Hire Jim Essian

Only one week after my mockery of the pre-Muskbox blurb, said blurb has gone missing from this week's Muskbox! What lies in store for future Muskboxes? Will Carrie finally get a cubs.com e-mail address? Will a thought-provoking question get a researched, insightful answer? Will Carrie let her hair down? There is only one way to find out, and unfortunately it involves me continuing to read the Muskbox!

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

The only reason to watch the Cubs for the remainder of the season is to watch Starlin Castro hopefully erase Juan Pierre from any bit of Cub trivia. Before the end of the season, when anyone asks you, "Hey, who was the last Cub to collect 200 hits in a season?" you will no longer have to answer, "Juan ... Read More

I was hoping to see Starlin Castro get his 200th hit at Wrigley Field, so I watched the game today. While he didn't become the first Cub since Juan Motherfucking Pierre to reach 200 hits, there were a couple notes from the game that I found interesting. The paid attendance was just over 30,000. While it is a Wednesday ... Read More

I offer you this submission. Never has there been a more hate-worthy Cub shortstop than Ryan Theriot. Not Jeff Blauser. Not Neifi Perez. Not Alex Gonzalez. Not Ronny Cedeno. All of those guys were terrible, but they either had some redeeming moments (Gonzalez), were hated solely because of misuse (Perez), were harmless simpletons (Cedeno), ... Read More

As you're all aware by now, on Sunday night Bobby Valentine went on a 7-minute tirade about what a lazy player Starlin Castro is when compared to Darwin Barney. Yes, it looked terrible when Castro was facing the third-base line as Jeff Samardzija delivered a pitch. But then Bobby went off the deep end for a lot of ... Read More

So, I was up in Wisconsin killing time, animals, and brain cells when I heard the news that Carlos Zambrano had retired. Or not retired. Or was just sick of the Cubs. Or giving up home runs. Now, the Cubs have put Zambrano on the disqualified list, and the Cub with the longest uninterrupted tenure on ... 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

The Muskbox is back with a robustness that was lacking last week. It's also unreasonably back on a Thursday. I politely asked if Carrie would reconsider, but she hasn't gotten back to me yet. Oh, well. Will this week's Muskbox answer the question of why Jim Hendry inexplicably declared Jeff Baker untouchable? Will it declare Carlos Marmol ... Read More

I'm going to get around to posting the Photoshops from the other day. I'm also going to get around to the next entry on the T79. But occasionally there comes along an article so stupid, that it must immediately be addressed. Five times out of ten, that article is written by Phil Rogers. But the other ... Read More