Could you imagine Heyward playing for Dallas Green or Billy Martin. Guys who truly wanted to win. Not spew out mandated PC praise. The gag order will whittle down and in the coming years ex Cub teammates will start telling the truth about this guys disastrous 7 years here .

Doubtful. Bought drinks.

Listening to Holmes ask David Ross what it meant to have Heyward on the team was excruciating. I wasn't expecting Ross to rip the guy, but Holmes' line of questioning made it almost impossible to say anything but meaningless praise. It is really quite the accomplishment for a player to be a complete albatross -- the worst contract in franchise history -- and yet come away with nothing but accolades from the team and the media.

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Jon Greenberg (The Athletic) 8-9-22 on "The Speech", then Heyward's Cubs career.

Heyward isn’t the only person to speak. And it was guys like Kyle Schwarber and Zobrist who came out after the delay and won the Cubs their rings. But in a season that began with trying to calculate Heyward’s value and nearly ended with a negative answer, there was no sense fighting this narrative. Everyone has their role and Heyward’s was as a teammate

Heyward was marketed as an all-around baseball player, a sabermetrics darling for his skills on defense, baserunning and contact percentage. (No one knew at the time Heyward would become famous for groundballs to second base.).

Heyward should be sending Ben Zobrist half his salary for saving him from fan abuse had Zobrist not won the WS for them. If they had not won, and they are very lucky to have done so, Heyward would be the face of the franchise's failure and would no doubt have been run out of town a long time ago. The championship took the heat off. And he had virtually nothing to do with it.

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Fascinating tv broadcast couple minute talk between Boog & Coomer. Coomer has consistently on the Score and radio broadcasts blasted "over the top" weak swing grounders. But, as a general principle. Never any names. So on the night Heyward news breaks B & C go into great detail on the "over the top" weak swing grounders. Now it's pull grounders. Boog this very night says data proves pull grounders by left handed hitters with modern defenses are the least productive hit balls according to data. Jeez wonder who they were talking about?

Over a year late.

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Go Cubs!!!!