Some Nonsensical Ramblings from the Hot Zone

I have been laid up with some sort of illness that may or may not have been swine related, but was nonetheless extremely annoying and exhausting.  You know you have no energy when the thought of logging on to a laptop that is sitting five feet away from you seems like an ungodly chore.

In the course of laying around, not eating anything and forcing myself to drink Gatorade so I didn't die of dehydration, I had a chance to reflect on some of the events of the last few days:

• I wish I had been feeling better so I could have made an actual tally, but it seemed like for every real question a media member had for the Ricketts regarding ticket prices, Wrigley renovation, etc., there was a softball lobbed up a la Dave Kaplan's question (which I'm paraphrasing): "You once told me a story about your dad going to one of the rooftops before the sale process even started, can you tell us that story again?"  I'm not saying they had to grill the man, but a few more real questions instead of a rehashing of the time he met his wife in the bleachers would probably have been better use of the press credentials.  They're not going to be your buddies no matter how much sucking up them you do now.
• I liked how every media member read the Ricketts his or her resume before asking a question.  Les Grobstein practically went back in his career to his junior high paper route.
• None of the Ricketts said anything overly surprising, and all came off as true fans of the team. Time will tell if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
• I realized I may be the only person in the world who doesn't give a damn if they spend one penny on the bathrooms at Wrigley.  I honestly don't spend much time in there, and when I do, I find the trough system to be about as efficient as possible in moving drunken fans through while reducing the amount of splashback that you can get from a normal urinal.  Sure, the sinks should probably not look quite so similar to the urinal troughs, but that would be a simple cosmetic change.  Otherwise a couple of runs through with a power washer and maybe some fresh paint would be fine with me.
• I actually found myself agreeing with something Joe Morgan said during last night's ESPN Radio broadcast.  After A-Rod got hit with a pitch for the third time in six plate appearances, the umpires warned both benches despite the fact the Yankees had not hit a single batter in the whole series.  Joe summed it up with, "That's bull."  And it was.
• My god, the Browns suck.  The Bears are pretty bad right now and they kicked the hell out of the Browns.  It did nothing to make me feel better about the team or its propects in beating the Cardinals next week.  The Cardinals lines are both pretty decent, and the Bears' lines are unbelievably not.  I don't know if this team wins seven games the way things are going.
• The first Bulls game against the Spurs is now making me wonder more about how bad the Spurs are going to be rather than how good the Bulls could be.  The Boston game was an outright slap from the Celtics as punishment for the Bulls' uppity showing in the playoffs against them last year.  Then Miami didn't seem to be working very hard to hold off a lot of effort from the Bulls.  This mini trip did nothing to make me feel very confident about the annual Circus Roadtrip de la Muerte.
• It seemed like Indiana might be able to overcome some very questionable calls on pivotal plays to take down Iowa, but then Iowa started going with the wind and had two TDs in two plays totaling something like 160 yards and Indiana crumbled.  I didn't care much, but changing the channel would have meant reaching for the remote control and I wasn't up to it.
• Vernon Wells for Milton Bradley.  Holy Jesus - no, no, no, no, no.  A thousand times no.  This may actually be what made me sick in the first place.