Once More With Feeling

When it is all said and done, Lou was right about Milton back in June of last year.  Milton Bradley is a piece of shit.  There is no getting around it.  The man is a despicable human being with a persecution complex that probably crosses the border into downright psychosis.  His latest ripping of anyone and everyone in the Cubs organization to the fan base itself is just one last piece of evidence piled on top of a pile of evidence that makes Mount Everest look like a speed bump.

But if we are looking for a hero in this whole melodrama that is now entering its fifteenth month despite Bradley only being a member of the Cubs for eleven months, we will be hard pressed to find one.

Hendry is the latest to go on record with ESPN to criticize Milton's latest diatribe:

"We have a long history of quality people who want to play here," Hendry said. "I don't believe in the last seven or eight years, under this regime, we lost a free-agent player we wanted to keep.

"And that still is the case. We just heard from Aramis [Ramirez] and Derrek Lee [who are in the last year of their contracts], how strongly they would like to end their careers here."

Hendry also pointed out that two free agents he signed during the offseason -- Marlon Byrd and Kevin Millar -- are represented by the Levinson brothers, who also represent Bradley.

"If there were any truth to any of the things that are coming up now ... I don't think [the Levinsons] would have been dying to have their clients come here," Hendry said. "And I think Kevin and Marlon will tell you we were clearly their first choice.

"So it's really unfortunate to get to that situation, to deflect the lack of production you did in the year you were here, to try to use the other areas for excuses."

Those are all good points, but Jim, you know full well how certain numbnuts get in the bleachers.  They aren't called the lowest common denominator for nothing.  It is the lowest to attack people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, etc. and no one can tell me that words in that vein haven't floated out of the drunken sprawl of humanity known as the Bud Light Bleachers.

This is also not the first time someone on the Cubs has claimed they have received hate mail at Wrigley.  Whether other people deal with it better, or have somehow managed to dismiss the behavior does not excuse the behavior or even make it something that players should have to deal with.  We like to believe that this has got to be a fairly common practice throughout the major leagues, but for some reason the team with the most problems of hate and racial tension is our own Chicago Cubs.  It used to be Boston, now it is Chicago.  Good job, assholes.

Clearly the fans are not the hero here.

So maybe the hero is Jim Hendry.  He is the one who dispatched Bradley off into the Pacific Northwest instead of keeping his usually potent bat in the lineup.  He is the one who helped wash away the Bradley stain by bringing in such clubhouse friendly players like Marlon Byrd and *choke* Kevin *heave* Millar *vomit* to make 2010 a happier time at the ballpark.

Unfortunately, Jim is the reason we are talking about this at all.  If he hadn't over-reacted the way he always does in a quest to get "more left-handed" we would be sitting back and watching some other city try to figure out what the hell to do with Bradley.

As much as the media would like to be the hero, they are prime instigators and have been since Milton signed with the Cubs.  There are some that are worse than others and I won't go into it further other than to say that the worst offender's name rhymes with Small Dullivan. 

They started in on the "when will Bradley implode" stories instantly, followed by the inevitable "could his slow start trigger an eruption" stories, followed by the "See? Milton Bradley is a jerk that is destroying the Cubs' season" stories, followed by the "Cubs finally learn what we all already knew and suspend Bradley" stories, followed by "Now Bradley is calling us racist, we told you he was batshit crazy" stories, followed by the "Cubs have to trade Bradley" stories, followed by the "Nobody wants Bradley and the Cubs might be stuck with him" stories, followed by the "Now Bradley is Seattle's problem, but lets recap what a dick that guy was" stories, followed by the "Isn't it great now that Bradley is gone?" stories.  I swear people didn't write this much about Sammy Sosa when he was the only player on the team worth writing about.

So Bradley is gone, but people can't stop talking about him, and then act all shocked when he responds in the only way he knows how, like a fucking lunatic.

What's next?  I have no idea and I can't think of a better representation of where we are in the Bradley saga than the following scene:



(I'm represented by Spike.)