Cubs Snakebit with Injuries

I found myself decompressing after the unbelievably stressful double-overtime Bulls victory over the Celtics, and after the final outs of the Cubs victory over the Cardinals by watching Snakes on a Plane.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of watching this particular cinematic gem, the movie title is a pretty good synopsis of the actual plot. There are a bunch of snakes on a plane, which understandably is a huge problem for the characters of the movie.

The movie starts out well enough, the plane is heading merrily on its way from Hawaii to Los Angeles with a bunch of characters as diverse as "Stereotypical Hip Hop Star," "Close-to-Retirement Flight Attendant," "Balding Douchebag Businessman," "Big-Boobed Blonde" and many others. Shortly after takeoff, a bunch of snakes are set loose from the cargo hold and begin attacking passengers.

Naturally, things get worse and worse, just when one problem is supposedly solved, the snakes find another way to potentially kill everyone. The pilot is killed, then the plane's guidance instruments start shorting out, then the snakes start getting past a make-shift barrier constructed out of luggage, then they attack the co-pilot, then they start making their way up into the first-class lounge, then they finally kill the co-pilot. It never seems to end.

That's when I realized that this is how the Cubs season is going. The baseball gods have placed us in a cheezy horror movie formula and I'm actually kind of shocked that Samuel L. Jackson hasn't shown up yet.

First, Geovany Soto went down with an injury, but plucky Koyie Hill and a resurgent Kosuke Fukudome manage to get the Cubs by and everyone relaxes a bit.

Then Milton Bradley got hit with a groin injury. Still, the Cubs manage to win two of three when all he can manage is a singular pinch-hitting performance in each game (and an Oscar-worthy performance as an unfairly wronged baseball player who is eventually ejected for his protestations).

So the Cubs then headed to St. Louis with the end of the tunnel in sight, hoping to once again become 100% healthy within a couple of days. This is when the pace of the story picks up to a frenetic pace that surely will involve a body count.

Sure enough, within the same game, the Cubs lost both Aramis Ramirez to a calf-strain, and Carlos Marmol to a knee strain. Surely the team composed of nothing but corner outfielders and second basemen couldn't possibly sustain any more adversity, but the baseball gods were just getting warmed up.

As surely as a snake horror movie will involve a man being swallowed whole by a boa contrictor, Derrek Lee managed to hurt his neck while smacking a double.

Before the weight of that development could be fully digested, Alfonso Soriano got drilled in the head with a pitch. Under normal circumstances, Soriano probably would have come out of the game as a precaution, but since the motherf---ing injuries were all over the motherf---ing roster and Carlos Zambrano probably would have had to play left, he heroically stayed in the game.

It's hard to imagine how the injuries could possibly stack up for this team any more, but if watching Snakes on a Plane has taught me anything, it's that things can always get hilariously worse, and yet still end up with a videogame-playing fat guy safely landing the plane.

Hopefully our plucky comic relief team of height-challenged secondbasemen, mediocre middle-relievers, and curmudgeonly manager can gut out enough victories to survive and treat us all to a happy ending. But just in case, they should probably make sure there aren't any snakes on their plane to Arizona.