Tom Snyder, the Chicago Cubs, and Barry Bonds

Tom Snyder was a television talk showhost and personality. At one point Dan Aykroyd's parody of Tom Snyder on the old NBC Tomorrow show became as well known as Tom himself. I'm a little young for that show, but got hooked on his incarnation of The Late Late Show on CBS in the 90's. It promptly went off the air(as did Sports Night, Bands on the Run, Boomtown, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). If you really enjoy a television show, the last thing you want is for me to become a fan. I have been waiting for Mr. Snyder to resurface on television or maybe satellite radio for the last seven or eight years.

The picture to the left is of Mr. Snyder in 1968. I could not find one from this century with a "clear license", so I'll go with the one that is nearly 40 years old, but has a GNU Free Documentation License. Here is one of Tom's classic interviews an interview with John Lydon and some lesser former Sex Pistol .

Tom died of leukemia sometime Sunday (7/30/2007). We'll miss you Tom.

"Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."

On to the Chicago Cubs. I had hoped to blog about the Cubs sliding into first place tonight, but they lost, and therefore remain one game behind the Milwaukee Brewers. On the whole, the biggest problem with being a Cubs fan seems to be their propensity to lose baseball games.

Apparently in Chicago some people have adopted the mantra "Its gonna happen". I'm not feeling that positive, and at this point I think I prefer the "We Believe" slogan adopted at East Carolina University in 1991 as the Pirates went on to finish ranked 9th in the country. Either way, the Cubs are still a strong contender for the NL Central division, and despite losing tonight, I have high hopes for tomorrow. I believe.

Finally, I have ones of readers all over the world, and absolutely none of them have said "Bill, how do you feel about Barry Bonds?" I've heard a lot of people suggest that when Barry breaks Hank Aaron's record there should be an asterisk, because of the whole steroid debacle. Here's the problem: nobody ever caught him. There are people who belong in prison, some of them ex-football players turned actors, who belong in prison. But we endured the legal process and they were found not guilty. I think Barry used steroids, but nobody ever caught him. Its even debatable how hard they tried. I think I may finally understand the phrase "Don't hate the player, hate the game".

That said, a tearful apology from Barry a year ago would have probably fixed all of this. But unless he bets on baseball in the next few days, he will break the record. The betting on baseball scenario is my favorite.