Hey there, donut holes. Did you see how we water-boarded Miami today? I wouldn’t exactly call it a human rights violation, but lettin’ the Fish think they were gonna win before waitin’ until the 9th to methodically slice away at the score has gotta fall somewhere between Chinese water torture and bein’ buried up to your neck in a red fire ant hill. Not that I feel the least bit sorry for the Marlins. They’ve been an alleged baseball team for like 5 minutes, and they already got 2 trophies on the mantle. Pisses me the hell off, I’ll tell ya. Anyway, flushin’ the Minnows down the crapper has a certain satisfaction cuz of that. And a sweep practically makes me have to sit down and cross my legs.

Of course, there’s nothin’ technically special about the Marlins. In fact, after the Mount Everest sized pile of deuce I’ve had to take from fans of all stripes over the years, I wouldn’t feel even an electron-microscopic fraction of remorse if we treated every team in baseball like Jack Bauer with a 2-week old throbinator tooth ache.

See, I been followin’ the Cubs since I first laid eyes on my mother’s OBGYN, and in all that time there have been a total of about 4-1/2 minutes when the Cubs weren’t gettin’ the short end of the cattle prod. Did they bring that on themselves? Mostly, yeah. Does that make it tastier going down? HELL no. So now … when the Cubs treat a team like a baby treats a diaper, I feel like it’s just makin’ up for the kinda cruel and unusual punishment we’ve had to endure over the last century-plus. And hey, I’ve only been around for half of that. It’s way worse for people like my dad, and even more so for my granddad — God rest his ivy-covered soul — who ain’t around anymore to see how the Cubs have turned into the ’27 Yankees. Point is, bein’ a Cubs fan hasn’t been a cake walk. A urinal-cake walk maybe.

Aaaaaanyway … today’s win was a resurrection worthy of the Bible, with A. J. Ramos providin’ the miracle. (By the way, you wanna know a bit about torture, try readin’ the good book for a while. Makes Abu Ghraib seem like Sesame Street.) So like I was sayin’, in almost Jesus-like fashion, Ramos changed a bottom-of-the-9th 2 run lead into a 1 run loss. It was almost like there was some sorta force field around the plate keepin’ his pitches from comin’ anywhere near it; most especially that last one, which headed in the general direction of Montana, scoring Szczur and proving that there is, in fact, a God (and this year he’s rootin’ for the Cubs).

A helluva nice ending to the 7-1 home stand, and it closes the book on the Fish for the season. I’d like to offer an official Cheap Seats thank you to the Marlins for doin’ their part to get the Cubs to the playoffs. The Schlombowski’s and Colonel Nathan Jessup thank you.

Joe