Malcontent or misunderstood? A hater or a player? A masher or simply a mismatch?

Those are but three of the questions that have centered around Milton Bradley since he signed a three-year, $30 million contract with Chicago Cubs baseball in January.  And it doesn’t appear these inquiries of the Cubs biggest off-season acquisition will be going away any time soon.

Two months since the signing and nearly a month before the 2009 major league baseball season begins, the question of Bradley’s character remains upfront and center - at least in the notepads of the beat writers covering the Cubs.

Not that Bradley has given anyone a reason to continue to question his past.  It’s just another case in the Wacky World of Sports where past antics preclude a person or team’s present.

A haunting, if you will.  Like not winning a World Series Championship in 100 years.

And for that reason - if the only reason - Bradley and the Chicago Cubs seem like the perfect fit.  On one hand you have a player who can wipe the slate of a 10-year career of controversy clean with a single season of sweet harmony and an even tastier plate of 20-plus taters with a few dozen RBIs a side.

On the other, we have Chicago Cubs baseball, a franchise so mired in its own post-season funk that expectations of winning a World Series title has been replaced with getting past the first round of the playoffs.

It’s a pairing that only the Baseball Gods and general manager Jim Hendry’s recession-proof checkbook could concoct.  Baseball malcontent meet the game’s Lovable Losers.

It will remain to be seen whether Bradley’s new lease on life continues with the Chicago Cubs or if he’ll become the latest occupant of manager Lou Piniella’s doghouse.  Because, if we’ve learned nothing else about Piniella in his two years as Cubs manager, is that a happy club house is as important to winning.

Ask Michael Barrett, Matt Murton, Jacque Jones, Cliff Floyd, Scott Eyre, Jason Marquis and possibly even Mark DeRosa.  Each found their way into the infamous Piniella doghouse and each was only able to escape with a one-way ticket out of Chicago.

”When you have a reputation, people expect that reputation to continue to resurface,” Piniella said about personality comparisons between himself and Bradley.  “Milton, all he is interested in is helping us win some baseball games and playing baseball. Could there be a little eruption along the way? Possibly. But I’ll tell you, I like what I’ve seen. He works hard. He takes it seriously. And he gives 100 percent. That’s all I can expect from players.”

For now, any and all of Bradley’s past transgressions have been absolved - at least publicly by the Cubs brain trust.  But given the track records of both himself and Piniella, if I were Bradley, I’d keep at least one suitcase packed - just in case he’s shown the way to the doghouse.