A very merry Tuesday to all of you who celebrate. We have 22 days left of regular Hot Stove baseball until the owners lock out the players, so be sure to open up your lockout advent calendar for today.
- Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic raised quite a stir when he reported yesterday that theCubs are unlikely to pursue free agent pitcher Tarik Skubal this winter. (sub. req.)
- That makes sense as the Cubs have a lot of holes to fill and have never shown a willingness to go to the top of the free agent market. On the other hand, sources out of Los Angeles are saying that the Dodgers, Mets and Cubs are showing the “strongest interest” in Skubal. So shrug.
- Vinnie Duber writes that while Skubal would be nice, the Cubs have many different options to solve their starting rotation issues.
- Another bit of bad news reported by Sharma is that pitcher Ben Brown has still not been cleared to begin throwing and could be looking at surgery.
- Sharma also reported that the Cubs are looking strongly at Saitama Seibu Lions pitcher Kaima Taira from NPB. Brett Taylor has more on the diminutive Japanese right-hander.
- Doug Schwamb believes the Cubs should bring back free agent pitcher Clay Holmes.
- Brett Taylor has more on López as well. In short, the guy throws in the upper-nineties although his control is poor, he missed all of 2026 and he only has six innings above rookie ball. But the Cubs have two years to straighten him out now.
- Matthew Trueblood asks if the Cubs should pursue free agent first baseman Ty France? I’d rather they get Beat France, but that’s just me.
- Baseball America has released their top ten Cubs prospects for 2027. (sub. req.)
- Casey Drottar has every Cubs player ever to win the Most Valuable Player Award.
- Jordan Bastian looks back at the best games that Pete Crow-Armstrong had in 2026.
- Jay Jaffe takes a look at the Hall of Fame case for former Cubs manager Joe Maddon.
- And Jim Callis has a profile of Cubs minor league Harrison Feinberg, who is making his professional debut in the Arizona Fall League after going undrafted this past July.
Food for thought:
There’s a real crisis in this country in that men don’t read anymore. That’s not entirely true, men do read some non-fiction books, usually about politics, war or history. Reading non-fiction is good. But so is reading fiction. Young men and boys, especially, have fled from reading fiction. This creates a vicious circle, as publishers are less apt to publish fiction geared towards men, because female-oriented fiction is more profitable. This causes even fewer men to read and the cycle repeats itself.
If you don’t believe me, just go to your local Barnes & Noble and look at the new fiction books. You’ll find very few male authors and a lot of books written by women with female protagonists. It’s not anti-male discrimination. It’s just capitalism.
Now there’s no reason that men can’t read a book written by or about women. Anyone familiar with my movie picks knows that I love crime fiction/hardboiled noir. And a ton of that these days is written by women for women. I do read some of the stuff written for women—I found Out by Natsuo Kirino to be excellent, for a recent example. But sometimes you want to read something that’s written mostly for you and that gets me turning to the classics of the past—Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett or Mickey Spillane. I’ve seen several Mike Hammer movies, but I’m just starting to read Spillane. Some of what Spillane wrote was clearly sexist and racist: it was a product of white men of the early fifties. But it’s also the literary version of a “guy movie” with tough guys and lots of action.
I guess my point here is that everyone should read more and they should read more from all sorts of points of view. Read books by both men and women. Read books by both Americans and from other cultures. If that happens, we’ll get a better variety at Barnes & Noble.
Finally, guitarist Richard Lloyd of Television died at 75 on Saturday. If you don’t know Television, they were one of the bands who played the legendary New York Club CBGBs in the mid-1970s. The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads and Patti Smith Group went on to big fame. Others like Television, the Dead Boys and Richard Hell and the Voidoids went on to become cult heroes. But Television’s two albums before breaking up: Marquee Moon (1977) and Adventure (1978) are considered classics by anyone who has listened to them. Unlike a lot of the punk bands of the era, Television were generally quite talented musicians and Lloyd was a very good guitarist. Unlike a lot of those punk bands, Television had longer songs with long instrumental jams and dueling guitarists in Verlaine and Lloyd. I went back to my old Trouser Press Record Guide and they wrote “A tendency to ‘jam’ onstage caused detractors (and, paradoxically, British fans) to refer to them as the Grateful Dead of punk.” I always found that description funny.
Lead singer Tom Verlaine passed away in 2023 and bassist Fred Smith died earlier this year. The aforementioned Richard Hell, who left the band before their first recording contract, is still with us, as is drummer Billy Ficca, who would go on to be the drummer for The Waitresses after Television.
Here is the title track of Marquee Moon. I picked it because it features Lloyd’s guitar playing prominently. Also because it’s awesome. But most of Television is.
