RSBS Special Correspondent and Podcast Loverboy, Mr. Johanna Mahmud reports:

Well….. The first Mike Quade tirade is over. Carlos Silva is gone and I couldn’t be happier. In the offseason, as we learned more about Quade and his pastoral fishing trips, thoughts about fly-fishing technique and bait and tackle strategery, I began to wonder what would happen when there needs to be a time to put the hammer down. I got my answer this weekend. When Silva had his tirade earlier in the season over a perceived lack of effort from Aramis Ramirez and other players in a meaningless spring training game, it soon became apparent that his teammates in the locker room had just about enough from this untradeable giant throbbing male member. By the way, this horrible pitcher had a 10.9 ERA in spring training and is a complete a$$bag.

Another thing we’ve learned from tirades in baseball (or maybe it’s just me) is that stupid, childish behavior gets you nowhere. No one ever got better at baseball by being yelled at to be “better”, or try “harder”.

In basketball, you can achieve better results on defense with more energy on that side of the ball, but primarily defense is a team objective. Football is almost entirely a team sport with thousands of moving parts. In baseball, which is an individual game, players don’t get better by being yelled at to try harder. Defense is improved over practicing fundamentals and years of adjustments, like how and when to get to a certain part of the field.

I loved when Carlos Zambrano last year called out (gold glove first basemen), Derek Lee, that he wasn’t giving enough effort on a line drive up the line, when in actuality, Zambrano used Lee as a scapegoat for his ineptness and temperamental issues. After the line drive Lee missed, Z gave up a 3 run bomb.

If I could make people better at baseball by yelling at them, I would have my own instructional video a la Johnny Bench. And it would be called “Listen you f**ktw*t, piece of s*** kid: Be better at baseball right the f*** now or go die inside a dying elephant’s rectum. Please?” I think this could work and be very effective to young aspiring baseball players. It’s like saying guys at the plate need to try harder. Plate aptitude is based on concentration, patience and HOURS AND YEARS of practice. Not try. There is no try.

The best parts of these player on player rants is that it always comes out that the accusing player ALWAYS admits eventually that they were just venting because they were mad at themselves.

Now that Silva has been released, the right pitcher for the future is Andrew Cashner. He has been promoted, Mateo moves to the bullpen and Quade can move on. When Silva talked behind Quade’s back to the media; that was the last straw for him. Jim Hendry, for once did the right thing and finally removed the team and the fans from the original blunder that got us here in the first place with the indefensible signing of Milton Bradley. Which, by the way, 29 other GMs in the league looked at like we lost our damn fool minds and laughed and laughed….and…laughed when as predicted, he colossally blew up in the Cubs’ face.

Mike Quade and the Cubs can move on now in his young inaugural season which is already strife with all the usual Cub plight we’re used to. One hundred years of bad memories, horrible contracts, bad paper, bad karma. Soriano…….(enough said)… Can Ramirez bounce back after hitting .190 for most of the year last season? On and on again.

If Mike had to deal with Silva staying and walking on Quade’s sack day in and day out and more second guessing, it would be totally unnecessary. Quade seems to say and do all the right things so far, (especially for a guy that’s been waiting his whole life for this and paid every due imaginable).  But when the initial scuffle happened in early March, he said that some infighting could be good for a team. POPPYCOCK.

All it did was confirm what we’ve been hearing for a while; that Silva was not only a replacement level pitcher but also an undeserving malcontent. Eating the money sucks ($8.5 million), but we basically knew that would happen after about two weeks of jagbag Milton Bradley.

Quade finally let him have it this weekend.

Ozzie style and I’m happy. 

–Johanna Mahmud