The Rundown: Cactus League Opens Today, More Mature Bregman Ready for Next Chapter, Murph’s Pocket Pancake Budget Swells

No Debbie Downer intro for me today, though I will say the weather is doing nothing to boost my spirits. Here we are on Opening Day for the Cactus League and it’s windy as hell with leaden skies. The temperature has dropped by about 30 degrees as well, which actually just puts it more in line with what you’d expect for this time of year. In spite of all the things conspiring to dampen my mood, I know I have something to look forward to later.

An Evening with Blues Traveler and Gin Blossoms. Oh, and the Cubs. Not a bad combo to get the weekend started. While neither band we’re going to see quite gained escape velocity from their biggest two or three hits, both achieved a level of ubiquity throughout the early-to-mid 90s. More than one-hit wonders and less than megastars, they fall into that pocket of holding a strong nostalgic appeal without feeling desperate and sad.

I think a big part of that, at least for me, stems from the overwhelming cultural significance of MTV at that point in time. The network was a phenomenon throughout the 90s in particular, and its star-making power was unmatched. Gen X and early millennials went from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street to GI Joe and He-Man before graduating to MTV and ESPN’s SportsCenter. Knowing is indeed half the battle, and television was our favorite teacher.

As vapid as consumerist as some of that programming was, I often find myself pining for the days when the Video Music Awards were an event not to be missed. I was a senior in college and living in a corner room at the Sigma Chi house at Hanover College when Britney Spears appeared on stage wearing a small green bikini and a huge Burmese python. Nearly every TV in the house was tuned to the same thing, and the reaction was akin to what you’d expect after a game-winning Hail Mary in the Super Bowl.

The groups I’m seeing tonight never took a blowtorch to barrels of highly flammable testosterone, but they were certainly part of the mellower soundtrack of the years leading up to the pop explosion to come. That’s sort of how the Cubs are these days, with MLB and the general broadcast landscape having shifted so that the experience isn’t nearly as communal as it once was. WGN was the station of choice in our home growing up, either for the news or the Cubs.

I’m sure the same was true for many of you, especially if you grew up without cable. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating for a return to WGN. Anyone who does so, and they come out every time we mention Marquee, doesn’t understand how broadcast rights work these days. Not to mention, it was the Superstation that chose to drop sports programming altogether in favor of cheesy CW shows.

The Cubs can still be fun and you can still watch or listen to them, you just have to try a little harder than before. I guess it’s like curating a Spotify playlist rather than having to wait to see what Carson Daly would feed you on Total Request Live. Isn’t it funny how much more you want something when you have to wait for it? Well, we’ve waited over four months to see the Cubs play a baseball game, and that ends today.

Bregman Ready for Next Chapter

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale catches a lot of crap for reports and predictions that often end up being wrong, like when he tweeted that the Cubs and Zac Gallen were nearing an agreement on a contract. While his piece on Alex Bregman contains nothing that will come back to haunt him in that regard, it’s replete with typos and is formatted oddly. Blame for that would normally fall on the editors, but I’m reasonably sure they just leave ol’ Bob to his own devices.

Still, they could at least do what I do and have a Grammarly plugin that highlights mistakes. Oh well. Even if Bregman doesn’t actually study scouting reporters [sic] and even if he [sic] Red Sox really did want him, the fact of the matter is that the third baseman is happy with his situation. After entering the league as a bit of a wild card, Bregman has matured into a leader who has gained fluency in Spanish so he can better communicate with teammates for whom it’s their native language.

He’s also more aware of what he says in the media, using a filter instead of providing bulletin-board material with every quote. It helps that he’s now a 32-year-old family man and not the cocksure youngster he was a decade ago on a team filled with similar players. The Astros’ rise paralleled the Cubs’ in a lot of ways, but Houston did it better and maintained their winning ways over a longer period.

That said, Chicago has always been a better sports city and is hungry for another serious winner. Bregman has already gotten a taste of that during his brief Cubs tenure and he’s now ready to dive into the main course.

“It’s crazy, it was so much fun,” Bregman told USA Today. “The energy is crazy, especially with it being 10 degrees outside and just seeing how excited everybody was. You can feel the energy in the city and they love their sports teams, and they love their city.

“There’s so much energy in those buildings and everyone has welcomed me with open arms. I’m so grateful for that. My wife and I are super excited to get out in the community and raise our kids there.”

I fully expect to receive comments pointing out my errors now, especially since I made only a cursory pass over this before publishing.

More News and Notes

• The Brewers and manager Pat Murphy have agreed to a new contract that reworks what would have been the final year of his deal, plus adds two more years and $8.95 million in new money. There is also a club option for 2029. Murphy, the reigning back-to-back NL Manager of the Year, now has more than enough money to keep himself swimming in pocket pancakes for the rest of his life.
• It’s funny to think that Murph almost joined Craig Counsell in Chicago as the Cubs’ bench coach, the same role he’d held in Milwaukee prior to being promoted.
• As first reported by The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, ESPN is replacing Sunday Night Baseball with “Women’s Sports Sundays” featuring the WNBA and NWSL. This news predictably brought legions of mouth-breathers to the forefront, so Marchand went on to provide some facts around the matter.
• The main point is that, not unlike WGN with sports as a whole, ESPN opted out of SNB a year ago. So anyone who’s mad about this wasn’t watching much baseball on ESPN anyway and is just engaging in performative outrage. And with NBC picking up those games with Jason Benetti expected to be in the booth, it’s just a matter of punching up a different station.
• Now that I’ve typed that out, I realized that WGN’s TV coverage isn’t the right comp. Remember when people flipped out because the Cubs moved from 720 to 670 on the AM dial several years ago? Holy cow, that was fun.
• A far more pressing move in Chicago sports involves the Bears’ future home, specifically whether it’ll end up being in Illinois or Indiana. Hoosier lawmakers continued their assault on public education by approving a funding proposal for a site in Hammond, though the lack of any development renderings strikes me as curious.
• Bears president Kevin Warren’s most recent step in this protracted dick-measuring contest was to skip a legislative meeting in Illinois that was supposed to have gone in the team’s favor. That was presumably meant to gain leverage via the Indiana proposal, which would see a stadium built on marshland surrounded by steel mills and clouded by industrial stench.
• That part of the state is unpleasant enough to drive through, let alone to serve as a destination. You can’t just slap a shiny new stadium down and call it a day; the Bears are looking to have a full-on entertainment district with hotels and housing. I can’t imagine a future in which they eat the money they already laid down to purchase the site in Arlington, but Warren’s seeming ineptitude could see them left with no choice.
• I’ll close with a follow-up to yesterday’s opener just to keep folks up on the situation. First, thank you for all the wonderful comments; the community we’ve built here is wonderful. My brother, sister, and I were able to FaceTime our aunt with help from family in Hawaii, though she was not awake for any of it. My sister is actually in the air right now, and I suspect I’ll follow her at some point.
• I didn’t note yesterday that my aunt never had kids of her own, so the three of us more or less served as her surrogate children. My aunt has a step-son, and she has a niece there in Hawaii who might as well be her daughter or granddaughter. It did my heart good to see them there.

Trailer Time

Based on the untold story of the 72 hours leading up to D-Day, Pressure follows General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Captain James Stagg as they face the impossible choice of whether to launch the largest and most dangerous seaborne invasion in history or risk losing the war altogether. Starring Brendan Fraser, Andrew Scott, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, and Damian Lewis, Pressure launches on May 29.