HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"It's been a pleasure fucking you."

I feel like a kid who woke up on Christmas morning to find out that all of his siblings were killed in a horrible fire the night before and that all of the presents were now his. PLUS no going to Church.

Best. Day. Ever.

Not only do the Cubs get rid of Bradley, but they pick up Silva, who is complete and utter shit. Bradley is not going to be just "good" this year - he's going to have another Revenge Year. For those of you that aren't familiar with this concept, let's look at Bradley over the years:

2003 (CLE): .321 average, .923 OPS. Is rewarded by being sent to the Dodgers, which pisses him off.

2004 (LAD):.267 avg, .768 OPS. Is sullen and cranky (sound familiar)? Doesn't get moved.

2005 (LAD): .290 avg, .835 OPS. In a Revenge Year, he pushes himself to the limit (and misses some games in the process). Is "rewarded" by going to Oakland.

2006 (OAK): .276 avg .818 OPS. Bradley is now pissed about being in Oakland. He misses a significant amount of time with injuries as well.

2007 (OAK/SDP): .306 avg, .946 OPS. Time for another Revenge Year! Bradley takes the frustrations of the previous season and turns them into death for all opponents. Goes to Texas because he wanted to.

2008 (TEX) .321 avg, .999 OPS. And there's a happy Bradley. He has an amazing year, and wants to stay on. Instead, he is "rewarded" by not getting the contract he wants and winds up signing with the Cubs, which pisses him off. You can see where this is going...

2009 (CHC) .257 avg .775 OPS. Oof. That's underperforming and Bradley knows it. That should likely set up for a Revenge Year...

2010 (SEA) PROJECTED: .308 avg, .876 OPS. Time for a Revenge Year!

Long story short, Milton Bradley is a serious headcase, but he's a headcase who understands when he's been crappy and does what he can to fix it the following season. By trading him, the Cubs ensure that they don't enjoy his resurgence in 2010. Better still, they get Carlos Silva, who is the equivalent of a pitching machine.

Silva's claim to fame is that he doesnt walk too many batters. Neither does a pitching machine. The WHIP says it all, with Silva hitting 1.598 in 2008, and 1.714 in 2009. That wouldn't be terrible, except that he doesn't strike guys out. In his last two seasons COMBINED he had only 79 Ks. To put that in perspective, Rich Harden had 171 in a shortened year LAST SEASON.

I can't wait to open the rest of my gifts!

Kenny is Beyond Me

Look at this awesome crate of baseballs I got for Javier Vasquez!

Some people have a reputation for being good dealers, and other do not. Omay Minaya? Not particularly good at dealing. That guy under the bridge who walks up to the driver's side window? Not a good dealer (try the guy at the Jackson stop who pretends to be blind). For Kenny Williams, though, he has somehow earned a reputation as a guy who can make things happen.

Best of all, Kenny has said that he's "done" for this offseason, and people are just saying "Oh, that Kenny, he's got a move up his sleeve. No, boys and girls, he really IS done. Right now, all I see is 5 outfielders competing for three spots. No matter how this plays out, we're still not really in better shape.

Let's take a look:

C: AJ
1B: Konerko
DH: Andruw Jones
2B: Beckham
SS: Ramirez
3B: Teahen
RF: Quentin
CF: Rios
LF: Juan Pierre
B: Kotsay
B: Vizquel

Really? Our outfield of Quentin, Pods, and Dye has changed considerably - Pods has been replaced with Black Pods (don't believe me? Look at the numbers. They might as well have the same name), Quentin is replaced by Quentin, and so the real difference is Rios over Dye. When he's on the ball, sure, Rios is the better play. Another slump year, though, and this one stings.

The real kicker, though, is Jones as DH. I hear Carl Everett is available.

Birthday Sharks

I actually missed our second birthday - can you believe it? The little Dong is all grown up at TWO YEARS OLD, which, in blog years, is somewhere around 70 years old. Strangely, blog years are the only measure of time that works backwards (Under 1 Year = 20 years old, Year 1 = 40 years old, Year 2 = 70, Year 3 = 120 years old, Year 4 = 80 years old, Year 5 = 50 years old, and so on until you get back to 20).

And this is us jumping the shark.

When we started this little outlet for racism, hatred of Ron Turner, and general homophobia, we were like a drunk version of Apollo - bringing fire to the world by lighting it ablaze. We took out our hatred for Chicago sports in multiple daily doses. We made friends within the blogosphere. We were featured regularly on pseudo-respectable outlets like Deadspin, With Leather, and so on.

Now look at us - the White Sox signed a guy named Putz and there hasn't even been a post about it yet. Old me has at least 3 posts on this, one of which is just a series of MS Paint doodles on old White Sox slogans ("Grinder Rule #34: It never hurts to have a Putz on the team"). It's no secret that we've been lax in posting, and that when we DO post, it's usually out of guilt and less about enthusiasm.

Somewhere around this time last year, we started to drop off. It wasn't anything personal, really. We still all love the Dong and what it represents - it's just a pretty big time commitment to keep up with those big names like Chicago Bull and My Brain Says Rage...wait, what? Those blogs are dead? Oh fuck yes - we outlasted you guys! FUCK AND YES. QUITTERS!

Long story short, we're not dead. We're not even on life support. But we do recognize that we've been more of a flaccid flesh pile than the throbbing hard entertainment you deserve (does that make me gay for pointing it out like that? Probably. Oops).

I mean, I missed the Dong birthday! Two years ago, I would have sold my third nut just to GET to the Dong's birthday that I was so pumped for it! It's not like I waited until July to realize my folly, but missing it by more than a day is punishable by death, let alone the two weeks it took me to realize the problem.

We're not going to post multiple times a day. Hell, we're not even going to post every day. But I will tell you this - you will not be getting the same garbage that you get everywhere else. We will not say "oh look at the cute youtube video" and call it a post. You will get the venom that we spew when we think about Chicago Sports. You will get discertations about the Bears offense, the Bulls, and of course, the White Sox. Hell, if there's even a reason to cover that Chicago National League team, we'll talk about that too.

For those of you that have stuck through the rough times, we salute you. Oh, and as a reward to those of you that HAVE stuck around, you probably know we like to do a little something for our birthday...(hint hint)

What to do with the Bears?

Looming questions:

1) Is it time to fire Lovie?

This is a tough one... I'd argue that up until this season, the Bears have gotten better every single year he's been the coach including a Super Bowl run. He's been good at finding talent and has led an aggressive defense despite consistently lost talent (Mike Brown, Urlacher, Vasher) and pathetic offensive weapons (Orton, Grossman, no WR's etc). This season is a HUGE step backwards for the organization... I think we own Lovie one more year (more than we can say about Ron Turner).

2) How will we address needs this offseason?

With no high draft picks and key holes in our lineup at LB, DB, WR and OL, I'm not sure how this is going to work out. Perhaps we can swap a guy like Briggs for multiple picks and some depth but I'm not sure that's a good move. Hey, maybe we can send Cutler to the Skins for Campbell and 45 top draft picks...

3) Why do we suck so much?

3 reasons:

1) Our offensive line is built for bruising and rushing. It takes a lot more energy to pass protect then to run block and out line is old/bad. We changed our profile overnight with the Cutler deal and it's going to take some time to build around him. In the meantime, we cant pass protect and our running game is non-existent.

2) Cutler is essentially a rookie again and playing like it. With far weaker weapons than he had in Denver (and a worse O-coordinator), it will take time to fix. This wont be an ongoing issue, just this season (hopefully).

3) Our pass defense is bad. We need Gaines Adams to start to play a bigger role. We need Tommie Harris to play like the monster we drafted and we need another DB that can create plays (Afalava has been playing well and Jamar Williams played well subbing for Briggs yesterday but we're still short on talent).

We've got 1-2 more seasons to make a run with the current roster talent. Let's hope we can finish the season strong (no reason to tank without picks) and build for next season. 9-7 isn't out of the question...

Bears...win?

Speaking of things that make no sense...

Someone Check His Wrists

FLYING THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!

After another Sunday loss, the Bears are now at a less than luxurious 4-7. We're obviously not going to the playoffs, but at least we can treat this as past seasons and root for the Bears to lose because we want a higher draft pick, right?

Wrong.

That pick belongs to the Broncos.

There's only one thing worse than a losing season, and that's a losing season where you don't even get the benefit of the higher draft pick from sucking because you traded it to the Broncos. This means that the entire rest of the season is like watching the Bears in limbo/purgatory. There is NOTHING for us to gain at this point.

All we can do is hope to make the Broncos' 1st round pick worse by stringing together a couple of wins, and we can't even do that either. I mean, the Bears have won one of their last seven games - Cutler was supposed to be the guy that takes us to the playoffs, gives us that extra boost, and then we can say "who gives a shit about that 1st round pick?" Instead, we can watch the Broncos draft the next Cade Enis, except when it ISN'T the Bears that draft someone, 1st rounders are sometimes successful.

THINGS TO DO THIS OFFSEASON:

1. Fire Ron Turner
2. Trade Hester
3. Spend all remaining draft picks on offensive line or defense
4. Kill self

Sigh

"Shhhh...just ignore them, Jay. No one can deny our love..."

Side Note: I actually wanted to find a screenshot of the end of the game where Hester missed the last pass of the game and his pants got pulled down. Searching for "Devin Hester, Ass" produced nothing out of the ordinary. I tried "Devin Hester, buttcheeks" at which point Google noticed my searching trends and suggested "Devin Hester, Keggers, Anal Sex." After that, it's just not worth it to search.

What to do, what to do?

In a game that started out with the usual "Oh yeah, I forgot we were terrible" vibe, the Bears actually came back to make it pseudo-interesting...briefly. After Cutler's touchdown pass to Davis, the universe seemed to say "Whoa whoa whoa - wait a minute. This is the Bears!" and then the rest of it went to shit. Couldn't stop the Eagles on the most important drive of the game, and couldn't get the ball downfield to come back from it either. I'm sure the Broncos will be loving their high 1st round pick next year. Fuckers.

As much as it feels so natural to try and blame this game on Jay Cutler (which I'm sure 90% of the Chicago media will do ANYWAYS), it's really not his fault. He was pedestrian, sure, but it's not like he cost us the game. There were some passes I would like to see a little closer to OUR players, but nothing horrible.

The real story that keeps getting lost this season is Matt Forte. Surely someone you know has been lamenting over Matt Forte. Running the ball is hard when your offensive line represents a bunch of Weeble-Wobbles, but you've gotta get something going. Hell, even past-his-prime Edgerrin James managed 60+ with the pre-good Cardinals' O-Line. There's something to be said here about a lack of execution.

Um...

Yes Jay, that's where your brain supposedly resides.

I was all set to completely exonerate Jay Cutler in my post today.

Somewhere in the third quarter, I thought: "shit, he's not getting any help and some fluky plays are making his stats looks a lot worse than they are." Hester fell down on a deep route that got picked off, Desmond Clark clearly got bumped on what should have been a PI penalty for another INT and Hester ran into the ref on an underneath crossing route that got picked off... That makes 3 fluky INT's, not really Cutler's fault and totally drive-killing.

So in the 4th quarter, I was pretty sure redemption would be spelled J-A-Y, driving quickly and efficiently downfield and in scoring position with enough time for 3-4 throws to the end zone.

Then...

BAM!

I don't give a shit how many good excuses there were for throwing 5 INT's. Most people will forgive one bad red zone INT (like his first one early in the game) but a GAME ENDING LAST MINUTE PICK, DOWN BY 4 TO END THE GAME AND CAP OFF A 5 INT DAY? Winners don't do that. That shit isn't supposed to happen to franchise QB's. This is very troublesome.

Hence, I will not exonerate Jay Cutler. I am legitimately concerned about his ability to lead our team and win football games. No doubt he has the talent to be a top QB but the intangibles are missing. His constant sulking and general lack of emotion (or any sense of gravitas) make me want to punch him in the fucking face.

Get pissed once in a while. Show some fire. Get pumped up. Even Peyton gets amped up once in a while. We should all pray that he doesn't end up like Jeff George, the most talented shitty QB of all time... just writing that sentence makes me want to kill myself.

Go Bears?

-KEG

Mark Teabag

Sigh...Kenny, what are you doing?

Our two biggest liabilities for this upcoming season are our infield and our lack of real presence. Trading Getz and Fields dumps all of our infield depth (meaning Nix starts at second base, and...um...we have no other players) and gets us Mark Teahen.

No knock against Teahen, but he's Rob Mackowiak part deux. Kenny loves these all-purpose utility guys, but when you need to fill a RF spot and a 1B/DH spot, you might want to get someone that actually excells at his position.

All the papers seem to believe that he is our RF of the future, and I REALLY hope they're wrong. Getting Teahen to play 3B or 2B would be much more valuable as we could then pick up a powerhouse in RF (/wishes Abreu hadn't just resigned) or a disgruntled psychopathic switch hitter to play DH (yes, I want Bradley. Sue me).

Worst case scenario, we start Teahen in RF, Flowers at DH (not bad), and Nix at 2B (bad). We need another acquisition or some rookie depth. Or maybe Kenny thinks Viciedo will make the squad this year. Who knows.

Win