I can’t let the passing away of Rod Beck yesterday go unnoticed on my blog.  While a majority of his fame came when he was a reliever for the Giants, the two seasons he was in Chicago made him my favorite Cub (and Megan's too).  What’s not to like about a fat guy with a Fu Manchu and a mullet that made Cubs fans forget all about the previous reliever who went down in flames – Mel “No Mas” Rojas?  Heck, any fat guy in Chicago who has athletic success is bound to have a huge following (see Refrigerator Perry, Bobby Jenks, Ted Washington).   Megan and I adopted him as our “mascot/favorite player” for the Cubs and he wound up having a one-name moniker in our house – BIGRODBECK (and you have to say it real fast).  Any time he came into the game, BIGRODBECK was there to make the save.

His signature stance on the mound was to bend over slightly while looking at the catcher, right arm dangling back and forth as if the muscle had just become detached from the shoulder.  Depending on the camera angle and how far down he was hunched, sometimes his belly blocked your view of the catcher’s signals.

It was appropriate that he also spoke my favorite line from a baseball player ever.  When asked about his size, he responded “I sure don’t think of myself as a fat person, just someone who carries extra weight.  I’ve never seen anyone on the DL with pulled fat.”

He was found dead in his bed at the hitting-a-tad-too-close-to-home age of 38.  I truly hope the toxicology reports don’t come up positive but he did have a history of substance abuse.  It was heartbreaking to hear how Ken Caminiti died (a mixture of cocaine and opiates) a few yeas ago at an also-much-too-early age and I'd hate to see yet another ballplayer perish the same way.

I hate to bring his name even into my blog, as my hatred for this jerk knows no boundaries, but I found out about Beck’s death while watching the Cubs and White Sox game yesterday.  The White Sox crew was doing the game and of course that includes the Worst Announcer On Earth – Hawk Harrelson.  It’s bad enough to listen to his never-balanced views of White Sox Always Good / Everyone Else Bad but when they somberly announced Beck’s death, Darrin Jackson had some really nice words to say.  In typical Hawk form, since Beck was never a White Sox player, he quickly said “I never met him” and couldn’t even offer a verbal bouquet before going back to the game action.  For those of you Sox fans who still tolerate that assclown, he showed his true colors yesterday.  Maybe he said something nice about him later, but I was so steamed as his blowing off of the moment that I couldn’t see straight.  If he did offer an olive branch, I still won’t retract what I think of that no-talent hack.

Regardless, R.I.P. Rod Beck, and thanks for the fun memories.  You’ll be missed.