Chicago Cubs Baseball

There’s two things that assure us the advent of a new Chicago Cubs baseball  season is upon us:

• Pitchers and catchers report on schedule.
• The inevitable talk of Alfonso Soriano moving from his lead-off spot in the Cubs batting order begins.

As anticipated, both have come to pass.  A week ago today the first signs that another major league baseball season is approaching when Chicago Cub pitchers and catchers showed up in Mesa, AZ, for the first day of spring training.

And quicker than you can say, “Pulled hamstring,” Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella once again began his annual ritual of teasing Cubdom with the thoughts of  Soriano batting somewhere down in the lineup.

Since Soriano first donned Cubbie Blue, and coincidentally Piniella first as Cubs manager,  the annual cat and mouse game of “Where will Soriano bat?” began.  Now in both their third seasons with the team, it’s become as much of a formality of the Cubs spring training regimen as calisthentics.

There is, however, a distinct difference between the two: spring training is a reality.  To expect to see Soriano anywhere in the Cubs lead-off slot is the stuff dreams are made of. Like, for example, a World Series championship after 101 years of waiting.

As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  With Piniella’s journey into “Fool me a third time” territory  simply call it boring.

It took exactly two days for Piniella to begin the annual tease.  “We’ve got a combination of Derrek [Lee], [Milton] Bradley, [Aramis] Ramirez, and I’m not going to [rule] out the possibility of throwing Soriano in that mix, either,” Piniella told the Chicago Sun-Times.

By Thursday, Cubdom comes to find out that ol’ Lou was just pullin’ our leg - again.  Kind of.  Sort of.

”I never said that we were going to move him out of there,” Piniella said Thursday. ”I said that we were going to take a look at the ‘possibility of.’ ”

Translated: Soriano is the lead-off hitter till hell freezes over,  the Chicago Cubs win a World Series or Lou either retires or gets fired.  With Lou’s certain refusal to move Soriano from a role he’s ill-suited for, my money’s on either of the latter choices.

And that’s as certain as spring training.