Chicago Cubs Baseball

So much for a stroll to a third consecutive Central Division title.

Just three weeks into the 2009 season and Chicago Cubs baseball looks more like its on the brink of disaster than snapping a 101-year old drought without a World Series title.

Not that anyone in Cubdom needs to be reminded of that sordid piece of franchise history.  The only problem is that with each passing game Chicago fans are reminded that Cubs baseball is exactly what it is - an exercise in futility.

It doesn’t take a slide rule and a computer program to figure out how Cubs baseball arrived at this point.  The tougher question is does it ever find its way out of this century-long mess?

From nearly 30 years of ownership where baseball was treated as a secondary business venture to a continuing array of front office management missteps to an assembly of underwhelming, underachieving and overpaid players, it leaves little wonder why Cub baseball continues to wade in its own muck.

I’m smart enough to know that a week of bad baseball in April does not a season make.  But I’m also aware enough that this past week was not an aberration, but a manifestation of the two weeks of mediocre baseball leading up to it.

This was the week where the Cubs’ late-inning heroics stopped and the fortunate bounces went the opposite way.   Or to put it more bluntly, the Cubs luck just ran out.

Once the smoke cleared and the mirrors were replaced with a clean shot of reality, the picture Cubdom and myself included didn’t want to see is becoming crystal - and painfully clear.

This team at this point in the season is not very good.  And I’m not even sure if this year’s edition is as good as the Cubs of 2008.

It would be unfair to point to a single player or one segment of the Cubs as the culprit behind their first slump of the season.  Although free-agent acquisition Milton Bradley would be a good place to start.

At $10 million a year, Bradley’s first three weeks has produced exactly as many hits as ejections - one.  He actually may have been tossed more by now if not for an aggravated groin that has kept him out of the majority of the Cubs games thus far.  And if that weren’t enough, the volatile outfielder is slowly starting to shed his skin, now picking fights with the Chicago media.

When a team is trying to overcome its own frightful legacy, it’s the type of distraction it can do without.  But don’t blame Bradley.

If any one person in the Cubs’ organization deserves credit for this latest mess, it’s general manager Jim Hendry. Chicago and Hendry knew what they were getting when they signed Bradley - a temperamental, oft-injured outfielder.  He also knew what he was trading away when Mark DeRosa was sent to Cleveland - not only a loss of offensive production, but also one of the most versatile players in the game.

I could be wrong.  Maybe the Cubs have all the ingredients to take that next step to shedding its own ghosts.  But a hard look at this group of 2009 Cubs, and my better angels tell me differently.