Bernstein: Good Riddance To A Big, Stupid Baby
By Dan Bernstein-
CBSChicago.com Senior Columnist
(CBS) Go away, Carlos, and take the whole act with you.
Pack up all your stomping, snorting, outsized machismo and sell it somewhere else. Take your on-field buffoonery, too -- the eye-rolls at teammates, the dugout confrontations, the umpire-baiting, the bat-breaking, the ridiculous self-celebrations, and the staredowns with managers when they dare to take you out of a game.
And don't forget all the phony-baloney apologies. They'll keep for a while, since they're canned.
The pandering, whispered contrition only fools dummies. It serves to convince the same kind of saps who believed that anger management therapy would do anything to make you less of an enabled, spoiled child.
Oh, and one more thing: take that absurd sky-point. You know which one I mean – the one at the end of each inning as you reach the dugout, pretending to glorify some god as you really call attention to yourself. It's shallow and dumb.
For that matter, hit the road with all of the fake piety and humility. Remember what you said right after you signed that $91.5 million contract? "I'd like to thank god. Without him, I'm nothing, I'm screwed."
(Actually, you said you were "a screw," or "escrewed," if memory serves.)
Well guess what, bonehead – you're screwed. And a screw, and escrewed.
God called, and he wants you to stop pointing at him. He also said he thinks you're an unsalvageable idiot.
We put up with all your garbage when you were throwing hard and getting people out. It was fun when you mattered, when the Cubs were competitive.
Now, your arm isn't what it was, your only significance is bad money and bad behavior, and the team is a total mess: spineless, rudderless ownership, management well behind the times, a current roster featuring just one material player, and no real prospects in the minor-league pipeline.
In other words, you're yesterday's news, and today's news sucks. So there's no reason, now, for your sugar-daddy Jim Hendry to cut you any slack.
The Cubs will trump up this latest transgression, hiding behind well-worn clichés about the teammates' code of honor. Poor Mike Quade set the tone after the game, grumbling the "he walked out on 24 guys" trope as he rocked back and forth compulsively in his office chair, now reduced to a sad mental patient in a red-white-and-blue clown suit, waiting for the floor nurse to deliver his Thorazine.
And players, themselves, are now more than happy to tell everyone what an ass you are.
"It's not like it's something new," Ryan Dempster said. "It's been one thing after another."
Here's Alfonso Soriano: "He's been doing a lot of things. Not one, not two. He's a big man, but I think mentally he's weak."
Ouch.
But Soriano was too kind, even, in calling you a man. At least he made the important point that this was just another episode in your long-running saga of selfishness and immaturity. Consider it your finale as a Cub.
Another team will bring the circus to town, I have no doubt, after the Cubs sort out your suspension and departure, eating most of the remaining dollars. Hopeful fans may even warm to your antics, again excusing and misreading them as "competitive fire" or "hot-bloodedness."
Good luck with that. Buena suerte. Vaya con dios.
I'll point at the sky, myself, as soon as you get on a plane.
Dan Bernstein has been the co-host of "Boers and Bernstein" since 1999. He joined the station as a reporter/anchor in 1995. The Boers and Bernstein Show airs every weekday from 1PM to 6PM on The Score, 670AM. Read more of Bernstein's blogs here. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein.
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