White Sox Jake Peavy; ‘I Don’t Like The Cubs’

Wow, that really gets me upset.  Peavy doesn’t like the Cubs?  I mean that seems pretty inconsistent with everything we heard last season.  What a jackass this guy is, right?  Well before you Cubs fans turn on him (and Sox fans choose to worship him for this nonsense), take a second look.  Here is Peavy’s ACTUAL quote from the article:

”I hate every team we play, that’s all there is to it,” Peavy said. ”From 2 o’clock until 10 or 11 o’clock at night, I don’t want to be friends with the other side. You’re not going to see me have relationships with anybody. Off the field, that’s fine. I’m a firm believer in taking care of that off the field or in the tunnel.

”No, I don’t like the Cubs. I don’t like the Minnesota Twins. Great guys, but I don’t like anybody we’re going to play. I’m a member of the White Sox, and I want to go to battle with the 25 guys we have in here. I don’t care about being friends with anybody else. … Inside the lines, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. I want to win all six games against the Cubs [this season], and it’s as easy as that.”

Gee, that headline was awfully misleading, don’t you think?  In fact you could probably get that quote from most baseball players about every other team but their own.  If my team’s players didn’t have that attitude I would be upset.  Must have been a slow news day.

Baseball in Chicago is back.  Get ready to be mislead and riled up for no reason all summer by “newsmen” looking for a story.

What a fox aye?

Harkening back to his days with the Appleton Foxes where the players had to get pretty damn creative to pass the monotonous summers, Williams decided he had enough and started to make his own fun. The first sign that Williams had a serious case of cabin fever was when he started trading the farm system to acquire a National League pitcher with an ankle injury serious enough to sideline him for more than two months that the Sox will have the joy of paying $48 million over the next three years with a $22 million club option for 2013 with a $4 million buyout.

Now usually this kind of trade and a quick trip to Beansnappers would have satiated the Appleton Kenny Williams for the rest of the summer. But then Mother Nature struck.

With heat advisories encouraging residents to stay inside if they did not have to go out this past weekend, Williams’ cabin fever flared up again. With his trusty bluetooth headset firmly implanted in his ear, Williams made a few prank calls.

First up, the Pirates. Williams called Neal Huntington and offered to trade him Gordon Beckham, John Danks, and Gavin Floyd in exchange for any combination of Nate McLouth, Adam LaRoche, John Grabow, Tom Gorzelanny, Freddy Sanchez, Jack Wilson, and Ian Snell. Unfortunately, Huntington didn’t understand the joke and told Williams to “hang on” as he furiously worked the phones to try and reacquire some of these players in order to trade them again.

Thinking that was too easy, Williams moved on to his next target. Lowering his voice even more than usual, Williams worked his magic. After fifteen minutes he had a tentative trade arranged with Chris Wallace of the Memphis Grizzlies involving Rudy Gay and OJ Mayo for DJ Carrasco, Mark Kotsay and PF Jim Thome.

After hanging up and giggling to himself, Williams quickly grew tired of this game. He went online to check on his Facebook page and found himself staring at Alex Rios, outfielder for the Blue Jays, sitting on the waiver wire. After collecting all of his babysitting money, Williams threw caution to the wind and agreed to spend it all and more for the next five years (forget that trip to Paris with his French class next summer) to snatch up Rios, he of the 0-5 with 5 strikeout evenings.

On second thought, maybe Kenny isn’t bored but is suffering from heat exhaustion instead. They always say that humidity is a silent killer. This is the GM that said earlier in the year that the White Sox couldn’t afford a guy like Jake Peavy with only 20,000 fans trickling into premium priced games against the Dodgers. What possible explanation other than mental illness could explain Williams picking up the tab on Peavy’s $48-70 million contract and Rios’ $64 million contract that runs through 2014?

Is Kenny taking a page from the President's book?

Some may wonder if President Obama has become too close with Williams and the rest of the team.  It certainly seems that Kenny has adopted some of the President’s economic policies, electing to spend in the face of grisly future predictions for the state of the Sox economy. Kenny just agreed to take the Blue Jays’ clunker off their hands and will be paying a ton of cash over the next five years for it. Hopefully Rios’ emissions will be healthy for the Sox future, but it will be a sad day when 2005 World Series MVP Jermaine Dye or fan favorite Jim Thome is sent to the scrapyard at the end of this year or the next.

Cubs Injury Issues: Now Zambrano gets scratched with back problems.  It’s been a season-long injury issue with this team, with Fukudome and Theriot being the only real iron-men on the team.  How are the Cubs supposed to live up to the potential of their ridiculous payroll when none of the big money spent is even taking the field on a regular basis?  Can we blame the trainers? Or Hendry for signing a team full of players made from glass?

Richard Dent Gets Screwed: It’s a real shame that this kind of thing happens.  Richard Dent is one of the greatest defensive ends in the history of the game.  He dominated the position on what was the best defense of all time.  Be it journalists, or veteran’s committees, or whatever, the selection processes for professional halls of fame needs to be amended to actually let in hall of famers.  Dent had 137.5 sacks and was the Super Bowl XX MVP.  He created more turnovers and havoc in the backfield than any end in NFL history.  Why he didn’t get in the Hall is beyond me.

Broncos Fans Boo Orton: Broncos fans really suck.  I mean they are just terrible.  Apparently Orton got booed for having a bad practice.  Not a bad game or series of practices; one bad practice.  Gee I wonder why Cutler wanted out of Denver.

Kevin Gregg is Still Having a Better Season Than Kerry Wood: Even though he blew 2 saves last weekend, his numbers are still far better than Woody’s this year.  Gregg and the entire bullpen has just been overworked and needs some time to rest their arms.  Unfortunately that may or may not happen.

Obama Almost Wore a Cardinals Jersey: I really want to like this guy.  I do.  He says all the right things to make me believe he can turn this country around and he has pretty good handles on the hardwood.  Then he stalls on health care, makes some terrible appointments, continues many of the old failed policies of the last administration, wears a White Sox jacket, and now this.  Apparently he almost wore a Cardinal’s jersey at the All-Star game.  That would have literally lost my vote right there (not to mention make me vomit in my mouth a little bit).  Thank god he didn’t do it.

Hoffpauir Sent Down, Soto Called Up: It’s a numbers game, I get that, but why do the Cubs have to send down Hoffpauir?  Although his average has slipped a bit since he gets less consistent playing time, he still has the power numbers to be an effective left-handed option off the bench.  I mean do we need Scott Baker, Mike Fontenot, Andres Blanco, and Aaron Miles on the squad?  How about send Aaron Miles down, that guy sucks and everyone knows it.

Bulls Save Some Money on Tim Thomas: The Bulls bought out Tim Thomas’s contract which was worth 6.4 million but they only paid 4.8 million.  Every little bit of cap space helps.  I’m still wondering who will shoot the 3 on this team though.

Ben Wallace Returns To Detroit: Just kidding, even I don’t give a shit about this.

I Just Don’t Like Matt Holliday, Why Do I Need a Reason?: Either Mozeliak, LaRussa, or Holliday himself sold his soul so that Holliday, who had been hitting just .276 with 8 home runs before the break, all of a sudden is hitting .525 with 4 home runs since being acquired by the Cards.  I hate that whole team, and Holliday is no exception.  I’m sure he’ll do some classless Cardinal-like thing soon enough (that organization is character poison) to give me a good reason to hate him, but in the meantime I just don’t like him and I have no good reason.

Fine, Gordon Beckham is Good, But At Least I Was Right About Carlos Quentin Being a Fluke: The title says it all.  I was skeptical about both Beckham and Quentin this winter after every Sox fan I talked to told me Quentin was the second coming and Beckham will be great.  Quentin is not the second coming.  Don’t you find it odd he didn’t come up to the majors until he was 27?  And don’t even start with the “he’s been injured” crap.  If anything that just means he is injury-prone, proving me correct that last year was a fluke.  Props to Beckham though, that kid is filthy.

Marlins Little “Goat” Stunt Not Appreciated By Sweet Lou: Who cares Lou?  If the goat and the curse are all bullshit, then it doesn’t matter.  I’m sure you get sick of that stuff, but getting mad about it only brings more attention to the idiots who mock the Cubs.  I never thought I would say this, but Lou needs to just shut up about this stuff.  No one would have even batted an eye if he didn’t get all worked up about it.

The Return of Fire Joe Morgan: My favorite sports blog of all time will be returning (sort of) for one day.  On September 16, the old crew from FJM consisting of Dak, Ken Tremendous, and Junior will be running Deadspin for a day.  Hopefully it inspires them to start writing FJM again, but either way it should be fun.

Some White Sox Fans Might Be Actually Retarded: Not to be too rude, but how can you not laugh a little at how dumb some Sox fans are when you see this picture.  Did you really think Rowand was spelled “R-O-W-A-D-N”?

The “Derrick Rose Had A Rough Summer” Story is Bullshit: He didn’t have a tough summer, okay?  The two stories this is referring to are the gang sign thing and the SAT cheating thing.  Both are bullshit.  No one cares that he might have made a gang sign to a camera one time in college.  And he didn’t cheat, he was proven innocent pretty convincingly.  Here’s the real story of D-Rose’s summer: He tried out with Team USA, worked on his jumpers, and probably bought a lot of cool stuff with all his new money.  I don’t want to hear about the “cheating” or the gang signs anymore, okay mainstream media?

Tom Gorzelanny Can Pitch, and He Looks Like Sloth from the Goonies: So he probably isn’t as good as he was in his start for the Cubs, but to be honest all we need is 3-4 halfway decent starts from him until Lilly comes back.  If he pitches really well for the next couple weeks and its a tough decision whether to send him down or keep him in the rotation, that is the kind of tough decision a team wants to have.  Oh yeah, and he looks like Sloth from the Goonies.

Let’s Get Real, The Peavy Trade Probably Won’t Mean Much This Season: I know this will sound like sour grapes, but seriously, if he comes back healthy he can make 3 starts in September.  If the Sox make the playoffs, which seems less and less likely, then he can definitely be a factor.  Otherwise, this signing was for the future.  The Sox rotation will be formidable with Buerhle and Peavy at the top and Danks and Floyd at the 3 and 4 for the next few years.

Sometime Wednesday night, Jake hears about the deal from his agent and gets off the phone with Scott Linebrink.

Who the hell is Scott Linebrink?  I know my agent said I played with that guy, but wow he must suck.  He had good things to say about Chicago though.  Great city, great people.  But why the hell would I leave sunny San Diego?  Right, my team is awful and this is my chance to get out!  Besides, the South Side can’t be that bad as long as I get a ride to the park in a tank…or Buehrle’s truck. Better sleep on it.

Peavy falls asleep, dreams about life as a White Sox pitcher.

Not a bad game today, sure we lost 4-3, but Thornton gave up those runs after I was yanked in the seventh.  Plus, you’d think we could muster more offense than three solo homers.  Oh my God, is that Ozzie?  He’s got blood all over his face and he’s swinging a chain over his head!  Why is he yelling at me in Spanish?!! The only words I understand are pitch count, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland and 2005.  Oh shit he’s going to kill me.

Peavy wakes up.

Wow, that Ozzie Guillen is one scary sumbitch.  Whatever, I’ll check out the game today and see if I can make a decision.  I really want to get out of San Diego.

1st Inning

Alright, here we go let’s see what they’ve got.  Oh, Bartolo Colon is starting.  He’s not too bad but man, he hasn’t skipped a meal since, well ever.  1-0 after one isn’t too bad.  These are usually low scoring affairs when the Twins and Sox play and I’m used to that.

2nd Inning

Oh wow, seven runs in the second?  All unearned?  I guess I can add poor defense to the Cons side of the ledger, right under “that one time fans attacked a first base coach.”

4th Inning

I fell asleep there for a while, it’s kind of early out here.  Hmm, 10-0.  Was that another error by Betemit?  Who’s that guy they used to have at third base?  Oh yeah, there he is.  Man this isn’t looking too good, come to think of it the weather out here is so nice, and I really like the golf courses.

6th Inning

Look at all those singles and walks!  There’s Mauer with a grand slam.  I’m going to need more paper for the Cons side of this thing, seems like a lot of home runs flying out of this park.

8th Inning

20 to nothing?!!  Forget pitching for these guys, I can’t wait to hit against them.  Too bad they got rid of Nick Swisher, he could have stopped the bleeding a few innings ago.  Come to think of it, Nick left sunny California a couple years ago for Chicago.  Wonder how that worked out for him.

Gets a call from his agent Thursday afternoon.

Well, better give it to him straight.  “Tell them sorry, I’m scared of the AL.”

Now it seems that Peavy could be heading to the White Sox as the Sox and Padres have reportedly agreed to a deal that would send four players to San Diego for the ace.  Apparently the only step left is approval by Peavy, who called former teammate Scott Linebrink to do some scouting on Chicago.

A presence like Jake Peavy could drastically change things for the White Sox, who before winning their last two had been in a serious funk, dropping 5.5 games behind Detroit for the lead in the Central Division.

It’s been reported that the deal includes Clayton Richard and Aaron Poreda.  They are both young lefties, with Poreda being a former #1 pick.  According to ESPN’s Peter Gammons, first round pick Gordon Beckham is not part of the trade.

This would be huge news for the Sox and we’ll try to keep you updated throughout the day.

**Update: Apparently Peavy has expressed that he wishes to remain in the NL, but there is still a possibility he okays the deal.

***Update: No deal