The offseason is approaching -- and not a moment too soon.
I've been thinking about ideas to fill our baseball-reading needs over the winter; of course, I'll write about the new Cubs manager, whoever he turns out to be, and any acquisitions, whether by free agency or trade, and what to do to improve this mess of a team.
But that's not going to fill up the entire five months between October and the first spring training game in March.
So, I have borrowed an idea from our SB Nation sister site Halos Heaven, the Angels blog; last winter the Rev Halofan, who runs the site, posted a series called "The 100 Greatest Angels Of All-Time".
Over the last couple of weeks, I put together a list, going all the way back to the 19th Century beginnings of this franchise. Mike and I discussed it, and then I had it vetted by Ed Hartig, a SABR member who is perhaps the most knowledgeable person I know about Cubs history.
The Angels list included coaches and managers and even their original owner, Gene Autry; I've decided, because of the much longer history of the Cubs, to limit my list to players only. Also, I have ranked them in such a way that takes into account ONLY their time as Cubs, not their entire careers.
I'm telling you this now because, well, 100 short biographies is quite a bit of research and writing, and I thought this would make an excellent little offseason project for the entire BCB community.
If you are interested in writing perhaps two or three or four of these profiles, drop me an email. Here's how it's going to work: I will assign profiles to you ... basically on a whim. Know that if I give you, say, Ron Santo, you're also going to be assigned a lesser-known player. Also, I will NOT reveal the ranking of any particular player to anyone when I assign him to you. And remember, once the rankings are revealed -- and I'm going to do it one a day, starting at #100 around mid-November, ending at #1 right before spring training -- this is MY list. I make no apologies for the way I'm ranking players, and besides, that's half the fun of doing it, right? Discussing and arguing about how the rankings do or don't reflect your thoughts?
Please let me know if you are interested. For some good examples of the sort of thing I'm looking for, check out the following Halos Heaven posts from last winter:
Don Baylor (yeah, I figured you'd all like that one!)
David Eckstein (another guy we love to hate!)
Have fun with this, and I hope to hear from quite a few of you!