Manic Panic

WGN Radio's Dave Kaplan blogged the following headline yesterday: "The Cubs Need to Sign the #1 Free Agent This Winter" Nice! You got me, Kap. We totally do! We should sign Adam LaRoche. Or maybe go out on a limb and sign Manny Ramirez with that Ricketts $$. There are a lot of Scott Boras clients out there this year, but we can file down his horns and low-ball. It's the economy, stupid! So I clicked thru, and immediately smelled sulfur and heard the gnashing of teeth....



LARUSSA!

Tony LaRussa coaching the Cubs? I've heard stranger suggestions, but not many. This is a man who made his dark, evil bones painting targets on the backs of Cubs batters, and never passed up the opportunity to rush the field and chest bump/swear at Cubs skippers, especially Dusty. There were some EPIC Dusty/LaRussa battles; battles that rivaled Ali-Frazier, Maris-Mantle, Frost-Nixon, and Pedro-Zimmer. These meetings of the mind (and ass) were often so heated that the deciding factor was usually who could chew a toothpick the hardest.

Now I'm not one of those stupid baseball fans who refuse to have anything to do with players/coaches from rival teams (see: the stupidity level of the ongoing Yanks/Bo'Sox "If you leave me for them you're dead to us" crap). I'm all for making the Cubs better, and I have to say, I think the addition of Tony LaRussa and (even better) Dave Duncan would make us a World Series contender off the bat. Duncan has been able to wring pure gold out of jobbers like Joel Pineiro, so imagine what he could do with a rotation of Zambrano, Ted Lilly, Randy Wells, Jeff Smardjiza, etc.

Plus, as much as I love Lou, we all know he's checked out. He's counting down days in between paychecks, trying new recipes, drinking Singapore Slings, etc. The fire has gone out. It's no one's fault, Lou baby. It's not you, it's us. It's not us, it's you, whatever. We just want you to know how important your friendship is to us, and whatever happens, we don't want to screw that up. We're just in different places right now. Plus, you fucked our ex-girlfriend, and that's just not cool and you know it. Hope we're cool, though. Check out this year's model: