In a celebration of circular reasoning, the Hall of Fame is touting the Veterans Committee's non-election of any old-timers this year as validation of the baseball writers not having elected any of these same players when they came before the writers.

That's the third time in a row the ex-player-dominated committee has seen fit to add no one to their club. So much for righting the wrongs of the past.

Ron Santo deserved to be voted into the Hall by the writers, and he deserves to be voted in by the Veterans Committee, though under current rules, there is no chance of that happening before 2009.

If you've forgotten what an insufferable ass Joe Morgan is, you'll find a reminder here as he discusses the vote. In related news, Joe has earned his way onto the Enemies Of The Blog list; in fact, he's in line for the first-ever Lifetime Listing.

I hope to give him a proper send-up later in the week.

Over at Baseball Prospectus, Jay Jaffe has a thorough analysis and explanation of the workings of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee. In fact, it's so thorough, I want to throw up.

In case you're unaware, tomorrow is the day Ron Santo is scheduled to have his heart broken again as the Veterans Committee announces which old-timers have not been elected to the Hall. As Jaffe explains, since baseball rethought the composition of the committee--it now includes 84 members, of whom 61 are Hall of Famers such as the insufferable Joe Morgan--it has punched exactly zero tickets to Cooperstown. Not Gil Hodges'. Not Tony Oliva's. And not Ron Santo's.

Jaffe utilizes his JAWS Score system to rank the 20 hitters on the current old-timers ballot and only third baseman Santo and catcher Joe Torre surpass Hall of Fame standards at their positions. In fact, as Jaffe summarizes, "Santo is the best eligible player not in the Hall of Fame" and his score would place him sixth among all HOF third baseman, behind Schmidt, Boggs, Mathews, Brett and Molitor, but ahead of Brooks Robinson, to whom Santo is invariably compared.

Jaffe continues:

It's not as if Santo was unheralded as a player. He was a nine-time All-Star and a five-time Gold Glove winner who placed in the top 10 in MVP voting four times. He had power (342 home runs), he had plate discipline (leading the league in walks four times in a five-year span), he had defense (a Rate2 of 104), and he overcame diabetes to do it all. The only thing he lacked was a pennant, but then again, so did teammates Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Fergie Jenkins, and they're in the Hall. Among that group, Santo outscores all but Banks (105.2). There's a sense that some players still carry a grudge for his habit of clicking his heels after Cub wins in 1969, but that's pretty small beer; is it any worse than, say, Reggie Jackson admiring his home runs? Santo not being in is a grave injustice that has more to do with petty politics among players than it does merit.

The results of the vote are to be announced Tuesday at 1 p.m. CST. Like millions of Cub fans who admire Ron Santo for his playing record among other things, I am hoping for the best, but expecting something else.

Crain's Chicago Business--it's like The Sporting News in a suit.

On Friday, for instance, Crain's didn't let the fact that all was quiet on the Tribune boardroom tug-of-war front stand in the way of another Cubs mention. They reported that the team has struck a deal with an electricity supplier called Constellation NewEnergy, whereby the company will be responsible for transmission of all electricity to Wrigley Field.

If you're any kind of a baseball fan, you're well aware that electric utility service includes three phases: generation, transmission and distribution. Constellation NewEnergy is involved in the middle step, transmission, which amounts to purchasing power from generators before delivering it to the local distributor, in this case, the venerable Commonwealth Edison Co.

Fun fact provided in Crain's by Constellation NewEnergy's Julie Hextall, Vice President, Great Lakes region:

At its peak, Wrigley Field uses about 2.9 megawatts of electricity, roughly equal to the power usage of 2,000 private homes.

Another fun fact: with the money they'll be able to save by doing an end run around ComEd, the Cubs can now afford to void that advertising contract with Under Armour, trash the revolving advertising sign behind home plate and sign Carlos Zambrano into the year 2040.

Though Friday is international Pretend You're Working At Your Computer While You're Actually Trying To Purchase Cubs Seats Day, I am not planning to observe it.

It's the old impatience problem. I can't stand the thought of staring at my screen while the hourglass symbol fills or the clockface symbol winds around or the rainbow ball spins or I'm sent some other signal indicating that it's not yet my turn to pay the laughably exorbitant price of major league baseball tickets.

Then there's the old paycheck problem, i.e., I'm supposed to be earning one Friday morning instead of auto-clicking incoming calls to voicemail or hiding behind a closed door so I can jump on the very best seats to the May 5th game against the Nationals when they're finally made available to me.

The truth is, I am lucky enough to work at a company with four season tickets which in most years are available to me more often than I am able to use them. If the Cubs actually stay in the race all season long, the seats would be less available to me, but then I can always turn to StubHub or eBay or the local scalpers, who wouldn't think of charging a lifelong Cubs fan like myself more than five or six or ten times the face value.

Maybe I better log on Friday morning just in case.

At Baseball Prospectus, Kevin Goldstein offers his list of the Top 100 Prospects. Three Cub farmhands made the list: lefty Donnie Veal (#36), outfielder Felix Pie (#42), and righthander Sean Gallagher (#82).

Though placing just three men among the top 100 might sound feeble and a long way from the days when the Cubs were named Baseball America's Organization of the Year ('96?), it left the Cubs tied with the Reds for second most Top 100 prospects in the NL Central. The Brewers placed four on the list, including #12 (3B Ryan Braun) and #14 (RHP Yovani Gallardo).

Royals 3B Alex Gordon was the #1 prospect. Overall, the Devil Rays and Rockies led the way with 7 players each.

So earlier today, on their way into the salary arbitration hearing room--literally--Cubs GM Jim Hendry and agent Barry Praver agreed on a one-year, $12.4 million deal for Hendry's best pitcher and Praver's best client, Carlos Zambrano.

In the end, Zambrano & Co. came down further then Hendry & Co. came up: the pitcher had been asking for $15.5MM and the Cubs' offer was $11.025MM.

The bottom line is that the Cubs got their best pitcher and Opening Day starter under contract and neither side had to endure the ugliness of an actual hearing in order to get there.

For the record and so there's no doubt after you read the next few grafs, I'm ecstatic Zambrano signed and hopeful it will lead to a long-term deal, even if it is for Barry Zito money, since Zambrano is a much, much better pitcher.

That said, if you've been following this story at all, you've no doubt encountered this factoid multiple times: the Cubs have not gone to salary arbitration with a player since 1993.

I bet I've run into that fact at least five times in five different publications in the last week alone. It seems to me it's usually brought up as proof of some sort that the Cubs are generally square-shooters in their dealings with player agents and/or they appreciate the damage that can be done to a player/club relationship if it's subjected to the sometimes rough and tumble proceedings in an arbitration hearing.

I guess those make sense. Of course, it could also be that the Cubs are saps and are too willing to cough up the extra few mill.

Here's the thing...

Since '93 when the Cubs last took a player to arbitration (note: it was Mark Grace and the Cubs beat him out of $1 million), the Wrigley Boys have a record of 1.049--1,153. That amounts to a .476 winning percentage. They've endured five 90+ loss seasons and enjoyed just one 90+ win season. They've been to the post-season twice, in '98 and '03, winning 6 games and losing 9.

So maybe the Cubs really are square-shooters and they really do take a constructive attitude into contract negotiations with guys they would like to keep around.

Or maybe they're just paying too much money to players--again, Carlos Zambrano excepted--who don't really deserve it.

From the February '07 Vineline (the swimsuit edition):

"A lot of what I do requires really short and quick bursts, whether it's swinging a bat or stealing a base. So I do a lot of baseball-specific, explosive lifts that generate power and speed."

––Cubs prospect Eric Patterson on his off-season conditioning program

At first I was surprised to see the Cubs mentioned on the Advertising Age Web site. Then I thought about it and concluded that this franchise probably has more to crow about in a business journal than in Baseball America.

Naturally, the story had to do with the team's two-year advertising deal with Under Armour, and it mostly repeated a lot of the obvious debate and the Cubs' easy-to-anticipate responses. One part of the story, however, caught my eye because it referred to a statement by Jay Blunk, Cubs Marketing Director--or is he just the Interim Marketing Director?--that I hadn't seen before:

Mr. Blunk said it was important that the outfield signage be related to baseball and competition, rather than doing a deal with, say, an insurance company or car company.

This almost makes me look forward to 2009, when Geico and State Farm and Nissan and the Chicagoland Chevy Dealers and whichever pharmaceutical company is making the leading erectile dysfunction remedy at that point in time vie for the opportunity to replace Under Armour.

They'll make February, 2007, look like the good ol' days, when the Cubs still had some respect for their home park and would only agree to descrecrate it on behalf of a manufacturer of sports underwear.

Despite everything you may have read, heard and thought over the years, Wrigley Field is no better than any other park in baseball. In fact, because it's the oldest stadium in the NL Central, Wrigley Field is actually a handicap to its owners, who must pour millions of dollars into it and rack their mega-powerful marketing brains just to keep the old dung heap serviceable.

Thanks, Jay Blunk, for the clarification.

(P.S. The photo illustration above, which appeared on the Tribune Web site and at cubs.com, was created and circulated by Under Armour. It seems they believe this image will make Cub fans feel better about what they're doing.)

If you’re expecting to read a thoughtful review of the Jae-Kuk Ryu trade, you’re about to be disappointed. (You'll find one of those right here.)

The subject of today’s entry is Andy Masur, who, until 96 hours ago, was the third stooge in the WGN Radio booth, playing Larry Fine to Pat Hughes’s Moe and Ron Santo’s Curly. On Friday, Masur was hired to do radio play-by-play and color work for the Padres, where he’ll join local fixtures, Jerry Coleman and Ted Leitner.

If you haven’t listened to Cubs radio broadcasts for the past eight years, odds are you’re not familiar with Masur’s work. Actually, even if you have listened to Cubs radio broadcasts, you could have missed Masur’s work. You see, the guy didn’t do much. Part of the pre-game show, the occasional Dusty Baker interview when Santo wasn’t traveling with the team, the out-of-town scoreboard update now and then during the game, and a late half-inning of play-by-play to enable Pat Hughes to urinate. (I’m assuming Hughes urinated during that half inning; it was never openly acknowledged.)

As I said, he didn’t do much, and what he did was utterly undistinguished. Masur has a pleasant voice and crisp pronunciation, two things that distinguished him from Santo. But he always sounded stiff and uncomfortable on the air, especially when doing play-by-play, like some guy whose wife had bought him a special anniversary gift at a charity auction—“Give the Cub fan in your life a chance to announce a real Cubs game!”

Obviously, the Padres didn’t see it that way.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, “(Padres’ CEO Sandy Alderson) said there were three major factors that led the Padres to select Masur: his ability to work well with an established broadcast team, which Masur did in Chicago with Pat Hughes and Ron Santo; the fact he had some experience ‘but is still on the upward trajectory of his career,’ and his style.

With the Pads, Masur is slated to do two innings of play-by-play and five innings of color. He will also have a role in the pre-game show and possibly host an off-season Padres talk show.

All I can say is, Congratulations, Andy Masur…and I have absolutely no idea how you did it.

Players packing for Spring Training might want to leave their golf clubs at
home. There will be little free time and lots of emphasis on fundamentals in
new Cubs manager Lou Piniella's camp.

"I don't like being on the field four hours," Piniella said of his plan,
"although I told a few of our players that if they want to play golf this
spring, it'll be twilight golf."

--cubs.com, 2.12.07

The Cubs are taking steps to stay healthy and work more on
fundamentals this spring...

Cubs manager Dusty Baker said the Cubs won't do
anything different, just place a different emphasis on the workouts.

"You can't do much differently -- they are what they are," Baker said.
"We'll stress it more. We'll give it more importance. Fundamentals are the
same whether you're playing Little League, high school, Pony League, it
doesn't matter."

--cubs.com, 2.16.06

There was a new message at the Chicago Cubs' camp on
Thursday, the first day pitchers and catchers took the field. Expect to hear
it a lot.

"It's the first day and I heard the word 'fundamentals' about 30 times,"
Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood said.

--cubs.com, 2.17.05

Cactus League play starts on Thursday, but Chicago Cubs
manager Dusty Baker said he's not ready for games yet.

"We're not ready physically, we're not ready fundamentally yet for games,"
Baker said Sunday. "I disagree with guys who say Spring Training is too
long. If anything, you might play too many games."

That's because Baker wants time to emphasize fundamentals.

--cubs.com, 2.23.03

I saw the White Sox World Series trophy Sunday afternoon. It was making a stop at the grand opening of a new park district facility in our community, a facility that will also function as a satellite location for the White Sox Baseball Academy.

I would describe the trophy as I've heard people describe Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dustin Hoffman: smaller in person than you might have expected. On the other hand, it came with its own security guard, which I thought was pretty impressive.

What amazed me most was that no one besides myself and the security guard was even paying any attention to the trophy. (Our suburb and most of those around us are pretty rich in White Sox fans). But then, maybe I shouldn't be surprised:

You know how it is with Sox fans--they don't really care much about the baseball. They just come out to the game because it's a party.

Former Cub, Jeff Fassero, cut by the Giants last May, officially announced Friday night what the National League had known for a long time:

He was done.

The Springfield, Illinois native debuted for the Cubs in 2001 and started in fine fashion. By April 21st, when he struck out John Wehner to preserve a 4-3 Cubs victory at Pittsburgh, he had saved 9 of the team's first 12 wins.

Fassero, 38 years old at the time, would earn only 3 more saves over the remaining 145 games of the '01 season. (By early May, Tom Gordon had recovered sufficiently from elbow surgery to assume the closer's role.) In all, Fassero finished the year with a 3.42 ERA, with 79 K's and 23 BB's in 73 2/3 inning pitched. Not a bad season.

The lefty wore Cubbie blue until August of '02, when he was traded to St. Louis. He stayed with the Cardinals through '03, pitched for the Rockies and the Diamondbacks in '04, and for the Giants the past two years. Last season, he compiled a 7.80 ERA--Is "compiled" even the right word when your ERA is nearly 8.00?--giving up 23 hits and 8 walks in just 15 innings. Remarkably, the Giants actually let Fassero start a game last April, an ugly 4-inning, 7-hit, 4-run outing at Arizona.

Over 16 Major League seasons, Fassero won 121 games and lost 124, with 1643 K's and 724 BB's in more than 2,000 innings.

I'm writing from a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio, where yesterday, National Signing Day, I was told that many people were huddled over their radios, tuned in to live reports identifying which 18-year-olds wanted to play football for the Ohio State Buckeyes next fall.

That's right--adults with families and jobs and mortgages and all of the normal, adult-type responsibilities obsessed about a sports team.

Hard to figure, isn't it?

Some of you already know that in addition to writing this page, I am now one-fifth of the team at The Cub Reporter.

If you're reading this, there is a nearly 100% likelihood that you're familiar with TCR. But if you're not, click here and see where all the cool kids hang out.

I have been pleasantly shocked at the number of people who have found their way here, particularly those people are neither related to me nor friends of mine for at least 20 years.

For now, I am hoping to be a steady contributor to The Cub Reporter and keep this site going with original, sarcasm-laden content. If something were to make that impossible--the need for REM sleep, for example--I would be disappointed. Anyway, that's the plan at the moment.

(I guess I raised a few hackles earlier today at TCR when I referred to Rupert Murdoch as Satan and the devil. You're certainly invited to read the piece at The Cub Reporter and share your opinion.)

ESPN Radio interrupting two and a half days of non-stop, post-Super Bowl analysis to let a baseball guy, Steve Phillips, talk about baseball.

Chicago becoming reacquainted with double-digit temperatures.

Blackhawk fans fully abandoning any hope of making the playoffs.

My kids starting to register for summer activities.

The college basketball crowd beginning to talk about who might make it, who might miss it, and who is likely to be "on the bubble."

The annual Tribune stories about the Cubs raising ticket prices and what one does in a virtual waiting room.

Can Spring Training be far behind?

Today while I was paging through the Sun-Times sports section, two items caught my eye, and neither was an autopsy of Beat-Down XLI.

One was an ad for the White Sox. The other was an ad for the Cubs.

The black and white, all-type Sox ad featured the team's '07 schedule and read, "We're on a mission from Guillen." The ad also introduced the Sox' new slogan, "Back to the grind." (Sounds like a re-fresh of their Grinder Ball theme from the past couple years.)

The Cubs ad, meanwhile, displayed a schedule and featured a shot of a uniformed Alfonso Soriano, bat cocked, and the headline, "Play like there's no tomorrow," which, I imagine, was deemed a shorter, catchier stand-in for "Play like the team will be up for sale as soon as we feel we've maximized its value."

Having had some contact with the Cubs' marketing department in recent years, I know the two teams advertise for very different reasons: the White Sox advertise to sell tickets; the Cubs advertise, first, to get their schedule in people's hands and second, to fulfill their obligation to marketing partners like Rawlings and Mitchell & Ness, who provide promotional give-away items.

There are other differences between the two marketing operations. For several years, the White Sox have employed a small, Chicago ad agency called Two-by-Four, which is one of the city's most creative and has produced some graphically beautiful ads on a shoestring budget. The Cubs have done all of their print advertising in-house, and it has been uniformly bland and workmanlike.

The '07 slogan, "Play like there's no tomorrow," is a departure from the Cubs' recent marketing campaigns, which have tended to glorify Wrigley Field and fans' personal, emotional connections to the building and the Cubs brand. It strikes me as a pretty risky theme line in that, if the team stinks, the line will leave the Wrigley Boys open to plenty of abuse, i.e., abuse above and beyond the abuse they would normally get for stinking.

"Play like there's no hope."

"Play like you want to play somewhere else in '08."

"Play like you want to make Lou Piniella homesick for Tropicana Field."

Feel free to join in.

I woke up this morning at 7:30 and turned on the tv, expecting to be awash in feel-good, live remotes from the Super Bowl. Instead, the "Today Show" was telling me how to save money at the vet--I've never owned a pet!--"Good Morning America" had a feature about the environment, which we've all heard enough about, and the local CBS affiliate was running some rubbish called "Dance Revolution," which smelled of 1994 or so. ESPN? The best they could offer was a bit of warmed-over Ron Jaworski which I think I've seen at least three times, plus the promise of an actual preview show at 10 a.m. That's two hours from now. What am I supposed to do in the meantime? One other thing: it's below zero and ice has formed on the inside of our living room windows.

All in all, the day has taken a nasty turn and it hasn't even started. I'm feeling entirely different about what is going to unfold at 6:25 p.m. EST.

New, sour prediction:

Colts 60, Bears 4. (Two safeties recorded by Tank Johnson. He deserves some success after the way the national media have distorted his misfortunes this week.)

No Sunday night posts this week. I have plans. Big plans:

I turned up my old Sports Illustrated Baseball board game and I'm planning to begin a complete replay of the 1971 Cubs season.

I have a feeling it's going to be a big year for Chris Cannizzaro.


P.S. Bears 29, Colts 24.

At least, not yet.

On page 24, a certain former manager of a certain Chicago National League Ballclub sits down with SI's Richard Deitsch and tackles queries about everything from America's renewed interest in space travel to the possible shape of a post-Castro Cuba.

I'm kidding. Dusty talks about the things you'd expect a 57-year-old baseball manager turned broadcaster to talk about.

But before you tear into the new issue--fabulous picture of Brian Urlacher on the cover--see if you can separate Dusty's actual responses from those I wrote, doing my best Johnnie B. Baker, Jr. impersonation.


About his willingness to leave his job at ESPN and take over a team in mid-season:

A.) It depends. I don’t want to be a guillotine over some manager’s head. I’ve been there before. If it’s the right job…I would consider it. But I’m not soliciting.

B.) Maybe, but I don’t think this year. I’m gonna give this broadcasting thing a chance and then we’ll see. By next season, my family will probably be dying to get me out of the house.


About the importance he places on managing again:

A.) To be honest, I don’t worry about it. If the good Lord wants me to get into that uniform again, I’ll go where He leads me.

B.) It’s important. But you can’t hire yourself.


About whether he would vote Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds into the Hall of Fame:

A.) That’s not my place to say. The writers are gonna vote for who they’re gonna vote for. All I know is, they were great players.

B.) Yeah…People assume they’re guilty when they haven’t really been proven guilty.


About his relationship with Barry Bonds:

A.) It’s good. It’s great. I thought the world of his daddy, and there’s a side of Barry that other people, the fans and media and whatnot, will never know.

B.) My relationship with Barry is that I’m glad to see him when I see him. Barry is a very private dude. Nobody hardly sees Barry in the off-season.


About the possibility that he might so excel at broadcasting that he would never return to managing:

A.) …like Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "I’ll be back." In the meantime, I’ll enjoy where I am.

B.) You can never tell. Maybe I’ll win a few Emmys and people will forget I was ever in the dugout.


EXTRA CREDIT QUESTION:
Which of these popular music figures does Baker mention in the course of one of his answers?
A.) Simon Cowell
B.) John Lennon
C.) Ludacris
D.) Frank Sinatra


THE ACTUAL DUSTY ANSWERS: A, B, B, B, A. Extra Credit Answer: C