We at The Heckler get unsolicited emails all the time. Usually they’re from Sox fans who think we have a North Side bias. Those go straight to the trash. Sometimes, however, they’re from people who actually want to talk about sports in an intelligent manner. We save those and today, we’ve actually answered some of them.
What are your thoughts on Kerry Wood’s return to the Cubs? Will he be more or less of a letdown than the first time around?
Great move. Every baseball expert from LA to New York cited the Cubs’ lack of a right-handed setup man as the main reason they did not win 90 games. FanGraphs may say he’s less than a one-win player, but they can’t measure the intangibles that Wood offers. No one in baseball is more suited for proper instruction of how to carry the Dora The Explorer backpack. Few players in MLB history are capable of growing such badass facial hair. And how can you put a value on the dugout leadership he provides from 250 feet away in the bullpen? Sometimes the numbers just don’t tell the whole truth.
Why is Koyie Hill allowed to continue wearing a Major League uniform?
Possible answers:
1. The Cubs have multiple hardware stores lined up to sponsor a Workshop Safety Seminar and they need someone to provide an example of what NOT to do.
2. The entire pitching staff finds it much easier to concentrate when the catcher doesn’t have plucked eyebrows and guyliner.
3. If you can ignore for a second that he might not crack the Mendoza line in a slow pitch softball league, Soriano would be better behind the plate defensively, and he’s severely overpaid … he’s really the ideal back-up catcher.
4. He has toe thumbs.
I’m leaning toward toe thumbs. They’re GOLD.
Do you think either Chicago manager will get canned this year?
Boy I hope so. And I REALLY hope it’s Ozzie. Not because I don’t like him – I think he’s a genius. No, I hope he gets fired because his ensuing Twitter meltdown would make Charlie Sheen look like Charlie St. Cloud. We would learn every Spanish swear word out there. Twitter would fail and the internet would most likely collapse on itself. And you just know that he wouldn’t let it go anytime soon. Ozzie would be bashing the Sox for at least the next six years. He strikes me as the type of guy who holds a grudge.
This needs to happen.
How would you compare going to a game at Wrigley versus the Cell?
I’d say each ballpark is a perfect complement for its respective team. For example, Wrigley obviously has its old school scoreboard and no Jumbotron. Makes perfect sense. Why on EARTH would any Cubs fan want to see a replay of Castro’s third error of the inning? Do you really want to see if Soriano was seven feet away from that curveball in the dirt? Is a third view of Zambrano’s inevitable meltdown necessary? Wait, who the hell am I kidding? I want 15 replays of all of those things. Hey Ricketts family, get on that. Thanks.
More dangerous place for a Cubs fan: the Cell or a White Sox fan message board?
Tough call. It’s true, you could definitely catch a beating wearing a Soriano jersey in the parking lot at the Cell (and you’d deserve it for owning a Soriano jersey). But five minutes on a Sox message board and you’re immediately dumber for life. Remember this scene in Billy Madison? That’s my reaction to pretty much every single post on a Sox board. It’s highly entertaining, but at the same time you have to be careful. If you don’t step away every few minutes, you’ll honestly start to believe that ‘sucks’ is spelled ‘sux’, capital letters are totally unnecessary, and exclamation points are more common than periods in standard usage.
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