manager...
Rumor has it that Yankees owner George "I Was Trump Before Trump Was Trump, Dammit" Steinbrenner wanted to fire manager Joe Torre because he "only" won the division this year, and not the whole ball of wax. Not only that, Big George wanted to announce the sacking on the same day that the Mets opened the National League Championship Series against those Poo-holes from Saint Loo.

Why? Because he's petty.

Rumor further has it that it was the Yankees players who, uh, went to bat for Torre and convinced Steinbrenner to not fire him. Steinbrenner, of course, wanted to announce that on the same day as Game One, too.

Why? Because he's petty: Big George likes to stick it to the Mets for air-time and column inches, just for the sake of being a prig. It's a wonder he doesn't slip his chauffeur a bonus and tell him to get into a minor "accident" in the parking lot at his private club. Even something as innocuous as that would bump the Mets off of the front page of the sports sections, simply because it happened to the chauffeur of the owner of the Goliath that is the New York Yankees.

Ultimately, it was Torre himself who announced that he would be back as the Yankees skipper next season. He made the announcement on the day before the NLCS was scheduled to start. Rumor has it that Bud "I Keep My Salary Cap In The Closet" Selig --showing far more pluck than usual-- ordered Steinbrenner to make a decision, one way or the other, before the day of Game One.

I can just imagine the players asking Big George not to fire Torre, and Steinbrenner saying, "All right, I won't fire him. Now, you have to do something for me..."

On the day the Mets were scheduled to open the NLCS, Yankees pitcher Corey Lidle crashed his single-engine plane into an apartment building on Manhattan's upper east side.

Chaos ensued, of course. CNN went commercial-free for a couple of hours so that they could tell us, non-stop, that they didn't know anything: "Details are sketchy. We can't really tell you very much at this time. Apparently, some kind of aircraft --we don't know what kind-- has apparently crashed into an apartment building on the upper east side. We don't know who the pilot was, we don't know what he was flying, we don't know where he came from, we don't know where he was going, we don't know why he crashed into a building, we don't know exactly how this all happened, but we're going to stay live and keep finding new ways of saying nothing at all for as long as it takes to ensure that we're still in the ratings race. Fortunately, we have about two dozen stringers in New York and several of them are at the scene. We're going to go to one of them right now, because I sure as hell don't know what's going on. Anderson, what can you tell us?"

"Well, Wolf, I can't really tell you very much at this time. Details are still sketchy. Apparently, some sort of aircraft --we don't really know what kind-- has apparently crashed into this building that you see behind me. We don't know who the pilot was, or why he crashed into the building. We don't know how many people have been injured or killed. We do know that there are an awful lot of fire trucks and ambulances here and there are a lot of emergency personnel hurrying around, uh, but we haven't had a chance to talk to any of them, yet, uh, because they have more important things to do than talk to us, uh, but other than that, Wolf, uh, we don't really know anything. Details are, uh, sketchy, uh, at this time..."

That night, the Mets game was rained out.

A few days later, while the Mets were in the midst of a rousing, seven-game series, a private jet over-ran its landing strip in Burbank, California.

One of the passengers was Alex Rodriguez.

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*Pluto's current status is uncertain, pending a full physical
and a ruling by an arbitrator. This portion of the agreement
may eventually become "a planet to be named later."

**The answer is 'Foghorn Leghorn.'

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P.S...
Bud "I Just-- I Say I Just Know That Marble-headed
Mongrel Is Backa All This**" Selig must go.