Monday, June 22, 2009

Cubs fans love "gritty" players, too

The Cubs fans are showing some Brosius-like love towards the departed Mark DeRosa. Rick Morrissey's tongue-in-cheek account is a fun read:

On days of exceptional mourning and sadness over DeRosa's absence, the Cubs could simply draw a chalk outline of him near third base. DeRo, as we all know, should be there filling in for the injured Aramis Ramirez.

But let's try to be celebratory: What a career DeRosa had with the Cubs!

Sure, if you want to get all technical about it, he was with the team for only two seasons. But what a sublime two seasons! He averaged about 16 home runs and 80 runs batted in while hitting .289. He played six positions in each season and had a total of 22 "unfortunate events" -- a designation many of us prefer over the word "errors" when it comes to DeRosa.

And, as we all know, the Cubs won the World Series both years.
As Morrissey rightly notes, if Soto, Soriano and Lee had performed to expectation and had Milton Bradley been anything but a huge, whopping, oxygen-sucking bust, it would be the issue it's become.

1 comment:

Alex K said...

My biggest problem with the DeRosa trade is that they signed Aaron Miles to replace him. Miles isn't near the player that DeRo is.

Sure it would be nice to have DeRosa to fill in for Aramis, but you hit the nail on the head when you pointed the finger at Soto, Soriano, Lee, and Bradley.