Fights Played Down and Played Up

It turns out that the Cubs' ingenious new slogan, "It's gonna happen!", recently featured in Sports Illustrated, was not developed by the geniuses in the Cubune Company Marketing Dept, who fathered such past triumphs as "lovable losers" and "everybody loves the Cubs" designed to fill a stadium despite a losing baseball team. No, this new slogan, inflected with the revolutionary notion of winning, comes from notorious Cub fan John Murray, famous for attacking Cubs reliever Randy Myers on the mound in 1995. Murray's slap on the hand consisted of a one-year ban from The Shrine (all Chicagoans should be so lucky), and now he's back at the forefront of Cub fan sentiment, printing "It's gonna happen!" on T-shirts, signs, and wristbands.

The Cubune Empire has been trying really hard to pretend Murray does not exist, especially when covering fan-on-field incidents on the South Side. But now this. According to the Tribune's Paul Sullivan, "The Cubs are aware of Murray's history and have asked Comcast SportsNet and WGN-Ch. 9 not to show Murray's signs during telecasts, according to team sources."

I mean, how can we maintain the carefully cultivated impression that these things only happen on the South Side if this guy keeps showing up on the North Side? Jeez.

Meanwhile, there's strife in the Milwaukee Brewers clubhouse, and who wouldn't be frustrated and embarrassed by letting the Cubs catch up to you? That's almost as bad as being swept by the Cubs at home. Anyway, the AP reported on a "tangle" in the dugout tunnel between a Brewers player and a coach.

The Cubs-owning Tribune ran the AP story, but in its headline, upgraded the "tangle" to a "brawl." AP used the terms "tangle, scuffling, nearly tangled, heated dispute, talk" to describe the incident, but Tribune wants you to think there was a riot up there. Never let the truth get in the way of the trophy.