The One About Baseball

The baseball season is almost over, and while I'm not a huge fan myself, I felt it necessary to give a diehard fan the space to grieve the exciting but ultimately disappointing Chicago Cubs season.

Author

Conor Cawley
October 30, 2025

Brian Cawley, my younger brother, loves the Cubs and this season was particularly taxing, especially considering he recently married into a Brewers family. Subsequently, I wanted to give him a place to air his grievances about the 2025 season in a special, extended edition of Cawley an Audible!

Cawley an Audible – The 2025 Cubs: A Playoff Team That Won’t Break the Bank!

The Cubs concluded the 2025 season by losing Game 5 of the NLDS to the Milwaukee Brewers after failing to win the NL Central and beating the San Diego Padres in the Wild Card round.

You may have heard some pundits say a 92-win season and a playoff berth, despite losing the NL Central, is a pretty darn good season. Maybe you heard some folks wax poetic about how our fellas sure did put up a heck of a fight battling back down 0-2. And you might agree, thinking that this team has what it takes—with a little more elbow grease and a can-do attitude—to make a run at it next year.

Win or lose, the vibe at The Bank in Baltimore is always top notch. Source: Conor Cawley

False. In no world should a Cubs team that loses the NL Central to the Brewers and loses to them in the playoffs be deemed a success. In a league without a salary cap, there is no reason for a team that brought in more than $575 million last year lose to a team that brought in less than $350 million. If this were a one-off occurrence, sure, every team has bad seasons.

But before this year, the Cubs had missed the playoffs five of the last six seasons and had not won a playoff game in the past seven. How? Put simply, the Cubs ownership refuses to invest in players the way real contenders do. If you look at the amount of money each team made in 2024 and compare it to how much money went towards paying players in 2025, here are the top and bottom five teams:

The Cubs sit amongst some of the bleakest franchises in MLB. But at least a Marlins fan can get cheap tickets, a $5 beer, and a $3 dog. Meanwhile, Cubs fans are paying a king’s ransom just to get a moderate-to-heavy buzz going on a handful of $17 Old Styles. Sadly, this is the reality of the front office’s post-2016 methodology.

The Cubs ownership does not want to build a World Series caliber team, because it’s too expensive. Instead, Tom Ricketts’ goals are to “break even every year” and field a playoff caliber team, because once you make the playoffs “anything can happen.”

That’s right. The billionaire at the helm of the Cubs organization does not think investing more in the team will help and instead subscribes to the same philosophy as JP from Angels in the Outfield, just hoping it will happen. Bad news, Tom, the angels are busy up in Milwaukee helping the Brewers somehow win the NL Central four of the last five years despite playing their home games at a stadium that has all the pomp and circumstance of the Northbrook Court Shopping Center.

So, yes, it’s good to be back in the playoffs, but so long as the organization is being run like the Krusty Krab, Cubs fans better settle in for another long wait before their next World Series win.

Dad tips of the month

  • Don’t take it personal - Toddlers are mean, whether they want to be or not, but you’re the adult. Don’t be weird and take something they say personally, their brains won’t finish developing for another 20 years. 👶

  • When they’re sick, ditch the rules - I’m not saying you should let them run in the streets if they have a fever, but when the flu comes knocking, some extra screen time won’t kill anyone.👩🏻‍⚕️

  • Play relaxing games - I came up with a game this month called Waves in which I ruffle our duvet while she’s in the sheets, and it’s exhausting after like 2 minutes. It’s one of her favorite games. Don’t be like me. 😴

Comic Spotlight

Because I’ve been doing comedy in Chicago for more than a decade, a lot of my comic spotlights are for established comics with plenty of stage time. However, Bronwyn Galloway is a fresh face on the scene, only a few years in, and she is crushing it.

Her matter-of-fact delivery, her coy and clever writing style, and her genuinely likable vibe make it clear that she’ll be an established comic in Chicago in no time.

She’s also extremely active across the scene, hosting and producing shows like Trauma Dumping at the Lincoln Lodge and the Potato Mic at Burton Place, so if you’re looking for some great shows, you know where to find them!

What I’m consuming this month

Borderlands 4, PlayStation 5

There are few things better than playing a great video game and Borderlands 4 is a GREAT video game.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of playing this franchise, Borderlands is the king-of-the-mountain when it comes to looter shooters, essentially inventing the video game style 16 years ago.

I don’t care how bad the movie was, nothing could make me hate Claptrap. Source: Gearbox

With over 30 billion different guns (literally) and an endlessly creative approach to the first-person shooter medium, Borderlands 4 improves on the gameplay in every way, and I simply cannot get enough.

Beyond gameplay, though, Borderlands 4 is simply as fun as fun can be. The writing is hilarious, the storyline is compelling, the open world is expansive, and the characters — like my beloved Claptrap — are so damn likable that they make it emotionally difficult to press the “skip dialogue” button.

I have no “but” for this one either. Top to bottom, one of my favorite entries in one of my favorite franchises. If you don’t play this game, you are incorrect.

I bid you adieu for now

Adieu is such a weird looking word, and apparently it means “goodbye” in French, which is crazy because we already have “au revoir,” right?

I know we’ve been pretty sports heavy over the last two months, but I promise we’ll be back to some non-sports related content next month.

In the meantime, thank you for continuing to check out Conor Intelligence and, if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe with one of these fancy pink buttons!