Bally Sports National MLB writer David Brown is back on the show and the guys talk about the Cubs recent resurgence and why Yan Gomes is ever allowed to designated hit. Seiya's back and Andy has big plans for him but he's going to need his pal Rob Manfred to use his powers to make it happen. Pete Crow-Armstrong is in the Futures Game which everybody thinks is great, and so is Darren Baker which pretty much only Dusty thinks is great. Andy comes up with a much better idea for All-Star Week than t...
Jul 08, 2022•1 hr 9 min
It was a season so bad that the manager made up an excuse to go to Florida to take care of his mother to get out of it early. The last vestiges of the 2008 Cubs were either leaving after or during the season. Opening Day was a bad omen for the rest of the season and a Barves rookie had a big day and has been stealing money from the Cubs ever since. Starlin Castro had a huge first game and a really good first season. One of the catchers nearly killed one of the outfielders by plunging a bat shard...
Jul 07, 2022•1 hr 49 min
You asked and we answered. The baseball podcast this week is Cubs intensive, as Andy and Mike Praznowski take this awful team out to the woodshed. You'll hear scintillating answers to questions like: Why is Jason Heyward still on the team? Do they not realize they have nobody to replace Willson Contreras when they trade him? Would Willson even want to stay if they miraculously offered him a new deal? Are any of their starting pitchers going to be back in time to trade? How many fingers does Seiy...
Jun 23, 2022•1 hr 11 min
Sandwiched in between the 88 win near-miss 2001 Cubs and the 88 win heartbreaking 2003 Cubs were the gawdawful 2002 Cubs. They got a manager fired, which got Ron Santo's number unofficially unretired before it could be retired. Moises Alou showed up and immediately got hurt. Fred McGriff was still around putting up completely hollow stats. They traded a Rookie of the Year for two pitchers, one of whom had 24 digits, and two prized rookies made their big league debuts. You'll learn the truth abou...
Jun 22, 2022•1 hr 56 min
The Movie Deep Dive Podcast with actor/comedian Mike Pusateri returns with the long promised, much anticipated Young Frankenstein episode. It's one of the funniest movies ever made and toes the line between smart and stupid better than almost any other film ever has. Gene Wilder said it was his favorite movie and Mel Brooks said it's his best. So kick back, and enjoy this loving look back the movie, it's casting decisions, how it almost wasn't in black in white (in Peru, anyway) and how Gene Hac...
Jun 10, 2022•2 hr 8 min
The other 15 percent take center stage as the wheel of crap lands on 1983. Lee Elia stood up for his team said a lot of really profane but accurate things and ended up getting fired a few months later, Leon Durham was the only All-Star on the club, Chuck Rainey almost threw a no-hitter, Fergie forgot how to throw the ball to first base, the Cubs played a five game series in Pissburgh and lost them all, and their interim manager had first managed in 1947. The guys play six degrees of Craig Leffer...
Jun 03, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Bally Sports' David Brown is back from field trips to St. Louis and Washington and he has important food-related things to report. The guys talk about a fantasy football league that doesn't seem like that fun to be in and and they take a look at every team and with well more than 100 games left to go just how many still have realistic playoff chances. Not so fast, White Sox. How has the extra playoff spot affected how teams will treat the trade deadline? Why do players on bad teams still do reha...
Jun 02, 2022•1 hr 14 min
The Athletic's Jon Greenberg swings by to talk about Marquee's fiasco with The Reporters and the guys talk about all of the other things Marquee needs to do to fix things, including giving Cole Wright hazard pay for doing an hour pre and postgame for all of these awful Cubs games. How's Jed Hoyer's don't-call-it-a-rebuild going? When is Jason Benetti going to go national full-time and then what happens to our old pal Len Kasper? What is Marquee Plus and why is it a thing? Where has Ryan Dempster...
May 25, 2022•54 min
The Cubs are ready to unveil the Fergie Jenkins statue, and the guys get so distracted by the fact the new "statue row" has two empty podiums that they spend the hour trying to figure out which players the Cubs are going to immortalize next. They're pretty sure the next one is guaranteed to be Ryne Sandberg, but then who gets the other spot? Many players are considered from several eras and a lot of time is spent on a guy the Garbage Family That Owns The Cubs™ has spent a lot of time ostracizing...
May 20, 2022•1 hr 17 min
The baseball podcast with David Brown is back and this week the guys discuss important baseball topics like why does Rick Sutcliffe think the Cubs are good enough to add players? Should the Cubs trade Willson Contreras? Why is it so much better when the Cubs bring up guys like Brandon Hughes and Christopher Morel instead of 30 year old non-prospects? Why do teams wait so long to sell? If the Nationals are really going to trade Juan Soto first, why would they do that? And second, why would they d...
May 19, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Some platforms had technical difficulties with the original post of this podcast. So here it is again. Not everyone had problems with the original, so that one also remains posted. The Cubs went back to the playoffs for a second straight year, and won just as many postseason games as they did the year before. But this was a 97 win team with a Japanese star in right field, a Cardinals retread in center, and a rookie of the year catcher. It was the 2008 Cubs and until their Canadian prop comic gam...
May 13, 2022•2 hr 2 min
The Cubs went back to the playoffs for a second straight year, and won just as many postseason games as they did the year before. But this was a 97 win team with a Japanese star in right field, a Cardinals retread in center, and a rookie of the year catcher. It was the 2008 Cubs and until their Canadian prop comic game one playoff starter walked seven Dodgers, things were going pretty good. The guys take a look back at a season where the Cubs had a lot of All-Stars, made a huge trade that includ...
May 13, 2022•2 hr 2 min
The red-hot Cubs won their second series of the season and fifth game in 20 attempts (yikes). Andy and Dave talk about Ildemaro Vargas' wild day in the field, Frank Schwindel's fortuitous flat tire, and some unfortunate (and a few convenient) injuries. They also talk about the crazy Angels-Rays game that featured lots of trophies, an outfielder pitching, a guy homering from the wrong side of the plate and oh yeah, a no-hitter. They discuss unwritten rules, why they exist, why they are so dumb an...
May 12, 2022•1 hr 1 min
The Bears drafted some players and so it's time for a spring edition of the Bears Podcast with Mike Pusateri. The guys take a look at the Bears picks, their strategy of not doing much to fix the offense, but how they did draft Velvet Jones. They also talk about the free agents the team has signed and discussed if the Bears really seem invested in Justin Fields. And then, it's time to talk TV. So they dig into Better Call Saul (and recommend a great podcast), Bob Odenkirk's book, Robert Evans' au...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 40 min
The season is nearing the tenth pole (that's not a thing) and so it's a good time to check in on the Cubs insistence on hitting everything on the ground, what's going on with the ball, what's the sticky stuff in the rosin bags these days, why are people still freaking out about Joe Maddon like he hasn't been doing this stuff forever, Javy's giant thumb, Aaron Boone intentionally walking a guy with 2,999 hits, April trades, guys getting struck by lightning and crushed by satellite dishes, great m...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 16 min
The 1981 Cubs season was so bad that fans were relieved when baseball took two months off right in the middle of the season. The Cubs record was so lousy that they ended up with the first pick in the 1982 draft, but they didn't have the worst record in the league and they only finished in last place in one of the two halves! They somehow had an interim manager for an entire season, the Wrigley family sold the team, the neighborhood was crap, the park was falling apart and one of our hosts went t...
Apr 21, 2022•1 hr 42 min
The 1984 Cubs were mostly still around in 1986 only they were older and mostly injured and pretty bad. The Cubs got off to a hot start, if 2-8 is hot, Lee Smith pitched a lot, like a lot a lot, nobody won 10 games, Jim Frey got fired. The Cubs fielded a dream twosome of Shawon Dunston and Brian Dayett. A dream I guess if you were Andy and you were 13. Things were just as bad on other side of town, so actually that was fun. Jerry Mumphrey was pretty good, so there's that. A few of the 1989 Cubs s...
Apr 14, 2022•2 hr 1 min
Baseball games have been played, the Cubs are the greatest team in the land, Seiya Suzuki can't be stopped and MLB is putting games on at weird times on weird channels, and blackouts are dumb. Andy and David take a look at the first week of games. They hand out the Jitterbug Call of the Week (and a Cubs' announcer gets nominated twice), they figure out why the center field camera at Kauffman Stadium is always wet, why nobody can figure out what to do with Katie Nolan, why Jim Belushi should neve...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 18 min
The Cubs were "Building A New Tradition" in 1982 with a new general manager in Dallas Green and a new manager in Lee Elia (no, it's not THAT Lee Elia season). If there were Prospect Perverts forty years ago they were excited about a trade that brought some kid named Ryne Sandberg over from the Phillies. Fergie Jenkins was back, the draft would yield the number one overall pick in Shawon Dunston and Eric Gregg would blunder his way into one of the longest games in franchise history. Some of the b...
Apr 08, 2022•1 hr 39 min
It's time for the 2022 Baseball Preview Podcast and Andy finally gets his co-host's name right. David Brown, National Baseball Writer for Bally Sports is back and after they get done making fun of the Marquee Sports Network Cubs Season Preview, they break down every division and all of the major awards. David makes a couple of very disturbing predictions along the way.
Apr 07, 2022•1 hr 44 min
It was the dawn of a new era for the Cubs with Andy MacPhail, Ed Lynch and Jim Riggleman wandering into town. They traded for Brian McRae, grabbed Howard Johnson off the scrapheap, and once they found out what a juggernaut they had they traded in-season for Todd Zeile, Luis Gonzalez and Scott Servais. Frank Castillo almost threw a no hitter, Randy Myers almost killed a guy, Shawon Dunston, Scott Bullett and Mark Parent came up big down the stretch (no, really), and when faced with elimination th...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 59 min
Against his better judgement Bally Sports National MLB writer Dave Brown returns for another week and the guys discuss the Cubs signing Seiya Suzuki, great commercials in Mariners history (it's a thing), the new DH rule and what Joe and Shohei can do with it, will pitchers ever learn to hit ever again, why the Cubs are still wasting time with Jason Heyward, how good is Bobby Witt Jr., players to be named later, what's left of the 2016 Cubs and where it all went wrong, and more.
Mar 24, 2022•1 hr 17 min
The wheel of crap lands on the earliest possible season and we break down the 1980 Cubs. Preston Gomez. Tim Blackwell. Lenny Randle. Dave Kingman. Dennis Lamp. Two Hall of Fame closers, two Cy Young Award winners in the bullpen, Bill Buckner won the batting title and the Cubs won 64 games. Ouch. You want stories about Steve Howe, Jay Johnstone pranking Bill Russell, the TV show Makin' It with Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler, Dave Kingman being a jerk in junior high, and the ten pitchers who have w...
Mar 17, 2022•1 hr 41 min
The lockout's over, and not only is baseball back, but the award-winning* baseball podcast is back with special guest Dave Brown, National MLB Writer for Bally Sports. The guys discuss where the promised flurry of signings and trades went, how Jed's dinner with Japanese star Seiya Suzuki was going, probably, what's the deal with Carlos Correa and Joe Maddon finding himself in a familiar predicament. They also discuss Joe's lack of communication with the best player of our generation and his atte...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 1 min
It's time to spin the wheel of Cubs crap again, but this time the pod starts with the guys talking about the end to the MLB lockout. Then the wheel lands on one of the most inauspicious years in Cubs' history the Mike Quade-led disaster that was the 2011 Cubs. The Cubs traded for Matt Garza, brought in Carlos Pena and brought back Kerry Wood and surprisingly none of that worked. It was the final season for Carlos Zambrano, E-ramis Ramirez and Kosuke Fukudome and we wished it had been the last ye...
Mar 11, 2022•2 hr 4 min
Not one but two interviews in this podcast, starting with Kevin Kaduk the head of content for the brand new CHGO Sports. Kevin talks about the new venture, how it came about, where it's going, how there's going to be a bar and he pretends to not be bothered by the fact I keep referring to it as Chuggo. Then Jon Greenberg of The Athletic comes by and we talk about Chuggo and the the lockout and how much he misses me writing for The Athletic (I thought the crying was a little bit much), and we dis...
Mar 09, 2022•1 hr 36 min
The Bears have had quite a few job searches since George Halas hired Mike Ditka over pudding and a wet nap in 1982, and the guys look at every candidate from all of them. Some of them you won't believe they bothered to talk to, others you'll be mad that they didn't offer the job and there are stories for all of them. From Ditka to Wanny to McGin--oops--Jauron to Lovie to Trestman to Foxy to Nagy with all of the better and yes, even worse candidates, we cover them all.
Feb 11, 2022•1 hr 38 min
The guys break down the first Ryan Poles-Matt Eberflus press conference by playing it back and making fun of it. They find the whys, they try to follow Matt's weird, overly complicated acronyms for everything, they relive the emotional moment when Ryan first laid eyes on Matt and fell in coaching love, and mostly they make fun of the media for their inane questions. The new regime is in place and they're full of promises, but are interestingly quick to avoid talking about any players not named J...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 45 min
The Second Arrangement's Kelly Dwyer returns to the podcast to talk about pertinent, timely things like how the Bulls can fill their power forward void, why it's weird that George McCaskey wears a Bears' letterman jacket, Easy Ed Macauley, Larry Bowa, Bill Russell trades, Fred Hoiberg's neckwear, Paul Mokeski, how many times Grayson Allen has been punched in real life, Phil Plantier, DeMar DeRozan, Stacey King nicknames, the Larry Nances, the Opti-Grab, and much, much more.
Jan 26, 2022•1 hr 50 min
George McCaskey drops by to join the guys on the podcast as they discuss the firings of Bears' GM Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy. George explains why hiring an 80 year old consultant who seems to be just trying to sell a book is the key to finally finding a good coach and GM. We learn that Ted Phillips isn't going to oversee football anymore because he'll be too busy in Arlington Heights pretending he's an architect, and that the GM will report to George and that George will get his football...
Jan 11, 2022•1 hr 26 min
