Down & Out in Wrigleyville...

--Anyone who thought the Chicago Cubs couldn't go any lower after losing another series (this time to its crosstown rival the Chicago White Stockings) and going 14 games under .500, think again after reading this gem. "I want to get into your hole" is a solid line, though....

Let's digress a bit, as the Cubs' prize free-agent signing Carlos Pena hits a few home runs but is batting .220 and strikes out far too often. Nice signing, considering the last three seasons he'd hit .196, .227 and .247. Sure, he hits a few HRs but struck out more than 150 times in each of those three years. Not a good combo with whiffer extraordinaire Alfonso Soriano also in the lineup.

--Keep your home state kids at home, forge pipelines to Texas and California by hiring assistant coaches from those states, and play fundamental baseball. Novel concept. Good enough for Dave Van Horn to craft three College World Series teams and good enough for Darin Erstad. Not good enough, however, for John Sanders and Mike Anderson.

--PYB can't wait for this kid to become an overachieving, Second-Team All-American while the Cotton boys sit in big daddy's pocket for five years wasting scholarships in Lincoln. The Diggler said it best when he mentioned that Barney Cotton makes more than 200k a year from UNL, receives tuition discounts as a staff member, but still has the gall to waste an important coaching spot and three scholarships on NU's roster? Shoot us now.

--We better cover this now, as we keep forgetting so: Why have the last two U.S. Open golf championships been a complete bore? We say it's the boring courses...or more accurately....the easy (relatively) courses. Gone is the thick, 6" rough. Gone are the images of players chipping sideways just to get back into the fairway. Just a few years ago, a player that missed a fairway banked on making bogey, and likely a double bogey. Or, as our favorite dickhead announcer Johnny Miller would say, double bogey/option bogey. Where are the ultra-slick greens? The immense pressure? No fight against the elements......another birdie-fest.....ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......