The Cubs Are The Reason I Drink... In The Summer

This winter has been horrifying. I usually like winter (I never got on well with hot weather), but goddamn if the last few months haven't been unapologetically awful. Not only has it sucked, it's still going. But now we have baseball back. And baseball thaws out winter. Not literally, of course. I've been to at least one game during which the wind chill was hovering in the mid 30s. And I was sitting in the upper deck. And it started raining as I was leaving the stadium after a drizzly, lifeless 2-0 Cubs loss.

Speaking of whom...

The Cubs have a second straight first year manager. There have been some injuries. And they've fallen back to 23rd on the payroll rankings, which doesn't mean anything on its own except that we can probably expect an even longer rebuilding process as they bring guys up through the system. The most exciting thing about 2014 will be Wrigley's 100th birthday. Love the park all you want (I do), but the stadium should not be the most exciting aspect of your franchise for the better part of the last century. I'll be happy if the Cubs top 70 wins. On the other hand, I chose Pittsburgh on a lark last year and it worked pretty well for them. So it can't hurt. Anyway, there are literally zero consequences for being wrong here. I could have the Cleveland Spiders win the AL West, if I wanted. Or the Montreal Alouettes. And nobody could do a thing about it. 

• NL East: Washington
• NL Central: Chicago 
• NL West: Los Angeles
• NL Wild Cards: St. Louis, Atlanta
• AL East: Boston 
• AL Central: Kansas City
• AL West: Cleveland Spiders
• AL Wild Cards: Oakland, Texas 
• World Series: Los Angeles over Boston 

By the way, love baseball's slow embrace of 20th Century technology. In another fifty years maybe we'll finally have the robo-umpires we should've had in 2010. And they'll all look like Bud Selig.