A lot of things have been said by Cubs fans since the team was swept by the Dodgers earlier this month. Many of the comments have been made out of frustration and are something you can ignore because they were more emotional than anything else. However, Rob and Kurt from GROTA have taken the time to think through their most recent posts before publishing. I’ll link to them after the bump, but I just wanted to say that these are good people and I hope they’re treated as such in the comments. Whatever issues we once had with GROTA are long over and this is merely a response that was too long to leave as a comment.
A day or so ago, Rob wrote that Aramis Ramirez was not a leader of men. Go ahead and read the entire article. I’m going to pick and choose a few things to quote without explaining what came before it so you’ll need to read what Rob wrote.
Our last, great hope was Ramirez, and based on his regular season performances since joining us, he is our best hope. He is our best clutch hitter. Hell, he is our best hitter. He has overcome his lazy reputation and his tendency towards malingering injuries. He comes to play every day, and he has nearly climbed to the summit of his game.
Ok, for those that didn’t read the article, Rob is talking about Ramirez being the last hope for a team leader. I’ll get to that later on, but in the quote above Rob mentions that he overcame his lazy reputation. Might the reputation have been undeserved? I think we all know it was, but the fact that comment was made and no questions were asked deserves a comment in return. Then Rob mentions his injuries. He overcame a tendency towards lingering injuries. How does one overcome a tendency to have lingering injuries? Might the injuries just have subsided? Yes. That’s what happened. Players don’t get lingering injuries because of a lazy reputation or anything else. They get lingering injuries because they’re injured an incapable of playing baseball.
As irrational as it sounds, it would have went over better if he HAD taken the lion’s share of the blame.
Went over better for whom? While Ramirez no doubt has not produced in the postseason the last 2 years, you don’t lose 6 games because of one player. He doesn’t deserve the “lion’s share of the blame” and it would be dishonest of him to accept it. It would have been done only to appease some fans and, well, while that may be what some wanted, it’s not true so why do it?
We want our superstars to take losses personally. We want him to internalize. We want this thing to eat at him every day between now and next April. We want to believe that, as he spends his entire winter in the Dominican, devoted to his cocks, that every time he watches his kids dive into the pool, or watches his chicken peck the other chicken into submission, or watches his wife lie down in their sweaty, mosquito-netted love nest, that he sees his distant cousin.
I have serious issues with this comment. Who is this “we” he keeps referring to? I sure as hell am not one of the “we” and I hope you’re not too. This is Rob’s opinion and he never should have used the word “we” because it does not reflect the truth in any way whatsoever. I want Ramirez to go home, have a nice winter, and come back ready to play ball in April. I want him to forget about what happened. Baseball is a job to him and that’s exactly what he’ll do. Fans must accept that baseball is a job. It’s not what we played when we were kids. It’s a job. I want him to do whatever it is that other employees do when they’re away from work.
Maybe you don’t have to SOUND like a leader to be a leader, but I doubt it. So whatever Hendry does this winter, if he can ever buy, trade, or develop that big stud hoss with the red ass who hates losing and isn’t gonna tolerate it anymore from himself or any of his men, now is the time to do it. Maybe Geo Soto is gonna be the guy, but naaaah…he looks too much like Rico freakin’ Suave to ever pull it off…
There’s so much wrong with this remark I’m unsure where I should begin. As the title of the post says, what is a leader? How do you develop a leader? How do you develop something that is only an opinion and varies from individual to individual? My definition of a leader is drastically different than Rob’s. No disrespect to Rob, but his definition of a leader is my definition of a crybaby. This is why opinions about “little things” are meaningless. Is he serious about the Rico Suave comment? Soto can’t be a leader because of how he looks? This is a great example of how one manipulates an argument and it happens all the time on the internet with regards to not only baseball, but every other possible thing that you can write about as well.
That was all to Rob’s first piece, but Kurt added on this morning.
You’ve got to give Rob credit. At a time when nobody really wants to think much about Cubs baseball, Rob was able to write an article that inflamed the Cub Fan Nation. And since content is king and it’s easier than thinking of something on my own, I’ve decided to add a few thoughts to the debate.
First and foremost: no, Virginia, Aramis Ramirez is not a team leader, whatever that means.
I couldn’t disagree more. Rob’s free to write about what he so chooses to do. I wish he’d change the “we” to “I” but that’s his own choice. I know I’m not a Cubs fans that wants to be associated with what Rob wrote. The problem with creating discussion with opinions is that you just can’t prove the kinds of things you need to in order to have a worthy discussion. Take something as silly as batting average. We can begin a discussion about how good or bad some player is based on that one stat. It doesn’t tell us anything other than the number of hits he had per at-bat, but it tells us a fact. Whether someone is a leader or not is no argument that begins with a point that can be discussed further. Opinions aren’t going to change based on opinions and since there are no facts to deal with when talking about a leader, it’s a relatively pointless exercise.
Kurt even admits he has no idea what a leader is, but strongly believes he isn’t one. How can Ramirez be something that you don’t even know what it is? “I’ll know when it I see it” arguments are a waste of time. That’s part of the problem with these kinds of arguments. I cannot prove or disprove what they are arguing and my opinions certainly aren’t going to influence them. So, really, what’s the point? If you can’t define something, you shouldn’t write about it. You can define something for your own purposes and then expect others to disagree and then argue with them, but if you don’t even bother to define what it is that you’re arguing, what’s the point?
Arguing is pointless and I shouldn’t haven’t gotten involved.
Take, for example, the few comments I left in Rob’s initial post (see below):
Why say something when it’s untrue? The only point in saying that would be to appease fans. Nothing about it would be true. Particularly the part about “not letting it happen again.”
The Cubs lost. It happens. All the time.
——————————————————————-All of this for 6 games? It’s one week on the regular season schedule. I can look back in the 2008 season and find a stretch of 3 games in which they played worse than they did against the Dodgers. I could probably find several stretches.
There was nothing wrong the attitude. Losing happens and it happens to good teams. The attitude thing is nothing more than an excuse to make one understand what seemed unlikely to them. The Cubs getting swept certainly was the least likely scenario going in, but there was still a decent chance it would happen. About 9% if I remember correctly. What would you say if I told you that you had a 9% chance of winning the lottery? That’s a pretty good chance, isn’t it?
The 2007 pitching match-ups weren’t fair. The Dbacks pitching was far superior to what the Cubs sent out there. The 2008 pitching match-ups were a slight advantage for the Dodgers.
Teams get swept. It happens all the time. Lesser teams sweep superior ones all the time. Having a so-called leader won’t change anything. This team won 97 games and they supposedly didn’t have one.
Come on, Rob. Let’s not lose all perspective here based on 3 or 6 games, in which almost anything can happen. It’s not surprising the team got swept. It’s disappointing, but the odds of it happening weren’t so low as to be shocking when it did happen. If the Dodgers and Cubs play that series a million times (I know, impossible), the Cubs win the majority of the 3-game series. They’d sweep some, get swept some, and others would be decided in 4 or 5 games.
——————————————————————-And had the Cubs won, you’d be talking about their leader. The “leader” comes out of winning, nothing more and nothing less.
Of course I have played, but my playing time in high school has as much to do with playing big league baseball as me removing a splinter does to performing surgery. Mindset? I’m sure it does, but do you know how it affects? You don’t. None of us do and that’s why it’s bandied about as an excuse.
These players do not need to take personal responsibility for losing 3 games in which they won 97 games. No way, not at all, NEVER. They wouldn’t need to if they won 37 games either.
Look, I understand your frustrated, but wanting the players to give you some words to make you feel better, even if they did so, aren’t going to make you feel better. This isn’t about anything other than your frustrations. It’s not based on anything other than you wanting to know that the players feel responsible.
Guess what. They played 3 games, when they could have played more. I don’t need to hear from them as I already know they feel like shit.
The bottom line is that teams lose. They lose 3 in a row all the time. Teams with “LEADERS” lose 3 in a row all the time.
They won 97 games. I honestly don’t care how they did in the playoffs. I had a lot more fun watching those 97 wins and some of the losses than I was going to have if they won it all. I understand the playoffs are mostly a crapshoot and anything can happen once a team is in. That’s what happened the last 2 years. Nothing more than that.
What I mean by meaningless discussion is what Rob followed up with this morning as a front page post: Aramis Ramirez is no leader of men, redux. The url to the page of the post doesn’t work, but I’ll quote the relevant the parts. After what I said above, clearly disagreeing in a decent manner, Rob followed up with this:
To name names, if you’ve read above, that was my comment. I have no issues with what Rob said here. I didn’t agree with him and he strongly disagrees. Whatever. But, the point of arguments is to convince one the other is right and while I often fail, I usually try to do so in a decent manner. Rob did not. See below.the thing that is sticking in my craw now is the comment “All of this for 6 games? It’s one week on the regular season schedule.”
Um.
I’m hoping beyond hope that you meant to say something else, and it just came out wrong. God knows I do that all the time. So I’m giving you the benefit, friend. There’s several ways we can interpret this particular comment, and the way I am interpreting it is “I enjoyed watching the 85 wins that we DID get last year, and the 97 wins we DID get this year, and this was just six games we lost. Every game is the same, to me”.
Maybe I’m wrong. I HOPE I’M WRONG. I hope to gatdamn hell that isn’t what you are saying. Because, come in close here, lemme tell you, come here…
PLAYOFF GAMES ARE NOT THE SAME AS REGULAR SEASON GAMES!!!!
I haven’t named names, because I can’t look into your heart and head and know for sure what you truly think.
If you truly believe that all games are created equal, that a 5-2 win in April against the Washington Nats brings you as much satisfaction than a win in the NLDS, that Jim Hendry, Randy Bush, Lou Pinella, Larry Rothschild, Alan Trammel, Gerald Perry, and the Cubs players are simply here to provide you entertainment on a day-to-day basis, that there isn’t any master plan in place, no higher purpose to their efforts than just whether or not they can win on the day you come in or tune in…Well, you’ve taken what I’ve said and made it fit your argument. I believe that a 5-2 win in April is nearly the same as a win in the NLDS. Baseball is baseball. It takes hits, walks, errors, strikeouts, and so on and so forth to win games. Whether those games are in April or October makes no difference whatsoever. Rob could have argued that teams in the playoffs tend to ignore their worst 20% of the roster. The 5th starter never gets a start, and there are far fewer changes made in the postseason than during the regular season in terms of batters. Managers don’t want to take their best hitters out. Managers use the best arms in the bullpen. If you want to argue about playoff baseball being different than baseball in April, that’s what you do. It is different in that the roster plays differently, but the game itself is the same. Ignoring that is silly.
...then I gotta tell you. You’re NOT my friend, you’re a freakin’ mindless, drooling idiot who shouldn’t be allowed to touch sharp objects. Your daddy shoulda wore a rubber. Your momma shoulda kept her damn legs closed. I will never buy you a beer, I will never ask you what time it is, and I don’t want to share the same air you breathe. I don’t want you reading this blog, and I don’t want to have to deal with the inanity you might have to spew on the comments.Few people, if even more than one, have said such things about me. Like Bob Brenly says about Ryan Theriot, I wear these comments as a badge of honor. I clearly struck a nerve somewhere and I’m guessing Rob didn’t want to confront those truths that were presented and resorted to what he did above. I did something right to provoke those kinds of comments. To add on to the whole Ramirez/Leader issue… How do any of us know whether or not Ramirez takes losing personally? To be quite honest, I’m not even sure what that means. I’d bet that each and every one of us has a slightly different definition, which makes it impossible to know one way or the other. These guys are professional athletes. Many have begged of them to act as such and it seems many of them are now begging for the opposite. There’s nothing professional about sounding off in anger or frustration. One is always at his best when he can think his thoughts through and articulates them in a clear and concise way. As little as I care about this whole professionalism thing, the Cubs have acted like professionals. I don’t think people can beg for professionalism one day and beg for childish behavior the next. You can of course, and people do, but they should not do it. I haven’t the foggiest clue whether or not Ramirez is a leader. Same for Zambrano, Lee, Grace, Manny, Jeter and so on. None of us do. We all have an opinion, but our opinions of what a “leader” is and how he acts are completely different from one another. For example, I don’t consider someone sounding off to the media a leader. I consider him weak for doing so. I consider someone a leader if they understand this game and understand that sometimes the breaks just don’t go your way. I consider this person a leader because he’s a rational thinker, which inevitably leads to good decisions by him in the future that helps this team win games. Fans have cried for years about Carlos Zambrano’s antics. He is, by and large, exactly what people are wanting to see from other Cubs players right now. Once again, how can someone complain for so long about someone’s behavior and then beg of it from others? If I understand correctly, this means you want someone to vocally come out and complain about what happened. Zambrano has gotten blasted every single time he’s done that. Some people, more than you’d realize, have called for the Cubs to trade Zambrano because of his behavior. And now, just to make ourselves feel better, we want others to act in that way too? I have no problems whatsoever with the Cubs getting swept. They had a great season and while I undoubtedly wanted more, stuff like playing bad for 3 games happens all the time and there’s no reason whatsoever to let it get to you for more than a few hours. I’m as disappointed as any Cubs fan. We all expected better, but we also, hopefully, understand this game and have a basic understanding of statistics. There would be nothing satisfying about hearing Ramirez or Lee or Lou sound off on their own disappointment. It would only be an attempt to appease some fans, which quite frankly, they should never do. As professional athletes who have played this game their entire lives, I find it crazy to question whether or not they mind losing. You don’t go through what these guys do, even for the money they do it for, just because. You do it because you have an unstoppable desire to be the best, to get better and to win. Professional athletes are the most competitive people on the planet. If thousands of fans who had no real investment in the 2008 season other than for entertainment purposes, can get as depressed as they have, do you really think the players involved don’t feel bad? Sometimes I really think that fans have lost perspective of what they are doing. I take this game and this team as seriously as anyone, but the only thing I have invested in this team is the desire for them to win because it’s more fun to watching a team that wins than one that loses. I don’t think for a single moment that I have invested in this team even a fraction of what these players do. My feelings and opinions about the Cubs getting swept and how they should act are meaningless. I have no fucking clue what it feels like to lose at that level. I’m pretty sure none of you do either. Can’t we watch this game for what it is? Can’t we expect the same from all of them? Why must we seek something that only we can determine whether or not it exists? What does adding our own definitions for things accomplish?
1. Faith Plus One (view all comments) — Oct 29, 2008 @ 12:07 PM
This is terribly Plaschke-esque. What does this even mean? Why even cite this?
Animal Cruelty + Hot Marital Sex = Championship for the Chicago Cubs
I was never good with math in college, but now it all makes sense.