The Cubs will not win the 2010 Central Division title this year.
I know…I know, you’re as shocked as I am by the news. Yes. The rest of the season pretty much doesn’t matter much now.
There’s nothing left to play for.
So, I’m guessing attendance might actually drop next week when the Giants come to town.
After the game yesterday, in which the Cubs played their hearts out against their hated rivals, the Cardinals, the players on the team checked the scoreboard to see if the D-Backs had pulled out a victory to keep the Cubs hopes alive. Much to their dismay, the Reds won.
A number of the team members talked with the press after the game about being eliminated.
Last night’s winning pitcher, Jeff Samardzija said, “Well, crap. What the hell was the point of even playing tonight? I hate this crap. This sport sucks. I’m going to go play some FOOTBALL!!!”
Cubs manager Mike Quade was rather sad as well, “Well, this is a terrible failure for this team. I’m not even sure why I took the job now. What a waste.” Paul Sullivan then started to walk away from Quade after he made those comments at which point Quade pulled out his wand and yelled, “So you prefer Sandberg? Avada Kedavra!” at which point Sullivan keeled over and died.
Not even Paul Sullivan can survive the "Killing Curse"
Cubs third baseman, Aramis Ramirez had a slightly perspective on it, “Well, I guess we all learned a bit of a lesson here. Next year I’ll start playing hard in July instead of waiting until August. It’s not a big deal, though. I’ll just pick up my option and stay with the Cubs and we’ll get it right next year.”
Ryan Dempster was unaware of that the team had been eliminated. With a shocked look on his face, he said, “Really, eh? How could that be, eh? We won tonight, eh. We have been winning, eh. We should be just a couple games out by now, eh. Well, this sucks, eh. I guess I’ll just go back home to Canada, eh, and just blow off the rest of this pointless season, eh.”
Dempster is a civil servant in the offseason.
With the fact that the Cubs have nothing left to play for, chairman Tom Ricketts announced after the games that the team would have ceremonies honoring various things for each of the last six games. “In order to try to draw fans to the ballpark for the remaining pointless games, my family has decided we do something special. We intend to have a ceremony to honor Yosh Kawano next Tuesday as we name the Cubs clubhouse after him. It will be called ‘Yoshi’s Island’.
Nintendo has created games based on the retired clubhouse manager.
“On Wednesday night we will have a ceremony to honor Derrek Lee. We felt it was long overdue. We will give him one of the bricks from the wall along the first base line for which he was so afraid of. Thursday night, we will honor Jim Belushi with a flag on top of the grandstand to commemorate the 450th time he’s blessed us with singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’.”
Ricketts continued on, “When the Cardinals come to town next Friday, we will honor Tony LaRussa who we hope to convince to retire. Saturday we will rededicate the Harry Caray statue which will be moved from outside the center field bleachers, to inside the ballpark in the batter’s eye area with the nice shrubbery. Dutchie will be there for the ceremony, and I’ll get to where those ridiculous oversized glasses again. Harry would have preferred it this way. And on Sunday we will have a ceremony to honor all the ceremonies we’ve had this year.”
Ricketts isn’t the only busy person right now; Jim Hendry has already started the process of finding a new manager. “I’ve interviewed 45 people so far. Right now I have two leading candidates: Aaron Miles and Fredi Gonzalez. I’ll do a couple hundred more interviews, then narrow the choices down to 50, and then draw a name out of hat.” Hendry also indicated that now that the team has been eliminated, he would go and start evaluating scrappy 2nd basemen to bring in for next season.
And finally, about his feeling about the Cubs officially being eliminated, and the season being, technically, over, Jeff Baker said, “Over? Oh crap…really? Crap, no one had even told me it had begun. This sucks. I thought it was still spring training…no one told me that these games counted. Now everyone is going to think I suck or something.”
