If You Want to Sound Ridiculous As a Writer, You Only Need to Say This One Phrase

"Team of Destiny".

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's ROMAN!

I think it was like June 25 of last year, and I think it was a wild win over the Rockies (ok I just looked it up and it was June 25 and it was another 10-9 win over Colorado), when I called the Cubs a team of destiny in this blog.

They weren't. Unless "destiny" means getting your ass handed to you by the Diamondbacks.

It was the type of game you point to in October as proof of something special. Was today's Cubs win over the Rockies along the same lines?

Good God, Roman, have you ever even HEARD of the term "variance"? It was a 10-9 win. Just because the Rockies got all of their runs before the Cubs got their 2nd run doesn't make the win count for anything supernatural. Exciting to watch? Yes. Inspiring? Yes. Something worth talking about during the playoffs? Absofuckinglutely never in a million years. I repeat. The Chicago Cubs are just as likely to win the World Series now as they would have been had they won that game 1-0. How is this difficult to understand?

Last year was different because after that wild win, the Cubs were still around .500

Probably not the best thing to go around admitting that you claimed a .500 team was a "team of destiny" last season.

This season they have the best record in baseball and are supposed to win.

"Supposed to win"? The 2007 Cubs were not "supposed to win"?

But still, they've won so many games they should have lost. That usually bodes well in the big picture.

Saying a team "should have lost" a game is pretty stupid unless the umpires fucked up or somethting, first of all. Second, if the Cubs are winning games that they should be losing, then it would make more sense to predict a downfall in the future, not success. And finally, the Cubs are actually underperforming their Pythagorean, suggesting they deserve at least every win they've gotten this year.

A team of destiny? Who knows.

::raises hand:: Ooh! Ooh! Roman! I do! I do! Can I explain something to you? Can I? Hmmm? PLEASSSSEEE?????

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

Hold on, you've been saying this for awhile despite me telling you otherwise. For your convenience, the above message will be copied and pasted until I get sick of typing CTRL-V. Ready? Go!

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

THERE IS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS A TEAM DESTINED TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES.

Kay?

Maybe they're not a team of destiny,

Whew. I think I got through to him!

but they sure are a scrappy bunch.

I never thought I'd have to point out an actual misuse of the word scrappy, but here it is. Roman, if you paid attention, 7 of the 9 runs the Cubs scored during their comeback were on homers. When the hell have you heard "homeruns" and the adjective "scrappy" associated with each other? Maybe they're just good at offense!

Down 8-0, down 9-1 and win 10-9. They have some type of special mojo going.

No. They have a good offense going. This is evidence of a good offense. Why is it so hard to attribute baseball-related successes in baseball to baseball-related reasons?

This wasn't a turning-point game, but it was another wild one.

Whew. Thank God there's nothing wrong with this sentence. My blood was just about at the boiling point.

Can't Believe I've Laid Off This Guy Before

Roman Modrowski is a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. He writes about boxing a lot. He also has a blog where he talks about Chicago and Notre Dame sports, often very stupidly. I'm a regular poster on the blog, and I finally feel compelled to make him show up here.

I thought our Cubs beat writer Gordon Wittenmyer had a very good lead to his story today. The Cubs didn't look like a good team last night, but they looked like a championship team.

Fantastic sentence there Roman. You just made "good team" and "championship team" mutually exclusive. As far as I can tell, the only way that's possible is if the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series every year.

And yeah, it was a comeback win against the Reds. But anybody who's followed sports for a while knows those are the types of wins championship teams pull out all the time.

The Reds have a terrible pitching staff and a relatively poor closer. A lot of teams pull off these wins. The White Sox, for example, have won a game being down 6 in the bottom of the 9th and being down by 6 in the bottom of the 7th this month. These are the kinds of wins that championship teams pull out, Roman.

I'm not saying the Cubs are going to the World Series, but once in the playoffs, anything is possible.

Yep.

Like I said back on June 25, this looks like a Team of Destiny (but with a bad closer).

By definition, if you say they're a "Team of Destiny", doesn't that necessarily mean that you are saying that the Cubs are going to the World Series? Or does "Team of Destiny" mean nothing even to the people who use the term excessively as well?

Other teams who, therefore, look like a Team of Destiny: everyone going to the playoffs.

Whatever happened to that poor "Team of Destiny" last year from Detroit? Didn't they lose the World Series?