There are people out there, who — unlike me — didn’t fire the Cubs as a fan back in July after they completed their three-year sandbagging of the roster that brought them their first World Series win in 108 years. That should have been enough to see Wrigley be more desolate than the Atacama, but that’s not really how things work. And that’s not all. The Cubs were one of the lowest vaccinated teams in MLB, and weren’t afraid to show their ass about it when Anthony Rizzo was around and Jason Heyward was healthy.
Somehow, either through diligent following of MLB’s COVID protocols for teams under the threshold, or more likely just concealing their activities well, the Cubs didn’t suffer any outbreak like the Red Sox or Yankees did (then again, maybe MLB just told them to fudge the numbers?). That didn’t stop them from being unwatchable since the trade deadline, as they sent Tweedle Dumb, Tweedle Dumbest, and Tweedle The Fuck Is This out to the mound on whatever day Kyle Hendricks wasn’t blowing a seven-run lead.
But the Cubs’ season couldn’t just go out quietly behind the curtain while other teams competed for the prizes they simply declined to chase. They couldn’t “Irish goodbye” it, with the emphasis on “Irish.”
It’s probably bad enough to have Conor McGregor throw out a first pitch, given that he’s an alleged bigot and accused rapist, and just a generally overrated asshole whose only victories in the past five years are over tackling dummies. This is the same organization that wanted some dope from BarfStool to sing the 7th-inning stretch before it actually got wind of the backlash and moved on from that idea. McGregor isn’t much better.
But then, in the coup de stupid, McGregor was photographed in the Cubs’ clubhouse with players, none of whom are wearing masks. Because the Cubs never came close to the vaccination threshold, they aren’t allowed to have unauthorized people in the clubhouse. It’s a clear violation. For this last week, Patrick Wisdom and Austin Romine have been ruled out for the rest of the season due to COVID, and they’ve had to stock the taxi squad with a collection of people who were wandering around the bus station in expectation of more being ruled out.
Manager David Ross was quick to accept blame, and much like a few other Chicago coaches, it seems the only thing he’s good at is accepting responsibility whenever something goes balls-up that he was supposed to be in charge of.
It’s really the perfect ending to just the dumbest season for a balloon-handed organization followed by gaslit giblets trying to talk themselves into 30-year-old rookies as long-term answers for a team that would rather be the baseball version of “The Producers” for the next decade and just cash in on their real estate investments around the park. It’s what everyone deserves on the Northside, maybe sprinkled with the White Sox winning the World Series in a month’s time.