A lot has been said in many places today about the fact that the Cubscast podcast has been pretty much kicked off the air by Major League Baseball. Cubscast has been around for a long time and the reasons for shutting them down really seem pretty weak on the part of MLB. I’ve never understood baseball’s obsession with trying to limit exposure to its product…and using the term “protecting revenue” is just a load of crap because we’ve seen repeated examples that protecting the product in such manners only hurts the overall salability of that product in the long run. (nice run-on sentence, Doc)
That was pretty much the nail in the coffin for my hope for humanity.
After seeing the Cubscast thing...ugh…I just didn’t know what to do.
Yesterday I was set off by Phil Rogers as he apparently completely fabricated story about a possible Daisuke/Kosuke trade. How many more made up stories does this bozo have to spit out into the media before he’s shown to the curb. Report after report now has come out saying that there is absolutely nothing to this to the point that Daisuke’s name never even came up during the organizational meetings last week.
Now, look, I fully admit that I’m not a professional writer and that my media credentials are pathetic at best. I never took journalism courses, and outside of a couple of brief stints as a sports editor for papers in high school and college, I really never did much serious writing of any significance. I also don’t get paid for doing this…well except for the small amount I make on the advertizing on this site (which I’m just doing to cover the cost of the domain name).
So, with that said, it irritates me to see, whether it be Paul Sullivan, Phil Rogers or whatever other dork who covers the Cubs in this town for a major media outlet, repeatedly distort, twist or just plain make up shit just for the sake of getting their name plastered all over the web and then get paid for it.
I bet I could get a billion retweats and thousands of new followers just by saying sometime stupid like “Source says Zambrano/Pujols trade discussions in progress” on Twitter. Boom…I’m as famous as Phil Rogers! BLAH!
So just as my faith in anything and everything had been destroyed, I see over at Aisle 424 (or whatever Tim is going to decide to call his site now that he sadly gave up his season ticket package) that Cubs Convention tickets are still available.
Really? Wow. Normally only a few days after CubbieCon tickets go on sale, the event is sold out. Did they make more tickets available this season for CubbieCon? I doubt it…as the Hilton is pretty much filled to capacity as it is. (In fact, I believe they should really consider a different and larger place to hold the convention in the future.)
The reality likely is that Cubs fans aren’t so blind to just snatch up crap like this any more. Did the Cubs/Rickettses actually turn off that many people this year? Are Cubs fans finally demanding more out of this team? Could it finally be that the Cubs management needs to seriously address the team on the field instead of just assuming that 3 million people will blindly show up at the ballpark in 2011?
I say all this even as I’m one of the morons who does blindly go to the ballpark, and I probably would have gone to CubbieCon this year as well if it was for the fact that my wife and I are expecting our second child (due that same week).
In the end, it makes me happy to see that we may very well be seeing a change on the north side…not from the organization, but the fans. We deserve more. We demand more.
Now if MLB and the Chicago media could wise up like it appears Cubs fans have.
