Hire Jim Essian

On Carl Everett's perfectly-flat planet, Kevin Mitchell is President of Earth, The New Girl is a great idea for a sitcom, and the Chicago Cubs are perennial World Series contenders. Oh, yeah, and dinosaurs didn't exist because God didn't mention them when he wrote the Bible. And God isn't a liar, idiot. Or should I say, "God isn't a liar, paleontologist?" Perhaps the reason Kenny Williams traded twenty-three players for Carl Everett is because Everett is #4 on the Top 79 Cub Killers of My Time.

Tim Wallach was many things. A five-time All-Star. A two-time NL doubles leader. A two-time Silver Slugger. A three-time Gold Glove winner. What he wasn't was good. His OPSes in the five seasons he went to an All-Star Game were: .706, .759, .858, .760, and .810. He won one of his Silver Sluggers while hitting only .260 (he hit .298 for the other one). He is a career .257/.316/.416 hitter who averaged 19 home runs and 82 RBIs in a 17-season MLB career with the Expos, Dodgers, and Angels. He is also the 13th-biggest Cub Killer of My Time.

Mike Jorgensen was from a simpler baseball era. A time when hitting .243 bought you 17 seasons in Major League Baseball. A time when it was okay to hit only 95 home runs and drive in 426 RBIs in a career. A time when maybe people only watched his games against the Chicago Cubs, against whom he ... Read More

There are some members of the Top 79 Cub Killers of My Time who were still relatively successful players against MLB teams that WEREN'T the Cubs. The 37th biggest Cub Killer, Mike Fitzgerald, is not one of those guys. No, Fitzgerald was only a .235/.321/.346 hitter throughout the course of his ten-year career, which he spent mostly with ... Read More

So, Mike Quade is off to a pretty good start as interim manager. He's won three games in a row and swept the mighty Nationals. Wow! I'm sooooooo impressed. What were the Nationals? 53-71 going into Monday night's game? And they had to face whom? Livan Hernandez? Hell, that guy was practically ... Read More

If there's one thing that's absolutely infuriating about the Cubs, it's their mystifying inability to hit left-handed pitching. No, scratch that. If there's one thing that's absolutely infuriating about the Cubs, it's their 102-year championship drought. Number two is the other thing with the left-handers. A couple of offseasons ago, when Jim Hendry decided to make ... 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

(Ed. Note: This post was all set to go up on Wednesday. And then Milton, in one of the most appropriately-timed tantrums of all time, decided to throw the good people of Chicago under the bus AGAIN. Thanks, Milton, for being the rule that proves that there is absolutely nothing exceptional about you.) The three-year anniversary of HJE ... Read More

Back in the glory days of video game baseball (read: MVP 2005), Jose Vidro was a favorite target of mine when trying to upgrade my Cub franchise. At the time, the pudgy, switch-hitting second baseman was under-appreciated by a virtual Omar Minaya, and could be had at cents on the dollar. Perhaps Vidro was the apple of my ... Read More

On September 15, 1973, a 22-year-old catcher on the Philadelphia Phillies named Jim Essian stepped to the plate in the fifth inning with the Montreal Expos leading his Phillies 4-1 at Parc Jarry. Phillies starter Dick Ruthven had been battered around for 4 earned runs on 4 hits and 5 walks in his 3 1/3 innings. Ron Diorio ... Read More