I’ll be outside or something; not admitting that I’m out of ideas. Maybe I’m just bored by my ideas – after all, there’s only so many times an unheralded rookie call-up can nearly no-hit the Cubs before I barely notice.

But I’m about to be busy, cleaning up around here. You guessed it, the ink is finally dry on the contract, and now I’m actually an owner of a piece of property in Lawrence. Nope, it’s not your mom.

Have a good weekend.

I keep telling you, there's no such thing as unnecessary White Sox hatred.

Bill’s Twitter feed reports he’s driving to Miami, so in his absence his editors conveniently cherry-picked several readers’ poor imitations of Bill responses to his “Most Tortured Teams” list from last Friday. Of course, Bill chose the Cubs No. 1, and of course, that’s totally justified. You can argue, I suppose, but it’s justified. It doesn’t matter if they’re more popular than your sorry team, we Cubs fans are tortured. Believe it or not.

However, the editors chose to run only with the dissident White Sox fan mantra; the “look at me” little-brother inferiority complex that theorizes, time and again, stuff like:

“Full disclosure: I’m a White Sox fan. I’ve lived around Cubs fans my whole life, and lemme tell ya something — Cubs fans are NOT tortured. First off, they aren’t even baseball fans. They care more about being at Wrigley and remembering where they parked their BMWs.”
- JB, Munster, Ind.

Oh, Cubs fans are all rich. Right. After all, that’s why I blog! Somebody tell me, but we’re probably yuppies, too, yes?

“Only one team had a “curse” everyone knew about and tons of yuppie fans signing up to hop on the failure bandwagon. … It’s romantic to go to the North Side and drink beer with rich white people and watch crappy baseball. There is so much “history and ambiance.” It’s a great way to feel like the common man, even though you paid $80 for a bleacher ticket.”

- Brent L., Chicago

Well, thanks, Brent L. It’s true. I never heard of baseball until I followed some dreamboat preppie to Wrigley. He looked just like Zack Morris. Next thing you know, Brent L., you’ll be telling me the 2005 title didn’t have an effect on Chicago.

“What do you think hurts more, suffering along with a cast of thousands in book and song, or getting spit on while you lose? The sick thing is that I’m still scarred, and we got our title.”

- Brent L, again.

Oh, poor you. Your team won a World Series and you can’t enjoy it. You’re right, it’s the fucking Cubs’ fault.

“Plus they wear their failure like a badge of courage, as if choosing this lifestyle makes them noble.”

- Mike K., NY

You know what, Mike fucking K? We don’t. We don’t want any points for nobility. We don’t love losing. We want our team to win the World Series every year, the pennant every year, and every single game. Just like you.

Sure, it’s just as sillly of me to cherry-pick quotes from Sox fan emails, as it was of ESPN editors, who chose only these columns, all White Sox responses. All predictable and annoying.

But honestly, surely a Cardinals fan wrote in and lambasted Cubs nation? (Assuming they could read. HA.) Surely some other city feels worse than the Cubs, worse enough to bag on the North Siders. I mean, the Mariners have never won anything. Ever.

But nope, some editor selected only bitter White Sox fan emails, lumping all Cubs fans into a pot of yuppie. Well, those generalizations are hopelessly played. You wouldn’t expect me to say stuff like, “all Sox fans are meth-addicts who live in trailers outside the Cell. With no day job, it’s easy to obsess about a team that isn’t your own. And no, stealing aluminum pipes doesn’t count as a day job.”

And I would never say that.

“Sometimes you get stuck in the world of evaluating players through home runs and RBIs. … And if you look at underlying performance of a lot of our guys, they bring more to the table than just the counting stats. … J.D.’s certainly having another good year for us … He’s up around a .900 OPS right now …
Based on his skill set, he’s always going to have underwhelming RBI totals. I couldn’t care less. When you’re putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn’t matter. When you have a player who takes a ton of walks, who doesn’t put the ball in play at an above average rate, and is a certain type of hitter, he’s not going to drive in a lot of runs. Runs scored, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs.”
“And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that’s NOT MAKE OUTS.
(Via Posnanski, Emphasis is Joe’s.)

I just want to point out that I agree totally with this logic. Have for quite some time. And in fact, it’s exactly the logic much of literate Cub nation called for in offseason acquisition and planning.

And it’s exactly the logic that we used, during three years of urging the Cubs to sign Milton Bradley. We heartily endorsed this move. We begged for it. We celebrated it.

And we couldn’t have been more wrong.

So it turns out there is a place for chemistry, intangibles, clutch, role play, and even traditional statistics in player evaluation, despite what Theo (or Joe) or legions of SABR members would have us believe.

As a test case, we urge the Sawx or Royals to trade for Milton Bradley this offseason. Prove us wrong. He’ll be cheap.

On the flip side, Milton Bradley may actually be the exception that proves the effectiveness of OBP lineup-creation. At least, we hope the Cubs give it another shot. (No, not with Adam Dunn, smart guy.)