T.J. Brown was kind enough to let me know that David Kaplan took it upon himself to “call me out” by pseudonym in whatever his night show is called on Wednesday. As usual, Kaplan was railing on Alfonso Soriano and was apparently mad at a comment on made on his latest post. What’s that, you say? You don’t see a comment from me on that post? Oh, right. That’s because Kaplan is now approving or disapproving comments (at least MY comments) on his site. Word to the unwise, Kap. You might not want to discourage participation from the eight people who are actually reading your blog.
If you’re wondering what riled up Burnt Sienna, all I did was pointed out to Kaplan that it was a nonsensical argument to call Soriano’s defense “not good” when Soriano has had the best arm in left field for the past three years. Moreover, until this year, Soriano has been a plus left fielder defensively for the Cubs. That is, of course, if you use things like STATISTICS instead of irrational hatred to gauge Soriano’s ability.
But instead of allowing me to comment and responding to me on his blog, Kaplan decided to call me out to the sixty-year-old men and women who actually listen to him on the radio. He apparently called me something along the lines of a Soriano defender because I don’t hate him as much as Kaplan does. Oh, and he made fun of my “silly” pseudonym. Not that it’s any of your business, Kap, but I use a pseudonym because blogging is not my job. It’s a hobby which I would not want to interfere with my real job. Oh, and the good journalists in Chicago know my real name. Moreover, I’m certainly responsible for my own comments. You don’t like something I say? You have my e-mail address, and you could always post a comment. Because that’s how blogs work. You’ll figure it out eventually. I promise I won’t even delete it.
Back to the radio show. I was going to try to call in earlier, but I was getting a haircut (remember those, Kap?). When I got out, the line was busy until the show ended. I did have the misfortune of hearing him rip Soriano and fellate Mark DeRosa at least a half-dozen times and to hear the bleating of a couple of his callers. One older gentleman called in and said that Jim Hendry had gotten rid of two guys of “integrity” and replaced them with Milton Bradley. I’ll give you exactly one second to guess to whom he was referring.
If you said Kerry Wood and Mark DeRosa, do two shots.
Now, I’m not sure how a right fielder replaced a closer and a second baseman, but that’s just the sort of nonsense that passes for radio in this town, apparently. Oh, by the way, the guy was perfectly audible, but he was slow in his speech, so Kaplan claimed he had a bad connection and cut him off. Classy move to cut off what sounded like an eighty-year-old man, Kap. At least you won’t have to deal with him much longer. You know. After he dies.

More like *Fad* Kermit. amirite?
For your information, David Kaplan has forgotten more about baseball than he ever learned !
Face it, Soriano is a selfish player. 14 homers and only 28 RBIs? What an asshole. An unselfish player is a guy like Juan Pierre. 200 singles. Comically over-sized hat. Involves other players defensively because he can’t throw the ball from shallow center field to third base without a cutoff man. That’s the guy we need.
Did you hear his interview with the bone cancer girl from DeKalb? It was painful. Nothing specific but just a great example of Kap’s uncomfortable interview style.
Kaplan’s interview style is more uncomfortable than Soriano at a WWE event.
Did he ask for your phone number so you guys could talk about your differences?
See? It’s comments like that that cause all the trouble in the world.
:)
Haha – now that is funny!
Not to mention it’s probably the only position I’ve never pictured DeRo in prior to reading this post.
Look, I’ve been as big a DeRosa supporter/whiner as anyone else, but this guy is ridiculous. DeRosa is gone, Wood is gone. I did my crying about it (and I’ve accepted that my wife is 2/3 less interested in the Cubs than she was before this year. If DLee leaves, it’s all over . . .) and now it’s time to move on. The only thing Soriano does that irritates me is that doofy hop when he catches the ball, and if he hadn’t hurt himself doing it last season, I wouldn’t even give a shit about that. I don’t care if he hits leadoff, because he hits for shit at any other spot in the lineup. He can’t play second and he has an absolute gun in left field. When he’s hot at the plate, he’s the best fucking hitter in baseball. When he’s cold, Jesus Christ, he’s Neifi Perez with a case of the clap. With Soriano, you know you have to take the good with the bad and right now, it’s bad. Unfortunately, everyone else decided they wanted to suck it up at the same time. Do I still want DeRosa on this team? Absolutely, but only because of the injury to Ramirez. If Rami were fine and Bradley hits like he did last year, nobody would care about DeRosa. My biggest red flag about trading DeRosa was the fact that not only did Rami have a history of leg problems, but the guy you added in the offseason was notoriously injury prone as well. But I also understand the business logic behind Hendry’s decision. He felt he needed more lefties and the only players he had available to move to get that flexibility were DeRosa and Marquis, plus not resigning Wood. He took a risk and thus far, it’s bombed big time, but why blame Soriano for that? He’s doing what he’s done every year since he got here: boom or bust. (Sorry for the length of this rant!)
I was at the game yesterday, and had to listen for nearly 3 hours as a couple twats behind me decided they were baseball experts and wanted to dissect the game. What did they focus on more than anything? Alfonso Soriano. Apparently, because Soriano didn’t throw out the runner (I think it was Getz?) at home on the sac fly, he is an awful defender and needs to be bench immediately. That’s right, because he hit the runner, he needs to be benched. I’m sorry, but if his arm is good enough that he can actually aim for and hit the runner on the fly, that man deserves a Gold Glove immediately. I’m not going to argue that Soriano doesn’t suck right now (if Denard Span were healthy, Soriano would be benched in my fantasy league), but he is far from a terrible defender.
Soriano is not a good outfielder.
Not that I want to actually agree with Kaplan on anything.
@Zach – I didn’t say he was “good.” I said he was a plus outfielder. He’s above-average, and his arm is terrific. This year, he’s been below-average, but it looks to me like he’s been playing hurt pretty much all year.
I was thinking just the opposite of those guys. I thought: “That was a pretty good throw! He might have thrown him out if he didn’t hit Getz.”
On another note, I watched the game twice yesterday (I like Baseball!). Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone are SOOOOO much better than Kasper and Brenly. Do the Cubs hire boring people on purpose?
Get out. Right now.
He Gone !
Hawk and Stoney had stories to tell! Brenly and Kasper are boring.
Take for example Podsednik’s stolen base. Both said that the shortstop was playing in front of the bag and trying to block the bag. Hawk, however, said, “Well, the next time he does that, somebody is going to slide into his….” and Stoney chimes in with “knee?” and Hawk goes “I was thinking a little higher – the jock strap area” and then Hawk references it Brian Bochy (??) who would have killed you if you tried to block second.
Also, Brenly and Kasper missed Podsednik’s reaction to Alexei Ramirez cutting off his throw to third, when he thought they had a good chance of throwing out the guy at third. Both Hawk and Stone were all over it. There was a LOT of stuff that Brenly and Kaspar missed.
They are Tribune employees! Boring! In a Wally Phillips way! A Tom Dore way.
that baseball prospectus link lists Soriano as playing one game at second base in ’07, ’08, and ’09. that’s gotta be a mistake, right… or am i reading it wrong?
Nope. He just played second last Friday. I had the joy of being at that game. He started the game in left, but Lou somehow got himself into a situation where he thought moving him to second in a two-run game was a good idea.
The picture for this article shows a somehow wonderfully-surreal amount of strainage (en France – ‘stranage’). And it’s wonderfully appropriate, because the team has been playing like excrement.
Yeah, I can tell stories, like how I traded Bobby Bonilla away for Jose DeLeon and fired the Genius in 1986.
Or I can bore you with my story about inventing the batting glove.
Or I can act like I know the rules of the game.
I’m awesome.
@Moon – Hawk is absolutely the worst play-by-play announcer I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’ve heard Chip Caray. Stone is a pompous shithead who thinks he’s entitled to a GM job. They’re terrible in every conceivable way.
@Bad Kermit – ah, touche. can’t believe i didn’t know that.
I’m not Hawk is the greatest announcer ever. I’m saying that Brenly and Kaspar are maybe the most BORING announcers ever.
There’s nothing boring about hearing the game. Tired schtick and nonstop drivel for the sake of talking is boring.
Moon, if you think Len and Bob are boring, you should have heard Chip Carey’s old man, Skip, and the sad bastards TBS hired to sit with him. Len and Bob are like crystal meth compared to those fuckers.
My favorite Hawk stories occur when the Sox are losing big and he shuts up for the rest of the game.
I am the most BORING commenter ever.
Hey!!! An impostor!!
This is true.
“HOLY COW!”
“HEY! HEY!”
not to hop back on the Cubs fans are racist bandwagon, but seriously, that “integrity” argument stinks to high hell. hey, that black guy there aint acting like how i want him to act, so he dont got no integrity! and because mark derosa shut the hell up and played where he was told, he got that integrity stuff! i have to assume that soriano doesnt have “integrity” either cause he doesnt want to move down in the lineup, either.
and hawk and stone are terrible. the best white sox game i ever watched had the volume on mute so i couldnt hear those two morons
A few weeks ago, Hawk and
DJStoney interviewed Gov Pat Quinn. After the interview, Hawk said something like, “I’m a republican but I’m going to vote for Pat Quinn.”First, Hawk, don’t tell us your political ideologies during a baseball game broadcast,
Second, don’t tell us who you’re going to vote for.
Third, especially don’t do either when the statement contradicts itself. Makes you look dumb.
Just emailed my good buddy Dave.
Classy, BK. I dig it.
@Ryan Beariot –
Not to be critical, but you hopped back on that bandwagon pretty quick, and then used a tired stereotype to make the accusation you said you didn’t want to make.
It’s just like where I said “not to be critical”, and then directly criticized. No disrespect and all – I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’…
All this talk about announcers and no one has brought up tHom Brenneman yet? He is the greatest, with the possible exception of his old man.
Brenly has really grown on me. With his funny little face and his fanatical hatred of the World Baseball Classic and his habit of starting sentences mid-thought and not realizing nobody else can hear the internal monologue that has just led him to the point where he says “So yeah it’s just like the Diamondbacks that one year.” Plus his knowledge of music and movies seems to end around the year 1998, so he’ll sometimes talk about a band from my high school days like they’re still a pretty big deal. He’s sort of bumbling and likable. He’s kind of the way you want your girlfriend’s dad to be the first time you go out to dinner with the family.
@ StPatrick
yeah youre right. i think i might have meant an opener where i say not all cubs fans are racist but that guy sure sounds like it. slash i dont want to sound like a hack newspaper columnist. ever since kermit got rid of that “think before you submit button” i just post and post without thinking. so its really not MY fault, its actually kermit’s. because he’s a racist, you see.
on an entirely different topic to anything i just said, i cant get banned from here, right? right?
and on an (actually) unrelated subject to anything i just posted, when will we get another 15% podcast? when aramis gets back? or sooner?
Too pissed.
I meant of course “Your credibility is now shot”
That’s BS!
Just throwing this out there – do you think there’s a chance, with Mark DeRosa back in town this weekend, that Kap may try to kidnap him and stuff him in a Cubs jersey? Not that I wouldn’t love to have him back like anyone else but c’mon…get some new material.
Last night there was a caller asking about PITCHING, throwing the Pedro Martinez thing around, and (go go gadget sarcasm) surprisingly, in the blink of an eye, Kap’s response turned into bring back Mark DeRosa. No, he wasn’t suggesting as a pitcher (although I wouldn’t put that past him) but Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, when someone is asking about PITCHING, address the question, don’t just shrug it off as “pitching is not the problem if you’re gonna spend money bring back Mark”, you could instead talk about PITCHING.
Appreciate the call.
PS – Kerm, way to “jump back on” the Sori bandwagon by pointing out that he had a game winning hit.
Hawks call of the game winning hit by Soriano…”There’s a single” followed by silence…hahaha pricless!
I listen to a lot of White Sox games (I like Baseball!) and I’ve never heard him say ANYTHING about Santo. (not that Santo doesn’t deserve it!). So, unless you are talking to Hawk Harrelson off camera (!!!!!)….
I gave two examples of things that Hawk said that added to the game and Brenly and/or Kaspar missed.
Just to be clear, my ideal game would be just crowd noise. But if you going have an announcer say something, have them say something interesting and Brenly and Kaspar didn’t add ANYTHING interesting to the game. I don’t need somebody to tell me the count is 2-2 or that there are two outs (maybe they could tell Milton Bradley how many outs there are, though – sheesh)
Ive said it before and I’ll say it again.
You cannot be a fan of both the Cubs and Sux.
If you’re a fan of “Chicago Baseball”, then you really don’t give a shit about Baseball at all.
You’re Dead to me.
If you’ve never heard your favorite douchebag rip a man who lost both legs for being a cry baby, then you haven’t been listeing for too long.
Wow. I just heard the replay of Hawk bitching about the ump. What a fucking baby.
Moon, I agree with your ideal game…crowd and field noise only, would be perfect.
Yea, how about the HUGE error that happened in that inning? No, the sox lost because a borderline pitch did not get called in their favor…
I got the feeling Steve Stone was tired of hearing Hawk bitch about the call.
@Chris P – I hate Stone, but I LOVE the fact that he won’t participate in Hawk’s terrible home run call.