Baseball fans understood when Nolan Arenado left Colorado. The Rockies looked stable for the first time in a long while, if not completely on the upswing, after Nolan Arenado signed a monster extension with the team on the back of two straight playoff appearances. Arenado signed the extension in Denver because he understood that the Rockies would try to maintain that standing.
We know that the Rockies immediately backed up, didn't add, and subtracted from the competitors. Arenado felt betrayed and that the Rockies would never get better, but he felt that it was fair to say that it would never get better. He asked out and got what he wanted.
Arenado's call out of his own front office last week could have been passed off as being desperate to win and wanting his employers to match his ambition. Maybe it was uncouth, but it could be said that Arenado would really like to get back to the playoffs and make some noise. Arenado might have said what most players think when the deadline arrives.
Arenado wants to be seen as the height of a guy who wants it and his team as well. He is doing everything he can to turn the Cards into a winning team.
Isn't he?
Arenado won't be at the game when the Cards play in Toronto. They won't have their two best hitters for two games. That is almost certain to make the most righteously empty-headed fans happy. Until they make the playoffs, that's all. Arenado's ambition goes all the way up to the point of logic and decency for other people.
You don't get to take two games off because of your ass if you want to be the martyr here. The two games may matter.
The last wild card spot is still up for grabs. The Padres seem to want to make a second-half faceplant an annual tradition, as they are two and a half back of them for the next one. The Brewers are two and a half games in front of them. With only a couple of months left in the season, it is not likely that anyone will leave anyone. The Cards could make a move to get a division or a wild card. They are said to be the leader of the club. They may think that a spot is not worth selling out for.
If the Cards don't make the playoffs, what do you do? What if the NL Central is not decided until the last game of the season? Imagine if they looked back on a one or two-run loss in Toronto where Arenado and Goldschmidt were at home. Would you be able to claim to your front office that you did everything you could? Is that what you put into this season?
They wouldn't do it, but it wouldn't be out of bounds for Mike Girsch to make minimal moves before August 2, and tell Arenado he put as much into the team as Nolan did.
Nolan, it's all hollow now.
Maybe you don't live in a city where the mayor plays how high he or she can get, but I do. In order to keep the Bears at Soldier Field, the city of Chicago will have to pay $2 billion, which it hasn't paid off yet. The Bears are being painted out to be the villains because they want a stadium that they completely own and not have the Chicago Park District pickpocketing them, or to collect all the cash from whatever event they can book.
The main problems with Soldier Field are that it is too small, the sightlines are not good, and the bathroom facilities are not flow through.
They were really nice pictures.
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