When has Matt Shaw ever demonstrated poor judgement?

Last year, the Cubs were one of the best base running teams in the game. It was part of their commitment to being good at things that players don't really get paid all that well for. Play good defense. Don't run into extra outs. Stop scoring runs once Easter has come and gone.

This marked a change from the Cubs of our youth. We witnessed such classics as Kal Daniels falling down between third and home while carrying the would-be winning run in the bottom of the ninth in an eventual 6-4 loss in 12 innings to Mets. It was a thing of beauty. Kal fell on his face, and then just laid there waiting to be tagged, and he was. Cubs manager Jim Lefebvre got heat for not pinch running for Daniels, a once-good player for the Reds whose knees were shot. Lefebvre asked the reporters just who the hell he was supposed to pinch run for Kal with? His bench was limited to two catchers--fan icon Hector Villanueva and 2000 All-Star* Joe Girardi, and backup infielder Doug Strange.

It was Doug Strange, Jim. You were supposed to pinch run Doug Strange.

There was also the time that backup catcher Todd Pratt was leading off third as the tying run in the ninth inning, and a wild pitch was thrown, and Todd stood there for a while and then thought, "Fuck it, I can score." And he ran at least the last 40 feet with the pitcher just standing in front of home plate with the ball.

Ronny Cedeno being thrown out going from first to second on a walk is perhaps the most famous terrible Cubs base running moment of all time.

And then there's Ryan Theriot, a sometime teammate of Ronny (what a collection of savvy base ballers the Cubs had back then) who was such a terrible baserunner and such an overall dumb player that the internet invented a base running acronym just for him. If you've ever wondered what TOOTBLAN stands for, it's "Thrown Out On The Bases Like A Nincompoop" and yes, it was created just for Ryan Theriot.

That leads us to current Cubs utility man Matt Shaw. Shaw is famous for a few things. He had the most fucked up batting stance this side of his manager's old one, when he started his Cubs' big league career, and he very slowly ditched all of the weird, completely unnecessary stuff. He learned third base on the fly and turned out to be very good there. The Cubs were so impressed that they went out and spent a lot of money on an older player to replace him. Oh, yeah and late last season he left the team to fly to Arizona to attend what was supposed to be a memorial for an assassinated podcaster, that actually turned out to be a right wing rally where speakers mostly screamed mean things at each other and about everybody else. Fun.

Yesterday, Matt was on second base when Seiya Suzuki hit a soft fly ball to short right field. It dropped in for a single, and somehow Matt was tagged out for the final out of a triple play.

On a single.

Matt just wandered off the field. Maybe he had some new roads to explore?

Shocking, considering that he normally demonstrates such good judgement.

When Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) executive director Tony Clark was fired, maybe for a federal investigation that had been opened into financial improprieties, some baseball writers and reporters expressed the opinion that it was terrible timing for the Players Association because the current collective bargaining agreement expires this December 1, and a lockout by the owners is a virtual certainty.

The MLBPA later said Clark was fired for having an inappropriate relationship with an MLBPA employee. That employee is believed to be his own sister-in-law, and possibly the widow of his former teammate Kimera Bartee,, the sister of Tony's wife.

Whatever the real yick of that turns out to be, the idea that the timing of losing Tony Clark is bad for the players is almost certainly wrong, and also incredibly naive.