Cubs After-Dark Column Asks Whether Fielding Needs New Limits
The short version
- BCB After Dark's October 8, 2026 post asked Cubs readers whether fielders should be required to remain in their positions.
- A reader poll found 57% would try to trade Matt Shaw, 26% would keep both Shaw and Pedro Ramírez, and 12% would trade Ramírez.
- The post carried a September 30, 2026 image of Dansby Swanson throwing during the National League Wild Card game at Petco Park.
- The column featured Ella Fitzgerald's 1969 live "Old Devil Moon" and a review of Peter Weir's 1974 debut, The Cars That Ate Paris.
The Cubs community feature BCB After Dark asked readers whether fielding needs new limits, after 57% of poll respondents backed trying to trade Matt Shaw.
The Chicago Cubs community feature BCB After Dark devoted its October 8, 2026 edition to a rules debate, inviting readers to consider whether defenders ought to be required to hold their assigned spots and whether the sport needs tighter limits on how clubs deploy their fielders.
The recurring feature presents itself as a free, casual hangout with no dress code and bring-your-own drinks, aimed at those up late or awake early, new parents and Cubs supporters overseas. Talk is permitted on baseball, music, films and anything else within site rules, with late-night readers getting things started and others welcome to chip in through the morning and afternoon.
An image attached to the post, credited to Matt Dirksen of the Cubs and distributed through Getty Images, captured Dansby Swanson in his No. 7 jersey making a throw from a kneeling position. The moment came from the National League Wild Card contest between the Cubs and the San Diego Padres at Petco Park on September 30, 2026.
A vote held the previous evening gauged opinion on possible trades involving Matt Shaw and Pedro Ramírez. Acknowledging that no one can know what a deal for either player would return, the author reported 57 percent of respondents in favor of attempting to move Shaw. Another 26 percent chose to retain both players, with 12 percent favoring a Ramírez trade.
For the music segment, the writer opened the Halloween season with a 1969 live performance by Ella Fitzgerald of "Old Devil Moon," a Burton Lane and Yip Harburg song from the musical Finian's Rainbow. The timing was inspired by Christmas goods already appearing on a department store shelf.
The movie discussion, meanwhile, examined The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), watched this week specifically because it is the first feature by Australian New Wave director Peter Weir, who went on to four Academy Award nominations without a victory. The reviewer is attempting bolder horror viewing this month while steering clear of the Saw franchise, having gotten through Suspiria (1977) a year earlier, and lists Weir's The Truman Show among personal favorites of the 1990s, reading it as a horror story of its own kind despite lacking graphic violence.
The film is set not in France but in a small Australian country town called Paris, where residents rig the roads to wreck passing cars and live off the salvaged scrap. Survivors go to a local hospital used for disturbing medical experiments and the removal of organs, while feuding gangs patrol in menacing custom vehicles styled as monsters. Terry Camilleri, cast 15 years on as Napoleon in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, plays Arthur, a passenger whose brother is killed when their car is caught in one of the traps. The mayor, played by John Meillon, keeps Arthur out of the hospital and installs him in his own home as a son, having previously taken in young women as "daughters."
Arthur has no say in the arrangement and no realistic exit. The car gangs decide who may leave, the town of a few hundred residents offers no public transit, and Arthur cannot drive himself out: years earlier he struck and killed a pedestrian, and although he was cleared of manslaughter, the episode left him with a deep-seated terror of getting behind the wheel.
As a critic, the author writes, Weir shows little interest in the gangs or the hospital atrocities, concentrating instead on Arthur's psychological wounds and the mayor's power struggle with the gangs, material that fills the middle hour of the 90-minute film, while cinematographer John McLean gives the picture a polished look. Even so, the stretch between the opening crashes and a closing 15-minute battle is described as slow going and not especially interesting. Gory moments are confined to a few staged images of wreck victims; the spiked "hedgehog" car, on which one character comes to grief, is held back until near the end, and the other monster vehicles make a weaker visual impression. Weighing the film against George Miller's original Mad Max and The Wicker Man (1973), the reviewer says it lacks the latter's suspense because the town's dark secret is evident to viewers almost immediately, though the opening fake-out, built to resemble a cigarette commercial, won the writer over.
