Hire Jim Essian

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

Way back in 2002, the Cincinnati Reds revealed a slugger who was supposed to be Sosa- McGwire- and Bonds-esque in his ability to hit home runs. Despite his inability to draw walks, catch and throw a baseball, or either spell or pronounce the name "Willy," Wily Mo Pena was going to team up with Austin Kearns and Adam Dunn ... Read More

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

Billy Wagner has had a very long, very successful MLB career. Wagner was half of a lethal back end of a Houston Astros bullpen in the early '00s. Wagner saved games behind setup man Octavio Dotel. He's saved quite a few of them in his sixteen seasons. 422, to be precise. He might be stuck ... 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

EDITOR'S NOTE: In light of a new season starting today, in keeping with the theme of HJE, and because Uncle Mike is about as vanilla as Neapolitan ice cream without the chocolate and strawberry, we have a new Friday host! Be nice to him. He's old. Hello, Cubs fans. Popeye here. I guess I'm supposed to ... Read More

No matter how stupid I feel about rooting for the often ineptly-managed Cubs, there is always the Mets' management to make me feel better. THINGS OF NOTE: Kevin Burkhardt can barely hold back his laughter as he's introducing the clip. It's the laughter of a man wondering how the hell he ended up in this situation, when porn was a perfectly ... Read More

No, Kevin Mitchell was not listed in baseball's infamous Mitchell Report. He probably wasn't on steroids. But he was an oversized left fielder for the San Francisco Giants who was so bad in the outfield that the greatest play he ever made involved him taking a horrible route to the ball and overrunning it by several feet. ... 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

I don't have too much interest in the World Series this year. The Phillies were just in it last year, and it feels like the Yankees are always in it, even when they aren't. But I will be tuning in to Game Two of the World Series tonight. Long time Yankee nemesis Pedro Martinez is taking the ... Read More