2012 in Review: January – When We Were Stupidly Kind of Optimistic About Stuff

In Commentary And Analysis, Year in Review by aisle42428 Comments

Year in review

2012 was pretty painful to live through as a Cubs fan, and even more so as a Cubs blogger who felt obligated to pay even more attention than is normally considered safe for human beings in an effort to bring you our non-classy, confidence-lacking, reundiscreditationalness that you all expect from us. So we're going to make you re-live the pain all over again. You're welcome, jabronis.

January 1 – The first full Year of Theo begins with rumors of Matt Garza getting traded to virtually every major league team that exists, the Cubs covertly pursuing Prince Fielder, and Cubs fans everywhere trying to learn how to pronounce "Yoenis Cespedes" just in case.

January 3 – Theo continues the annual Cubs tradition of signing Reed Johnson. It was immediately hailed as a "smart value signing" and we all count our blessings that the Cubs will no longer pander to the meatball fans.

January 4Carlos Zambrano is traded to the Miami Marlins for Chris Volstad. One of the best starters in team history and a highly valuable pitcher was traded for Chris Freaking Volstad and Cubs fans across the interwebs and talk radio largely rejoice in the news that they'd be getting a healthy dose of Chris Freaking Volstad in 2012.

January 5Starlin Castro is accused of sexual assault and the Cubs find themselves in the unenviable position of having a major crisis that can't simply be blamed on Zambrano.

January 6 – The Cubs trade the oft-injured, talented Andrew Cashner plus Kyung-Min Na to the Padres for the highly regarded 1st base prospect, Anthony RizzoZach Cates and a gigantic distraction from the Castro news as a throw-in.

January 9Paul Maholm scoops everybody with a tweet announcing he is signing with the Cubs. The mainstream media vows to never be embarassed on Twitter ever again.

January 11 – The Cubs waive Jeff Bianchi to make space on the 40 man roster for Maholm. This was widely believed to be the first time anybody had been aware that someone named Jeff Bianchi had ever been a member of the Cubs.

January 13 – As the Cubs Convention begins, Paul Sullivan tweets a somber note seemingly signifying the end of the Kerry Wood Era (Version 2.0):

30 minutes later, Pat Hughes announces his signing as part of the Opening Ceremonies and introduces Wood to a jubilant crowd. The mainstream media vows to never be embarassed on Twitter ever again.

January 14 – Lots of stuff is said at the Cubs Convention, but it's all pre-planned and I wasn't there because I was sick, so I'm not going to rehash it here because none of it matters worth a damn.

January 15 – The Cubs management announces that there will be a 75-foot long video display board added to the corner of the right field bleachers and everybody loses their shit about the beauty of the ballpark or some nonsense that never came up again after the scoreboard ended up fitting into the architecture of the stadium so well that nobody even noticed it.

January 18 – The Cubs and Red Sox still can't agree on what Theo Epstein is worth and interrupt Bud Selig from a very high-powered mid-afternoon nap to have him help decide the issue. He mumbled something about "ask your mother," rolled over and went back to sleep.

January 20 – The Cubs start selling nine-game ticket packs to capitalize on the momentum of their re-signing of Rodrigo Lopez the day before, which I just now realized I hadn't mentioned before and didn't think was worthy of a bullet of its own.

January 24 – We start hearing the annual song and dance about Jeff Samardzija wanting to be a starter again and we all laugh and laugh because Theo and Jed are WAY too smart to fall for that bullshit like Hendry was.

January 27 – The Cubs get a little closer to being playoff contenders when Bud Selig added an additional ten wild card teams per league… wait… what? Oh, it was only one additional wild card team, so the Cubs are still screwed.

January 31 – January ends with the Theo compensation issue still unresolved, Matt Garza is still a Cub, and Cubs fans are now pretty convinced that "Yoenis" rhymes with "menace" and not "penis," but who the hell knows for sure?

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  1. Suburban kid

    (dying laughing) at the jabroni on the yardbarker widget who only just discovered Kim DeJesus is either objectively hot or not.

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  2. Mish

    ^^ Couldn’t embed the above image. But anyways

    January 11 – The Cubs waive Jeff Bianchi to make space on the 40 man roster for Maholm. This was widely believed to be the first time anybody had been aware that someone named Jeff Bianchi had ever been a member of the Cubs.

    December 27 – Mish becomes aware that someone named Jeff Bianchi had ever been a member of the Cubs.

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  3. dmick89

    January 20 – The Cubs start selling nine-game ticket packs to capitalize on the momentum of their re-signing of Rodrigo Lopez the day before, which I just now realized I hadn’t mentioned before and didn’t think was worthy of a bullet of its own.

    (dying laughing)

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  4. Author
    Aisle424

    Actually, it’s a lot easier this year because I used to have to scroll through Cubs.com and all the minor bullshit and features to find a decent timeline. Now I just go to Brett’s archives at Bleacher Nation. Chances are if it isn’t in there it isn’t worth noting.

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  5. mikeakaleroy

    @ Aisle424:
    You should be getting the headlines from Rant! I’m sure in January they had articles saying that the Cubs were a joke and the new front office was terrible because they didn’t sign both Pujols and Fielder, and that they were the final pieces to a championship team.

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  6. Berselius

    @ Mish:

    I had a high school physics teacher who did Batman word problems. The only one I can remember involved batman jumping off a bridge onto a moving speedboat.

    We also did a unit on radar at some point, and had a cop come by to talk about calibrating radar guns and whatnot. The physics teacher had to dance around the fact that he knew a little *too* much about radar detectors, which are illegal in Virginia.

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  7. Myles

    You know what’s crazy? This actually was a pretty good month for the Cubs, what with the trade for Rizzo and signing Paul Maholm. I think we’d all take another January with a trade for a future piece and a good FA signing.

    Unfortunately, we probably will sign, like, Rick Ankiel (dying laughing)

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