The Cub killer

I'm typing as I watch tonight's Cubs-Astros creep excruciatingly into extra innings. Carlos Lee hit a home run early on for the Astros only run which makes sense because El Caballo turns into an unholy reincarnation of Babe Ruth when facing Chicago. In my mind, he's what's called a "Cub killer" but is my anecdotal notion well-founded?

Checking his career splits on B-R, he's hit .305/.360/.584 against the Cubs (in 430 PAs prior to tonight's game) against a career line of .291/.345/.504. So yes, Lee has performed very well against the Cubs, better than any other team excepting a few clubs that he hasn't faced nearly as often as Chicago. On top of that, he's put up a preposterous .314/.367/.614 line at Wrigley Field. And as I'm typing this, Miguel Tejeda hit a double and Piniella elects to intentionally walk Carlos Lee. I agree with Piniella, I'd much rather face Geoff Blum than Carlos Lee (Blum eventually struck out on three pitches).

Theoretically, I'm supposed to despise a rival player that continually torments the Cubs. After all, Lee spent years with the White Sox, a brief stint with the Brewers, and he now plays for Houston. If only he joined the Cardinals, I might not have a choice. But I like Lee, for a simple and silly reason. I like his nickname. In age when the only acceptable nicknames seem to be a combination of the first letter of the player's first name and the first syllable of the player's last name (example, Alex Rodriguez is "A-Rod"), "El Caballo" is a welcome relief. A rather husky fellow, it suits Lee physically and it has the exotic allure of being in Spanish. I think, without researching it, that the nickname was bestowed by Hawk Harrelson, a man that normally takes both idiocy and the English language to new lows. However, assuming that the moniker did originate with Harrelson, I'm forced to concede that Hawk contributed one decent thing to our culture.

As a closing tangent, why do the White Sox fans like Harrelson so much? I don't know a single Sox fan with a southern accent so it's not as if they naturally feel comfortable with the speech pattern. I've never met anyone would honestly utter the words "he gone" in seriousness. Harrelson speaks exactly like the parodies of southerners on Family Guy (Q: "Where's Col. Sanders?" A: "He dayd..."). More damning, he was a comically bad as the White Sox general manager. Harrelson fired Tony LaRussa because, well, Hawk's an idiot. He traded Bobby Bonilla for Jose DeLeon, a pitcher coming off a 19 loss season. For the talk of Cub fans being overly-optimistic softies, do you think we would tolerate it if the team had installed Larry Himes as the play-by-play man after firing him as GM? Of course not. For god knows what reason, the Sox fans love a man who nearly trashed their franchise.