Pointless Exercise - A Desipio Podcast

It's time for a Cubs podcast and Kyle joins Andy with Sam out on assignment, and the guys have breaking news to discuss with Joc Pederson traded to the Barves for an enormous prospect (literally.) They play a fun game of "Is he gonna be traded," they try to figure out who to assign blame to for the demise of the Cubs the last few years, and they pick the team they'd most like to be traded to. Oh,...

The Dusty era had ended, Sam Zell was in town screwing up the Tribune and trying to pump up the value of the Cubs so he could sell them to some unsuspecting dopes in Omaha, Alfonso Soriano, Theodore Roosevelt Lilly, Jason Marquis, Mark DeRosa and Cliff Lee were new to town and the Cubs struggled to start the season. Then Carlos Zambrano punched Michael Barrett, Lou Piniella kicked his hat and some...

Former Daily Herald Cubs' reporter Bruce Miles is back to discuss his new blog at brucemiles.net , his new book, " The Phenom " and to talk a lot about the Cubs current and past. Has the Cubs' six-game losing streak given the team permission to sell, and do they have anybody to sell if it did? The Cubs' schedule gets easier and the Brewers' gets harder but can the Cubs catch anybody without starti...

All Cubs seasons are fun to re-live (well, most of them) but some are more fun than others and this time the wheel of crap has gifted us the incredible, ridiculous, insane 1998 Cubs. Sammy Sosa homered every day, Kerry Wood struck out everybody, Terry Mulholland and/or Rod Beck were always pitching and Chip Caray was there to narrate most of it--well, it can't all be good. The Cubs roared through...

The season opened in the land of the rising sun and sunk pretty quickly afterwards. Don Baylor was the new Groove in town and he brought back a mediocre former Cubs catcher and an actual lead off man. Kerry Wood didn't debut until May after surviving his bout with Tommy John Disease but he did it in memorable fashion. The Cubs kept trading for Barves pitching prospects (never a good idea), Ed Lync...

Chevy Chase says it's his best movie and who are we to argue? We give  Fletch  the Movie Deep Dive treatment. We discuss the long tortured road it took to the screen in the first place, the differences between the book the movie, the stuff Chevy just made up, and we even mention the godforsaken sequel. We also look at why it's been so hard for Hollywood to reboot the franchise even thoug...

It's time once again to spin the wheel of crap and this time it lands on 1996. Jim Riggleman's fighting Cubs tanked down the stretch (surprise), Sammy was bad at the start then great and then got hurt, Ryne Sandberg came back, Doug Jones hit the road, Steve Trachsel was an All-Star. Jim Hendry arrived to start stocking the system with his guys and we look at his Marlins minor league managerial car...

When the 2021 Cubs tied the 1977 team for best record in May, it made us wonder what the hell happened to those 1977 Cubs. They had an 8.5 game lead and finished 20 games out of first, somehow. So, Mike D. and I brought in old friend Frank Nova (we needed somebody old enough to remember), and here's your chance to learn more than you ever wanted to about Jerry Morales, Bobby Murcer, Ray Burris, Ma...

A Cubs season so bad that all of baseball decided to just end the season in August...it's 1994 and that's this week's season to savor on Remember This Crap? Andy and Mike D. look back at Tuffy Rhodes' three homers on opening day, the Cubs not winning a home game until after tax day, Harry Caray falling down in Miami, Ryne Sandberg's first wife's press conference dress, the great Anthony Young, Ran...

Sam joins Andy for the Cubs podcast and they discuss the strange sensation of seeing a team totally turn things around right before your eyes. The Cubs smacked the Padres around pretty good and started what's supposed to be a make or break June schedule gauntlet with three convincing wins. The guys discuss how much of the preseason "sell off the free agents" plan is already out the window and whet...

After some fond remembrances of Andy's time as an official scorer in the Midwest League, he and Mike D. spin the wheel of crap and it lands on...well, a year they can't do because of their only rule, so they spin again and get the Don Zimmer/Jim Essian juggernaut 1991 Cubs. Re-live Dave Smith's season crippling early blowouts, a wild game against the Reds that featured two iconic moments, two Andr...

Neifi saved the season! At least that's what Dusty Baker insisted. We spin the wheel of crap and it lands on 2005 so we re-live Nomar's groin injury, Kerry Wood disappearing early and often between innings of starts, Derrek Lee's should have been MVP season, and a glorious assortment of Cubs bums. It's a very fun look at a team that was only occasionally entertaining. 

It's time for a deep dive into the 1998 Coen Brothers' classic, "The Big Lebowski", and at over two hours it's perfect if you're not into that whole brevity thing. Andy and Mike P. discuss the seemingly disjointed plot that all comes together, the perfect performances, iconic lines, casting decisions, how many times The Dude says "man", how many White Russians he drinks and how the Eagles and Meta...

Andy, Sam and Kyle have reassembled to discuss the Cubs season to date. Everybody's hurt, but it's not serious, you know the same thing that the Cubs training staff has said every time anybody has gotten hurt, ever. They play a fun game of "whose fault is it?" They make fun of Jesse Rogers' math. But they also wonder if the Cubs have actually accidentally developed some young pitching, which would...

Andy and Mike D. spin the wheel of the crap and land on one of the most fun seasons in our lifetimes, the Boys of Zimmer, the 1989 Cubs. They dispel some myths about Mitch Williams' opening day tightrope walk, revel in a big moment from a backup catcher, the greatest double play Andy's ever seen and the Luis Salazar Game. They also break down the Mark Grace-Will Clark stats from the NLCS. It was a...

It's a special edition of the Movie Deep Dive Podcast and Andy and Mike Pusateri are joined by a man with an inexplicable love of the 2014 Kevin Costner-Jennifer Garner classic "Draft Day." It's ESPN 1000 Chicago and NBC Sports Net Chicago's David Kaplan. The guys break down the movie, try to figure out why everyone in the movie seems to have been blindsided by the fact there is a draft, evaluate...

Andy and Kyle are on hand to do the first in-season edition of this year's Cubs podcast. They take a tour around the roster wondering if Javy is ever going to shorten his swing (he's not), feigning shock at Joc Pederson's early season struggles, enjoying the renaissance of Kris Bryant and (for now, at least) Jake Arrieta. They try to make a fireable offense out of David Ross using bona fide trade...

Andy and Mike D. spin the big wheel of crap and it lands on the Lou Piniella's final full season with the Cubs, 2009. You probably remember it best for Milton Bradley just being a complete psychopath, or for Kevin Gregg kicking his own team in the balls in a must-win game in Miami. It was the year we saw breakout stars like Jake Fox, Micah Hoffpauir and Randy Wells. And the Cubs made one of their...

It's time for another Movie Deep Dive Podcast and this time Andy and Mike P. are breaking down the Matt Damon/Ed Norton/John Malkovich/Gretchen Mol/John Turturro classic  Rounders.  What's with everybody's hair? Does the math in the movie make any sense? Why is that casino such a dump--oh,  that's  why. We talk about the cast, the backstories, our favorite moments and Ed Norton...

Once again, our heroes Andy and Mike D. spin the big wheel of crap to see where it will land what Cubs season they will discuss and this time it lands on a gem. Re-live Sammy Sosa's greatest season, a fun but bad Cubs team that spent most of the summer inexplicably in first place, three gut wrenching bullpen losses, one of the wildest nights in Cubs history where an umpire ejected a Chicago Bears...

It's time once again to spin the big wheel and see what crap we have to remember and this time the wheel commands Andy and Mike D. to remember Jim Lefebvre's exciting 1992 squad. It was Greg Maddux's last year in his first stint with the team, Ryne Sandberg's last really good season, and some guy named Sammy Sosa showed up from the White Sox. Relive the glory days of Hector Villanueva, Gary Scott...

Baseball season is nigh and man are we excited for the Cubs upcoming season! The baseball crew is back together with Andy, Kyle and Sam and they try to gin up some enthusiasm for what sure looks like the final promise of a Cubs run of dominance landing with a big, wet, thud. If the Cubs can't even pretend to want to keep Anthony Rizzo, what are we supposed to get fired up about? But they look ahea...

Remember This Crap is back, and if you thought we remembered a bunch of random stuff about the Bears you will be amazed what we can remember about the Cubs. We spin the wheel of death and it lands on...1997. It was a very memorable season for the Cubs, for all the wrong reasons. Relive their horrible start, Mel Rojas sucking what little life they had out of them in June, a waiver trade for the age...

Andy and Mike P. give the 1989 classic movie Major League the Movie Deep Dive treatment. Relive the best moments of your favorite baseball movie, learn scintillating facts about the cast and the shooting, and wait until you hear about how they used to figure out how fast pitchers were throwing. Seriously, it's insane. You'll learn fascinating stuff like: why was everybody wearing shorts and tank t...

Andy and Mike Pusateri are back with another deep dive into a great movie. This time it's Moneyball, with Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and...uh, Royce Clayton? You'll find out why Art Howe was so happy with the movie (he wasn't), how different the movie almost was, interesting facts about the cast and how it very nearly had a Billy Beane sex scene. Really. Andy picks the three mo...