Hire Jim Essian

Over the weekend, I took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Canada to visit Niagara Falls. Along the way, we spent a night in Toronto to visit the Rogers Centre and go up high in a giant needle. I was lucky(?) enough to see two beloved former Cubs play for the Blue Jays. Henry Blanco started for the Jays, and Mark DeRosa had a late-inning at-bat. Presumably because the game was already out of hand and the hot bartenders at Jack Astor's Front Street were busy serving Canadian beer to rowdy Jays fans.

I've crossed a fair number of ballparks off my list in my quest to see all 30 MLB stadiums. Eleven, I guess. But I always sort of figured the Rogers Centre would be a bitch to make an excuse to go see. Well, I'm going this weekend. Saturday, to be exact. R.A. Dickey is supposed to pitch for the Blue Jays against Hisashi Iwakuma and the Seattle Mariners. I'm ready to pretend I'm a Jays fan and yell things like, "More like HERashi!"

This is a reminder for those lucky nine of you who signed up for Razzball/Neifiball/Antisy Baseball. The draft is at 8:00 p.m. CST tonight. If you can't make the draft, be sure to pre-rank your players. It's WAY more important to pre-rank in Neifiball than it is in any other fantasy draft. You don't want to be the dope who doesn't pre-draft and ends up with a team of scrubs like Verlander, Trout, and Stanton, DO YOU???

How dumb am I? I'm actually going to Spring Training this year. Cubs Spring Training. I used money to purchase a plane ticket and a hotel room. I can't wait to see the bizarre number of jorts and eventual sunburns flown in from this great city of ours. I will be out there from this coming Sunday through next Thursday. This is my first trip out to Spring Training, so if anyone who's been there has any advice about what to do and things to see, I'd love to hear them. In the meantime, I'm inventing my own Cubs Spring Training Drinking Game. So long, liver!

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath on the eve of the fifth(?) annual Socially Awkward Cubs Meetup to find out what's happening for tomorrow's festivities. Wait no more, master baters.

If you started internet browsing during the eighty-run ninth inning last night, you may have noticed that today is Lou Piniella's 69th (hee hee!) birthday. For those of you too young to remember, Hire Jim Essian was originally Fire Lou Piniella, which was originally Fire Dusty Baker (no, not that one). So, I will always have a warm spot in my heart for Sweet Lou. Though not for Dusty F. Baker.

If you Googled "HJE meetup" looking for a handjob exchange, you're in the wrong place. MAYBE. If, instead, you have any interest in watching the circle jerk that is the 2012 Chicago Cubs, you're in the right place! One of HJE's long-time readers is going to be in town, and it's only fair that he should have to suffer a Cubs game like the rest of us locals do.

I am one of those lucky few dudes who has a girlfriend who accepts all the things I cannot do, ignores most of the things I do do, and has the courage to face both. Oh, also, when I have the idea to do a liveblog on a Monday night with a 12-pack of Big Hurt Beer and a CUBS MANIA (OMG!) trivia game from 1985, she's down.

Tonight, the Cubs are holding their inaugural Social Media Night beginning at 5:45 tonight at the Captain Morgan Club at Wrigley Field. Because it's called a SOCIAL Media Night, our good friends PAUL SULLIVAN and BRUCE MILES were not invited to participate. So, they decided to host Anti-Social Media Night just outside of the Captain Morgan Club. There are few Cubs bloggers as anti-social as I am, so I will be joining them to tweet bitter things about the Cubs' "cool" clique of Carrie Muskat and...Kevin Saghy.

Hire Jim Essian turns five years old right...NOW. In five years, HJE has ripped through three managers, two general managers, at least four different people who contacted me thinking I AM Jim Essian, 1,847 posts, one Milton Bradley, and 17,340 comments. Those numbers are as meaningful to me as OBP was to Jim Hendry. But I couldn't keep slogging through the past five years without you, dear readers. Join me on Memory Lane as I look back at the post that created HJE (thanks to TJ Brown) and the very first post on HJE.