Thoughts on the Chicago Cubs and other topics in baseball. E-mail Tom at: tomsmithcubs@ hotmail.com

 
FEINSTEIN'S ARTICLE: Ridiculous column by John Feinstein in the Washington Post today. Feinstein says the way to stop baseball's big market/small market payroll imbalances is to mandate a salary floor. No cap or revenue sharing needed, just mandate every team spend at least $70 million on salary a year. Presto everything is fixed! Gee John, why didn't the Montreal Expos, Kansas City Royals, and Minnesota Twins think of that years ago. I don't know why not. Could it be that they did not have the money like the Yankees did? Or they were not interested in losing $30 million like the Florida Marlins did in 1997 when they significantly increased their payroll.
posted by Thomas at 11:57 AM

 
STEROIDS: Well the steroIds controversy has engulfed the sport of baseball this past week. Now that the story has broken many columnists, comentators, reporters, and broadcasters are coming out and saying how everyone knew steroids were very prevalent in the game for years. Bob Costas more or less congratualted himself on his HBO show On The Record for talking about how he had said back in the 1990s on NBC that the increase in home runs was distorting baseball's history. Well before we give all these media yahoos credit they are now giving themselves, can anyone point to a really gutsy columnist or broadcaster who explictly said a few years ago something like, "I think many of these home run hitters are on steroids." I have yet to find one. Now one of the reoccuring themes in all forms of journalism when a big story breaks every journalist will claim they have known about for some time before it broke when of course they did not and are learning it for the first time along with the rest of the public. Which is likely happening again with this story. As for Bob Costas' statement about his comments back in the 1990s it really is not all gutsy. If Costas believed back then that many players were on steriods as he alluded to the other night why was he not more difinitive back then either on air or in print somewhere?
posted by Thomas at 11:21 AM

 
FRIDAY'S GAME: Cubs lose 4-1 to Houston. Bere very good through six again. Alou and Hundley deserve the boos.
posted by Thomas at 11:01 AM

 
CUP OF JOE: Joe Carter had some more interesting information for us all on Saturday night. In the fifth inning Carter told us, "Nelson Cruz has really dominated the Blue Jays since he came into the game." WGN please bring back Steve Stone next year.
posted by Thomas at 3:33 AM

 
SATURDAY NIGHT'S GAME: Kerry Wood outstanding. Fred McGriff is finally starting to hit. Sosa continues to be Sammy. Moises Alou needs to start hitting.
posted by Thomas at 3:30 AM