If The Cubs Were A Band, They'd Be?

'nuff said...

n/t

San Francisco Giants are The Grateful Dead: Defined for years by the presence of a bloated, drug-addled figurehead who all the fans paid to see, at the expense of developing or addressing the needs of the rest of the group.

haha, ok, not funny....

in the fanshots section, under the links tab.

That said, whomever wrote that piece really made some astute observations. It was a great read.

I thought it took a lot of creativity and thought. Wish I had that in me!

I've always compared the Cubs to one of my favorite bands, The Replacements. Pioneers of sorts, just as often brillant as they were horrendous, heartbreakers to the core, rich in history, literary in every sense, historic, popular yet hated. (Oh, yeah, and there's the drunken thing.)

The 'Mats, like the Cubs, always seemed on the brink of a championship, only to have some internal foible send them tumbling back down to the basement. Representative quote:

God, what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled
It beats pickin' cotton and waiting to be forgotten

One could look at their major label stab at greatest, Don't Tell a Soul as one could look at the '03 Cubs (or the '84 or the '69...). There's no reason this album shouldn't have gone all the way, putting the band up there with the U2s and REMs of the day. But it didn't, and the band died a not-so-quiet death right here in Chicago (Grant Park, to be exact) three years later.

Of course, like the 'Mats and our beloved Cubs, my analogy is perhaps fatally flawed. I'm currently reading a great book called The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History, by Jim Walsh. Fairly early in the book, one of the contributors makes a fairly convincing argument that the Replacements are really the musical version of the Minnesota Twins. (I'd be more specific, but I don't have the book with me.)

Well, while one can't argue with the geographic parallel, I'd say the Twins have climbed the ladder of success much more ably than our Cubs over the last 46 years -- two world championships, three pennants, nine playoff appearances for the erstwhile Senators.

In any case, the 'Mats would get my vote. Forgive the long post -- I'm a little stoned on cold and flu medicine and felt like playing rock critic this morning.

There's enough latin influence on the team, right?

Not sure if Sammy's boom box would agree, but I'd like to hear that at a game.

...Reed Johnson looks like he could be the bass player with that Matt Clement starter set he has on his chin.