Back from Florida

Among other places...

Sadly, my Hawkeyes got smacked in the Orange Bowl, so my trip wasn't perfect. But, tailgating with 45,000 other Iowa fans outside the Orange Bowl before the game was still tons of fun. After teasing me with 50 degree weather yesterday, Chicago is back to the usual 30 degrees, with word that this weekend will get very, very cold. Ah yes, vacation's over, back to the grind, etc etc.

Slow days for the Cubs

Slow, unless you consider a minor league deal for Lenny Harris to be your idea of excitement. Yes, signing a 38 year old pinch hitting specialist is the definition of excitement. Sadly, these are really the slow days of the offseason - the Winter Meetings are behind us, the Rule V draft is over, the Arizona Fall League is over, and so are most of the Central America Winter Leagues. Spring Training isn't too far off (check the Cub Reporter for a countdown until Spring Training) and with that comes more articles about the Cubs and probably more tinkering with the roster as people get shuttled back and forth between major and minor league camps.

Still, signing Harris might be a good move. Hendry has gone overboard to improve the bench this year, and while it's unlikely that Harris will have a significant impact on wins and losses over the course of a year, he'll probably have a couple of key hits in the 9th inning this year - something that will look good to the press (I can see the headlines now - "Specialist comes through in 9th") and the fans. Then again, he might get cut before the season starts and end up a retired "pinch hitting specialist."

Dave Veres

Dave Veres signed a one year, 2 million dollar contract the other day and spent most of the subsequent interview talking about how he'll be happy being a setup man for the closer otherwise known as Antonio Alfonseca. The press is saying he's a great addition because he has closing experience, but I think he's a great addition because he's pretty cheap, he's pretty durable, he's tough on lefties (thank to a nice splitter), and he's been a consistently good pitcher the past 3-4 seasons. The depth of the pen is now quite good with Alf, Remlinger, Veres, Farnsworth, Borowski, and probably Cruz.

If you're bored

or even if you're not - head over to The Cub Reporter to read Christian's compelling case for putting Ryne Sandberg in the Hall of Fame. I'll probably weigh in on this subject sometime soon, but he pretty convincingly shows why Sandberg got the shaft by only getting 49% of the vote in the HOF vote this week. Yeah yeah, I know he'll still probably get in in a few years, but he's still deserving and Christian does a good job showing why.

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