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In a sad week of news for former catchers named Gary, it's only appropriate that Waukegan native Gary Bennett make his presence felt on HJE. Bennett spent his entire thirteen-year career as a backup catcher. He never played 100 games in a single season, and he played in only 587 MLB games. But that was plenty for the Waukegan Kid (I just made that up!) to cement his legacy as the 6th-biggest Cub Killer of My Time.

It's hard to imagine that Neifi Neftali Perez was a bigger liability to the Cubs when off their roster than when on it. When last we left Neifi over four years ago, he was being honored as the second-worst Cub of my time. Now here we sit, eagerly awaiting his official retirement from baseball so that his Hall of Fame eligibility clock can begin its insistent ticking. Surely, a man with a career .297 OBP will not get a call from the Hall of Fame. He would, however, if the BBWAA considered only Neifi's statistics against the Cubs. His career pursuit of those numbers caused Neifi to scrap his way all the way up to #18 of the Top 79 Cub Killers of My Time.

There are three questions you have to ask yourself about Jeff D'Amico: Who the hell is Jeff D'Amico? Why are you making me think about Jeff D'Amico? How is Jeff D'Amico #22 on the Top 79 Cub Killers of My Time? The answers, my friend, like all good things, will come in time. Jeff D'Amico's Major League career was short-lived, a mere eight seasons, 131 ... Read More

The 2011 season ground to a merciful halt yesterday. In a beautiful display of symmetry, it ended much the same way it started, with Ryan Dempster walking everyone in the park, serving up a grand slam, and losing to a shitty team. In case you missed the past six months of baseball, the Cubs didn't make the playoffs ... Read More

Surely, you remember Preston Wilson. His hair was kinda- I don't know- brown. Well, not really brown. Oh, he's tall. Yeah. Kinda- kinda tall. Sorta tall. And he's always wearing- like- t-shirts. I mean, he's Preston. PRESTON. You know? Preston. Press-TONE! And he's the 29th biggest Cub ... Read More

Travel back in time with me, if you will, to a time before the Cubs' "Cajun Connection" of former Louisiana State University players Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot. Years before that cute moniker was first used to describe the diminutive middle infielders, the Cubs had a GRITTY second baseman with beard stubble and a Tiger pedigree of his own. ... Read More

(With sincere apologies to Dante Alighieri) Midway upon the journey through the T79 I found myself writing about Dante Bichette, For some horrible life choices had led me here. Ah me! How hard a thing it is to say What was the worst part of Dante Bichette. Whether his hair, his gap-toothed maw, or his unibrow. So bitter am I, having watched him bat against the ... Read More

There are two things that stand out in the career of Vinny Castilla. His dark, flowing mullet and the horrible things he did to Cub pitching throughout the course of his 16 MLB seasons. Cub pitchers breathed a collective sigh of relief when the former Rockie, Brave, National, Astro, and Devil Ray retired after the 2006 season. ... Read More

Ed. Note: When I'm long gone from this world and tales are told of what I did to make a difference in this life, no one will have an answer that doesn't, at some point, use the phrase "dick joke." Whether I leave a legacy in the expanding world of penis jokes or not, though, I certainly don't ... Read More

One of the difficulties of taking so long to finish writing the list of the Top 79 Cub Killers of My Time is that the list includes many active players. Some of them completely dominated the Cubs when I first wrote the list. For example, Zach Duke, of all people, was a top-ten Cub killer when the list ... Read More