Big Mike: Making A Cadillac Payment On A Chevy

John Lackey is good. That’s as far as I’ll go. As I wrote earlier, I like good, smart pitchers. I’d rather have a staff filled with competent, cagey starters than one top heavy with an ace and a near-ace followed by a bunch of question marks.

Theo gave Lackey $17M/year for five years. The Boston boss can afford the investment even if Lackey breaks down or suddenly becomes more hittable. The Sox and the Yanks are the only two teams in baseball that can make such a deal with a pitcher of his caliber and not be financially hamstrung for a half decade. More power to Epstein and Brian Cashman.

Had Hungry Jim Hendry or Kenny Williams made the deal, though, I’d have called for their scalps.

Let’s take a look at your new mound star. He has excellent control, rarely gives up a home run and has a decent strike out rate. I’d be worried, though, about his hit-ability. For his career, Lackey has given up 9.1 hits per nine innings. He’s not dominating. At $85M, I’d want dominating. Then again, I’d never make an $85M investment in a pitcher in the first place, even if he gave up only seven hits per nine.

It seems that Lackey hit his peak in 2007, when he was 28, and now has settled in as a nice, plus pitcher. His value isn’t in being the untouchable force of nature that Pedro Martinez was. It’s that, with him, the Boston rotation is becoming full. It’s solid from 1 through 4 with only joker being Clay Buchholz, in the back-end spot. I agree with you — I’d turn the kid over to the highest bidder in a heartbeat in exchange for some more offensive firepower and then look for a number five guy at a bargain rate.

Here’s where I’ll give Theo even more credit. He was reported to be interested in Rich Harden. Thank your lucky stars Harden signed with the Rangers for one year plus a mutual-option second year with a $1M buyout. He’ll make at least $7.5M for 2010 and could, conceivably, earn $20 for the full two years. He ain’t gonna make the 20. Harden’s got electrifying stuff but his control blows and he kills bullpens. I’ve got to think that Theo knew that even better than I do and his purported interest was nothing more than smoke being blown by Harden’s agent.

Instead, Epstein gets a good, solid, dependable righthander. I like the additition of Lackey, AJ, I just don’t like the amount being sunk into him. But, If you’ve got it to sink, you may as well sink it.

Speaking of sinking, the Cubs are still looking for someone to take Milton Bradley off their hands.

Big Mike: That Phallus In A Sweater-Vest

No matter which site I’ve posted on about the Cubs, one thing is always perfectly clear — I wish Jim Hendry would be kidnapped by aliens. I blame him for just about anything I can think of, up to and including Global Warming.

But, really, Hungry Jim is not my ultimate Cub bete noir, only the latest. No, the honor for the biggest dope to run the Cubs in the Tribune Company era can be fought tooth and nail over by Jim Frey, Larry Himes or the loathsome Andy MacPhail, a man whom many Cubs watchers nicknamed MacFail and whom I’ve always referred to as that phallus in a sweater vest.

Frey was just plain dumb. Himes was a jerk. Their sins could fill a book. Their respective signature missteps were Frey’s 1991-92 off-season splurge on George Bell, Danny Jackson and Dave Smith, and Himes’s role in the departure of one Gregory Alan Maddux. But Andy MacPhail’s transgressions are the most infuriating.

I can understand the bone-headed actions of bone-headed men. Frey’s and Himes’s idiocies were there for the world to see. MacPhail’s incompetence was subtler. In fact, many credited him with doing a fine job during his term as president of the Cubs. He packed the ballpark and brought the team to the brink of respectability a time or two. Yuck.

I’ve never given a shit how well the Cubs are doing financially any more than I have a rooting interest in the bottom line of Wal-Mart or the Disney company. I don’t care to watch accountants balance their books but I love to see outfielders run down long flies and hitters lash line drives into the alleys. All I know is that Cubs’ cumulative record during the MacPhail presidency was 916-1011. The twelve teams he ran finished under .500 seven times. They lost 90-plus games in a season four times and finished in last place four times. Sure, there were the 1998 Wild Card team (or, more accurately, Sammy Sosa and a bunch of guys wearing the same uniform) and the 2003 division champs (the phrase “five outs away” is acid-etched into my brain.) Big deal. The Yankees or the Red Sox would consider those off years.

Even though the Cubs in the MacPhail era were godawful with the exception of those two startling playoff appearances, I’d always felt that MacPhail went to bed each night saying to himself, Man, I’m good. The ballpark is full and I’m making money for the company. I trust he didn’t linger over the team’s record — if he had, he’d have never fallen asleep.

Now, though, I read in George Castle’s fine blog, Bench Jockey, that MacPhail’s bosses in the Tribune Tower could hardly believe how penurious their own bean counter was after they looked at MacPhail’s books one year.

Castle gives an historical rundown of what a bunch of cheapskates the Cubs were even before the Trib bought the team in 1981. The Wrigleys, Phil and son Bill, made the notoriously miserly George Halas look like a drunken conventioneer. The Trib continued the tradition of penny-pinching until Sam Zell took over the company and ordered Hendry to turn the Cubs into a decent ball team so he could sell it. MacPhail, thankfully, was long gone by that time.

Here’s what Castle revealed about MacPhail’s heartfelt concern for the Mother Corp.’s piggybank. The Cubs front office under MacPhail, Castle writes, “…was discovered to be grossly understaffed, ranking 29th of 30 teams[.] They did not have enough scouts and player development people for a big-market team. [MacPhail] …in July 2005 told me he preferred to be understaffed; he’d rather be ‘one man too short than one man too heavy’ so that all his employees could be suitably ‘engaged.’ MacPhail’s Tribune Co. overseers were shocked to find he was not spending the money on player payroll and baseball operations they expected.”

That rumbling you hear emanating some 1000 miles WSW of Boston is me, about to erupt. That bastard Andy MacPhail — that phallus in a sweater vest — dicked around with my emotions merely to add few few extra bucks to his yearly bottom line, a few extra bucks that his own bosses didn’t even care about.

Benny Jay and I went to a Cubs game one sunny afternoon in late September, 1992. The Pirates were in town. Greg Maddux was on the hill. Batting third for Pittsburgh was Barry Bonds. It was years before Bonds bulked up. Still, he was already acknowledged as the finest ballplayer in the game. Maddux had the Bucs in the palm of his hand that day, shutting them out on seven hits. It was Maddux’s 20th win of the year. He’d win the National League Cy Young Award after the season. Bonds would win his third Most Valuable Player plaque.

Both Maddux and Bonds were free agents that off-season. Benny Jay and I discussed the Cubs future as we sat along the right field foul line. We figured they’d re-sign Maddux — after all, only a pack of idiots would let him walk. Then we drooled over the prospect of Bonds in a Cubs uniform. He’d solve so many problems for the team that his value was virtually incalculable. Wisely, though, we put the brakes on such dreamy talk. The Cubs would never sign a free agent of Bonds’s caliber — when pressed about this or that big-time free agent, Cubs honchos normally would imply that such a signing would be, well, wrong — almost evil.

Of course, the Tribune and Larry Himes let Maddux walk and neglected even to make a courtesy call to Bonds’ agent. A year and half later, MacPhail came aboard. The Cubs wasted no opportunity to remind Chicagoans that his Twins had won two — count ‘em, two! — World Series in five years under his watch. I knew — just knew — things were changing for the better. (Naturally, I chose to ignore the fact that the core of those Twins champs was in place well before he took over in Minnesota.)

Over the next 12 years that MacPhail controlled the Cubs’ purse strings, the following free agents became available: Albert Belle, Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Jason Giambi, Jim Thome and Miguel Tejada. I’m sure there were more, equally eye-popping names available for the taking. These are only the ones I remember. Not a one came within a lightyear of signing with the Chicago National League Ball Club.

Perhaps Andy MacPhail thought none of them would be “suitably engaged” in Wrigley Field.

Big Mike: Big Name? Big Deal.

Okay, the Cubs are gonna announce today that Rudy Jaramillo is coming aboard as the highest-paid hitting coach in the game. North Siders are now forming lines in front of the Wrigley box office for their 2010 World Series tix.

As I’ve indicated before, Hungry Jim Hendry loves — loves — big names. In the tight little world of hitting coaches there is no bigger name than Jaramillo’s. Will his hiring mean a goddamn thing in the standings?

Jaramillo has been the batting pedagogue at Texas since the early 90s. His charges have won 17 Silver Slugger awards and four MVPs. Bruce Levine credits Jaramillo with jump-starting the careers of Sammy Sosa, Mark DeRosa, Gary Mathews Jr., and Milton Bradley although, if memory serves me correctly, Sosa had a fair season or two with the Cubs before he closed out his career with the Rangers.

And therein lies my point. When you traffic in Big Names, the hyperbole has to match — even if it’s utter bullshit. The truth is, no one has any idea what effect Jaramillo has on hitters other than to make sure they don’t lose their way from the dugout to home plate.

What I do know is that the Ballpark in Arlington (could they possibly have come up with a more generic name?) is one of the top hitters’ havens in the bigs. According to ESPN’s 2009 MLB Ballpark Factors study, the BinA ranked in the upper quarter of parks in terms of increasing run scoring. And it ranked third only to Angels Stadium and that new telephone booth in the Bronx in home runs.

In addition, three of those four aforementioned MVP plaques were copped by Alex Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez, neither of whom, I’d wager, was in dire need of a hitting coach.

So methinks the beckoning fences of the Arlington playlot and the innate abilities of his pupils had as much or more to do with the Rangers’ bat-swinging success than the soothing encomiums of one Rudy Jaramillo.

I also suspect that if the Cubs score one run more in 2010 than they did in 2009, Jaramillo will be hailed as the second coming of James Clerk Maxwell. Such are the rewards of possessing a Big Name.

Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds Only For Me

I agree 10,000 percent with your last point. And I wonder if I hadn’t made myself clear in my Nomar post. Hendry was jobbed on that trade. Not necessarily because of anything he gave up (primarily Francis Beltran — ugh! — and Brendan Harris — meh) but because he thought he was getting Nomar Fucking Garciaparra, the great shortstop.

What he really got, as I implied, was nomar garciaparra the fairly decent hitter and liability in the field.

My feelings on Hungry Jim have changed through the years. That’s probably because he’s the most Jeckyll and Hyde GM I’ve ever seen. Within his first two years on the job, he flushed Todd Hundley off the roster and swindled the Pirates and Marlins out of corner infielders who each can be reasonably argued as among the greatest ever in Cubs history at his position. Hendry exiled the drunken, bitter, impotent Son-of-the-Sainted-Randy to LA for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, who played key roles on the 2003 division champs. That summer, he shipped a minor league catcher, a grossly overhyped Triple A second baseman and an eminently forgettable major league infielder to Pitt for Aramis Ramirez, whom the Bucs had soured on for reasons known only to a team that has spent the last 17 years under .500. A few months later, he sent Hee Seop Choi to the Fish for Derrek Lee.

So for a brief shining moment, I hailed Hungry Jim as a cross between Branch Rickey and Isaac Newton.

But then…, but then, but then. Hungry Jim, the big boss man of the Cubs allowed Johnnie B. Baker to cripple Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. Hendry signed everybody and his brother on the team to big, fat, long-term, no-trade-clause contracts and now he’s stuck with them. He showered Alfonso Soriano with gold through 2014 (when he’ll be 38 years old, unable to run around the mound — much less the bases, and still incapable of laying off the outside curve.) He allowed Baker to miscast LaTroy Hawkins as a closer. When the time came to dump Sammy Sosa, Hendry did everything he could — up to and including releasing security video of Sammy ditching the last game of the season — to destroy whatever trade value he had left. After losing out on free agent Rafael Furcal, Hendry panicked and traded a trio of decent minor league arms for the indecent Juan Pierre. Then he upended the roster of a team that had just won 97 games to sign the Lee Harvey Oswald of Major League Baseball, Milton Bradley (I didn’t do what they say I did…, I’m a patsy!)

Every night before I go to bed, I pray to the god I don’t believe in to make Jim Hendry suddenly want to up and join the Peace Corps.

Yeah, you’re right. To say, as you did, that the Cubs have not shown savvy in acquiring players (even allowing for the aforementioned glaring exceptions) is to utter the understatement of the century. And, yeah, I’m jealous as hell of a guy for whom 95 wins isn’t enough.

That said, let’s get down to cases. Is it possible for the 2010 Cubs to win anything near 95 games? Phe-e-e-e-w!

I’ll go so far as to say I’d bet the new home deed that they won’t. They can, though, win 85 to 92 games — anything within that range might well be enough to cop the NL Central. And, as I’ve said many times before, once you get into the playoffs anything can happen.

They need, as even a teething baby knows, to get rid of Gameboard. When Bradley was suspended for the remainder of the season in September, players literally lined up to tell reporters how much they approved of his banishment. That’s unheard of. It’s also prima facie evidence they see his mental illness (trust me on this diagnosis) as an unneeded distraction.

If they can palm him off on a sucker, they need to find a second baseman, a shortstop and a centerfielder. Yuck. Conventional wisdom holds that the core of a good team is up the middle. And if Geo Soto doesn’t lay off the post-toke munchies, they’ll need a catcher, too. Yikes!

Did I say 85-92 wins?

Well, yeah, I did. They have a terrific starting staff, even if it is nominally led by the puerile, bullying, prickish knucklehead, Carlos Zambrano. Ted Lilly really is the ace of the staff (his signing is another example of Hendry as Dr Jeckyll.) Ryan Dempster is a decent number three and Randy Wells appears to be a nice end-of-the rotation guy. Sweet Lou will choose between Tom Gorzelanny, Sean Marshall and Milo Samardzija’s bastard son for the fifth starter spot — not a bad choice to be faced with.

The bullpen looks fine as long as Hendry can re-sign lefty John Grabow. Carlos Marmol now seems to be taking to the closer’s role better than the set-up man’s. Angel Guzman and a slew of live-armed kids (Berg, Caridad and Stevens) will fill out the pen.

The entire staff ought to keep the team ERA hovering around 4.00, which should be good enough as long as the Cubs can find a way to score runs. If Soriano and Soto bounce back nicely, D-Lee doesn’t suddenly grow old before our eyes and Aramis simply does what he’s been doing for seven straight years, that division title is no pipe dream.

My fingers are crossed that — in lieu of some shocking blockbuster deal — Ryan Theriot and Jeff Baker can man the keystone without embarrassing themselves. As for centerfield, well, um, Hey AJ, you got a mitt?

Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds For You, AJ

Poor AJ. His boys won 95 games in 2009. Apparently they were the wrong kind of wins. Or something.

I would have sawed off my right pinkie for 95 wins (not my left pinkie, though, since I’m trying to learn how to play the guitar.)

Are your fears for the Flaming Hose really warranted? Ortiz’s RBI were “quiet”? Bay “put up terrific numbers but… he’s a bit overrated”? Papelbon “gave up walks or hits and often had difficulty finishing batters off”? Ellsbury “can be pitched to by better pitchers”? Sheesh!

Whaddya want 105 wins?

I suppose the answer yes. Who wouldn’t want 105 wins? But no one — repeat, no one — can construct a team with the expectation that they’ll win 105. Not even the colossus that occupies new Yankee Stadium won 105 (of course, they did knock off 103 opponents but let’s not quibble.)

Have the Red Sox and their fans become — dare I say it — too demanding? It seems a short half decade ago, il Nazione del Calzini Rossi would have been thrilled to string up 95 fascisti. Now, 95 wins — bah! A bag of shells.

Were I the majordomo of the Sox, I wouldn’t worry too much about Papelbon’s walks or hits (his WHIP stood at a fine 1.15.) If Bay’s putting up terrific numbers, I’d say, Keep it up, Jason my boy. As for Ellsbury’s problems with better pitchers? Um, I’d guess the reason those guys are “better pitchers” is because they get most guys out, period.

I would fret a little about David Ortiz. He’s now 34 years old and weighs 230 pounds — at least that’s what the Red Sox web site claims. His bathroom scale might dissent. His best years are like a big ass — behind him. Then again, most AL teams would drool over the prospect of their DHs putting up mediocre Ortiz numbers. The Boston club really ain’t got much to worry about does it?

Sometimes fans and even GMs can overreact. Take last off-season. After the Cubs had led the National League with 97 wins, they went out and jumped in front of that speeding bus from LA. Fans boo-hooed as if the Cubs had gone sub-.500. Lou Piniella suggested that maybe the team needed a left handed bat to counteract teams loading up with righthanders against them — as the Dodgers did. Hungry Jim Hendry promptly turned over 40 percent of his roster, mainly in an effort to afford the $30M/3-year deal he bestowed upon Milton Bradley.

Pardon me while I have a seizure. Gurgle, gulp, ack-ack-ack. The memory of the Bradley signing is now a lesion in my brain that occasionally causes electrical disturbances among my remaining several hundred neurons. Ah — all better now.

Hendry dumped Mark DeRosa, Kerry Wood and Jason Marquis, all in an effort to squeeze Gameboard into the budget. The 2009 team could have used a nice fifth starter like Marquis (who, by the way, went to the all-star game.) They would have benefitted greatly from DeRosa’s 23 home runs, especially in Aramis Ramirez’s absence. Wood? Well, he stunk the joint up with the Tribe but he still was better than the execrable Kevin Gregg.

Be careful what you wish for, AJ. What’s Theo Epstein to do? Look for a centerfielder? Yeah, you could do better than young Jacoby. You could grab Carlos Beltran from the Mets and hope he thrives in Fenway. But at what cost?

Should Theo let Bay or Drew walk? Whaddya gonna do then? Play Joey Gathright and Rocco Baldelli?

In terms of planning, a good GM walks the tightrope. He (or she — Kim Ng, I hear, is in the running for the Padres job) can’t rely on an unchanging roster year after year. He also can’t swap his assets like so many baseball cards.

The Big Mike Philosophy of Building a Baseball Team, taught at the better universities around the country, holds that the GM should build his team with an aim to win 90 games. If your team is a consistent 90-game-winner, you’ll be battling for the division title every single year. And while the team may occasionally dip to 84-78, it’ll just as often rise to 96-66. That’s definite Champagne territory.

Now you may say 96 wins is fine for the Minnesota Twins or the Colorado Rockies but the Red Sox share a division with the Yankees. Okay. Let the Yanks spend $200M every year and win the East. It’s no dishonor to sneak into the playoffs via the Wild Card. In fact, the Red Sox of 2004 rode that ticket to their first World Series win in 10,000 years (that ancient triumph over the hated Jericho Palms!)

Just because New York assembled an all-star team and danced to the division title doesn’t mean Theo (and you) should panic. Theo (and you) should start planning for a future without Big Papi but the current lineup built around Pedroia, Bay, Youkilis and Martinez (assuming everybody’s re-signed) is scarier than a Glenn Beck commentary.

Boston is a lock to win at least 90 in 2010. Even if David Ortiz’s bat continues to soften and Josh Beckett’s back continues to throb, the Red Sox, along with the Yankees and Angels, will be the cream of the league. You worry too much.

Me? I’ve got Bradley in right field, Carlos Zambrano on the mound, and a century-plus of losing on my mind. I worry.

Big Mike: Who Needs Runs?

The cream of the Cubs farm system is a third baseman named Josh Vitters, the number three overall selection in the 2007 amateur draft. That June, he was acclaimed as the “most polished” high school hitter in the draft, whatever in the hell that means.

The Arizona Fall League commenced 2009 play Wednesday and Vitters went three for four with a double in the Phoenix Desert Dogs’ 4-2 victory over the Mesa Solar Sox. The North Side is abuzz, hoping the kid turns out to be the real thing. I — the voice of reason, natch — have to throw cold water on this line of thinking.

Vitters takes a walk about as often as Glenn Beck takes a moment to think about what he’s going to say. In 458 at bats this past season with the Single A Peoria Chiefs and the Double A Daytona Cubs, Vitters drew a grand total of 12 bases on balls. Twelve. Not even a baker’s goddamned dozen.

Your grandmother and your teething toddler know that minor league free-swingers are the worst bets to become capable big league hitters. If guys like Vitters can’t figure out a way to lay off those big, jug-handled curves that are 14 inches outside and those sliders in the dirt in places like Peoria, they’re going to get chewed up and spit out the second they hit the bigs.

The Cubs are notorious for bringing up kids who haven’t the faintest idea what the strike zone is all about. Going back to Shawon Dunston and through Corey Patterson and Felix Pie, Cubs phenoms have acted as though swinging at every pitch is a compulsory act. Dunston, for instance, in 1995 drew 10 walks in 503 plate appearances. And that was his 11th year in the majors!

The entire Cubs organization is notorious for having been slow on the uptake when it comes to the tenets of sabermetrics. The Bill James crowd has preached plate discipline and on-base percentage since the late 1970s. The Cubs occasionally acknowledge that it’s nice to take a walk. yet no one from the front office publicly extols the virtues of patience. Hitters who control the strike zone not only maximize the chance that they’ll see a fat pitch but they force the pitcher to throw, throw, throw — meaning the starter lasts a shorter time in the game and he’ll likely be more hittable by the middle innings. It all sounds so reasonable.

Yet the Cubs treat this philosophy as so much Zoroastrianism, arcane and quaint. The nadir of such thought came during the tenure of one Johnnie B. Baker as manager. Dusty never let an opportunity pass to tell the world how impatient he was with patient hitters. His assertion that walks clog the bases is now risibly legendary.

The 2008 Cubs led the National League in runs, something they hadn’t done in…, let’s see, hmm, oh yeah…, my goddamned lifetime! And I’m older than Gabby Hartnett, for chrissakes. The Cubs have led the league in runs precisely once in my 6000 years on this planet despite playing in a ballpark that for most of that time was the definitive hitters haven.

And how did the Cubs lead the league in runs in 2008? By walking a league-leading 636 times! Walks equal men on base. Having men on base means you have a greater chance of scoring runs. Simple, no?

This year, the Cubs went back to their impulsive ways. They stopped being selective at the plate and consequently dropped to 11th in the league in runs scored. Their limp-dick offense killed them this year, considering the pitchers posted a fine earned run average that ranked fourth in the league. And, by the way, the three teams that ranked ahead of them all benefitted from playing in pitchers’ parks.

Aaaarrrggghhh…, the Cubs make me so mad!

So the future rests in the hands of yet another kid who eschews patience and discipline at the plate. Hey, kids like Vitter think, I swung at everything in high school and hit them all a mile — may as well keep doing it! Only the big leagues ain’t high school.

Something the Cubs’ successive brain trusts have never figured out.

Big Mike: A Couple Of Suckers

Howdy. This blog is dedicated to the delusions of a couple of baseball fans: AJ, who follows the Red Sox, and me, Big Mike, who lives and dies — okay, just dies – with the Cubs.

I’ve always felt there was a kinship between Red Sox and Cubs fans — although residents of the Hub have enjoyed a couple of World Series wins within the last few years, the bastards.

Anyway, both sets of fans have always reveled (wallowed?) in the unrequited devotion they lavish upon their respective nines. Honestly, up until 2004, why on earth would anybody in his or her right mind choose to become a fan of either of the teams with the longest championship droughts in American professional sports? Being a fan of either the Cubs or Bosox is something bestowed upon one, not exactly akin to an inherited fortune or a hereditary trait like courage or brilliant intellect, but closer to the alcoholism gene.

Bostonians now are fat and happy with their ’04 and ’07 triumphs. Yet, they still retain vestigial memories of the too many years they spent gritting their teeth as the Yankees and the likes of the Blue Jays, the Angels and — for chrissakes — even the goddamned Marlins won championships, so AJ and my baseball hearts still beat, more or less, as one.

I’d predicted a Cubs-Yankees World Series before the start of the season and I just might be half right. The Cubs forgot to ask me my opinion, though, and so they sleep-walked through much of the campaign. The hitting went to holy hell and Jim Hendry’s big off-season gamble — signing the troubled Milton Bradley — turned out not to be such a huge gamble after all. He blew up, as any good bettor would have guessed. Gameboard turned out to be such an annoying, disruptive and destructive pain in the ass that the Cubs literally paid him to stay away from the team for the last three weeks of the season.

Much of the North Side wants to wring Bradley’s neck for his antics this year but not me. Milton Bradley is a troubled human being. He’s a mental case — and that’s my professional opinion. He deserves pity not rage. I reserve my ire for Hendry, who elected to believe that Bradley had turned over a new leaf. That hope was about as ridiculous as predicting the Cubs would go to the World Series.

There you have my first pompous oration on the state of the Chicago National League Ballclub. Stay tuned, there’ll be many, many more. AJ and I will alternate posts — that is, unless one of us turns out to be a smidgen more ambitious than the other — on our respective towns’ baseball crews.

As we begin this new, semi-cross continental exchange of missives, AJ’s thinking about how his beloveds are going to win next year; I’m gonna try to figure out how my boys can win sometime within the next century. We’re going to lay our harebrained opinions out here for each other and any idlers and lunatics who come across this site.

Welcome aboard.