Moving On

I'm not sure about anybody else, but I'm pretty tired of talking about Paul Sullivan and whether he is good at his job or even at being a normal human being with common decency.  The fact of the matter is that without access to his Twitter feed, I will rarely know what he has written and will therefore probably never end up on his Trib stories, and he won't get the three members of my family that would go to his stories from links that I may have placed here.

It isn't a tragic loss to my world nor his, but it does make one wonder: If Paul Sullivan bitched about Milton Bradley in a forest and everyone was blocked from hearing it, would anyone give a shit?

More importantly, the time for an unfounded sense of hope and faith in the Cubs is upon us.  This is the time when it is most reasonable to believe that Alfonso Soriano can come close to earning all that cash Hendry shoveled at him.  This is the time when we can believe with all of our hearts that Randy Wells is not a one year wonder.  This is the time when we can visualize Jeff Baker becoming a productive every day player.

Marlon Byrd can patrol centerfield.  Theriot will start to take walks again.  Rudy Jaramillo will fix everyone's swings.  Marmol will throw strikes.  Samardzija will emerge as a legitimate member of the pitching staff and not just a hairdo that makes the ladies blush and giggle.  Lilly's shoulder will be fine.  Lee will not stop hitting like he's twenty-eight years old.  Ramirez's arm won't fall off again.

Deep down we know that at least half of those things will not come true, but we have a whole season to come to grips with harsh realities.  We feel there is plenty of time to wait for the first debilitating injury or inexplicable slump of death.  We do not want to believe that major failure by at least one of the key members of this team is almost inevitable.

The Spring is a time when fans can prepare themselves for the rigors of the season much as the players, umpires, and announcers do.  We can gear up for the rollercoaster ride of emotions that awaits us as the season unfolds with its many twists and turns.

We, here at Aisle 424, will endeavor to provide some useful tidbits over the next few weeks about the members of our 2010 Chicago Cubs to help prepare for the road ahead.  We will attempt to highlight the reasons we could end up loving a player enough that we would agree to name our unborn children after him, and we will also investigate why we could end up hating a player more than Paul Sullivan hates spinach. (See what I did there? I went the other way.)  We will also attempt to stop writing in the third person and coming off as an arrogant ass.

I'm hoping to have the first post up sometime tonight or early tomorrow.  Until then, please enjoy two random pictures that have no relationship to each other in any way.