I've Had Z-nough

Get out and stay out. The Cubs have an opportunity to purge themselves of their second largest embarrassment this decade and start fresh.

In looking over the history of the Cubs, they’ve always had a penchant for grabbing petulant, semi-talented ballplayers (Kingman, Prior, Hawkins) but never have they been embarrassed this long by one guy. Oh sure, they had the problems with Bradley last year, but Hendry was able to turn that around in one year.

We as Cub fans and the organization have been burdened with Zambrano’s crap since the Baker administration. When he and Barrett went at it, we all thought it was Barrett’s fault since he (Barrett) sucker punched Pierzinski. But now we see a lot of it had to do with Zambrano’s attitude and personality.

Here is an opportunity for the New Cubs Regime to make a statement and get rid of Zambrano. Since they were able to find a taker for Bradley, I’m sure there’s a team out there that’s dumb enough to take on this headache. But even if there isn’t, Ricketts should send Zambrano off.

Perhaps the most disgusting thing in sports is the guaranteed contract. Every major sport has the massively overpaid “star” who ends up tanking his performance because he’s too comfortable. So the part of my proposal that I hate is that I’m willing to have Zambrano never pitch another game in his life and still collect the remainder of his $95 million dollar contract. But as a wise relative of mine that you know once said “What do I care how they spend the money? It’s not my money.”

Additionally there has to be a “Respectability Clause” in every contract issued from here one out. Anyone (player, coach, manager) not performing in a respectable manner on or off the field will have their contract voided and will be shown the door. Now of course the player’s union would never approve of such of thing, but this is my article not theirs.

The Cubs could be known from here on out as a Class and Respectable Organization much like the ‘70’s A’s were know for facial hair and the Cardinals of the ‘80s were known for Astroturf extrabases.

As we went to press the Cubs were planning to put Zambrano on the Restricted List. The plan is that Zambrano won’t be back until at least after the All-Star Break. Well that’s a start so let’s finish it. While he’s Restricted and supposedly learning how to act, not even like a ballplayer, but like a human adult, let’s find a taker and if none are out there, let’s book a ticket for July 20th on a non-stop flight to Venezuela and move on.