Baseball hangover stories never get old

I really don't know what I expected. When I heard that Anthony Rizzo and David Ross were starting a podcast, I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly went blind. Then, I heard more about what the focus of the podcast was going to be and I was more intrigued than sickened.

It has a cutesy title, "The Lovable Reunion" and the podcast is Rizzo and Ross having members of the 2016 Cubs on to talk about that season. OK, that I can get behind. It's not Ross trying to break down some current manager's bullpen usage, when we watched him be perfectly clueless doing that for four seasons as Cubs' manager.

I still doubted how good this would be. And granted I've only heard/seen one (because that's all they've put out so far), but that one episode was really good.

Mostly that one was like an hour and 15 minutes of the two "hosts" talking about trying to play hungover (often), Ross getting mad at Rizzo a lot during the two years they were teammates, Rizzo getting a little too graphic about his naked Rocky dancing (not the creature from Project Hail Mary, Rocky the boxer creature from Philadelphia), and Ross being appropriately self-deprecating about his long, but mostly bench riding career. They have good chemistry, Rizzo is very good at talking, Ross less so and continually blames it on being hit in the head a lot as a player (which is going to do wonders for his chances to ever dupe another team into letting him manage).

But I'll be damned if the first episode ended with me very much looking forward to future episodes. Next up is Joe Maddon, which should be great. And they teased upcoming episodes with Kyle Schwarber, Dexter Fowler, Travis Wood, Jon Lester, Jason Heyward and Kris Bryant. KB has a lot of free time on his hands these days, and man do I miss that guy.

In the trailer they put out for this you see all of those guys plus John Lackey (I think we can all skip that one), Jake Arrieta, Mike Borzello (really?), and...ugh...Addison Russell. There are so many questions that I'd ask Addison that they won't.

Look, I know you have lots of great baseball podcasts to choose from. There's the Pointless Exercise Baseball Podcast with me and David Brown, there's the Pointless Exercise Cubs Podcast with me and Praz and Oleg. There are the Cubs podcasts with Sam Fels and me. But I give you permission to make room for one more.

Honestly, I'd like to thank these guys. This podcast makes a nice companion to my book, "The Immortals: The 2016 Chicago Cubs who made professional sports' longest wait worth every minute" available in paperback, hardcover and Kindle. Get yours today.

To get a feel for the general tone of this podcast, which I think they have nailed, here's Rizzo and Ross telling the story about a Sunday game in Pissburgh late in the 2015 season after a very long night in Jon Lester's suite. It's pretty good.

After a recent newsletter and podcast slagging Craig for his ludicrous lineup, he changed things up pretty dramatically on Wednesday. Nico Hoerner led off, and well that was the only change that made much sense. They faced Yusei Kikuchi, a lefty and so Craig dropped Petecrow down to eighth, let Michael Busch play and batted him fifth, but he had Carson Kelly bat cleanup? What the fuck?

Anyway, the Cubs scored five runs in the third and won 6-2. Matt Boyd looked much improved over his shaky opener, going 5.2 and allowing just two hits and striking out 10. He'd have allowed zero runs, but after he left the game his trio of Gold Glove infielders fucked him over. With two outs and runners on first and second, Dansby and Nico both managed to botch a slow roller right over the second base bag that trickled through for an RBI single, and then the next batter hit one right under Alex Bregman's glove for an error.

The real story was Carson Kelly, though.

Huh?

In the series he hit two fly balls to Mike Trout. Trout's a first ballot Hall of Famer, he's a great all-around player. He even won something called Wilson's All-Around Defensive Player of the Year in 2012.

That's an award that no longer exists.

I think we know why.

Yikes.

Everybody's talking about the hot start Ian Happ is off to. He did hit three homers in his first four games, but he also only had four hits going into his final at bat yesterday and was batting .174.

But he got a ringing double to get his average over .208.

Just look at this thing. What a rope.

Nice play, Jeimer.

The Cubs are off on Thursday, and then help the Guardians open their home season on Friday. I'm going to guess that not many Cleveland fans are going to be tuning into Tony and Rossy's podcast.

Nobody does baseball quite like Dave.