Chicago Cubs Baseball

Forget about Ted Lilly’s throwing arm for a second.  Put aside any thoughts about a suspect bullpen.  And don’t even think about another year without a World Series championship.

There’s plenty of time for those and a hundred and two other questions regarding another Chicago Cubs baseball season.  Besides, those and any other thoughts you might concoct form a second-fiddle ensemble compared to the real news that came out of the Cubs’ camp last week.

In response to yet another accusation from former Cub Milton Bradley regarding the city of Chicago and the organization itself, Chicago general manager Jim Hendry set a personal best for admission of error when he called signing the troubled outfielder “a mistake.”

”Obviously, it was a one-year situation,” Hendry said of Bradley. ”I brought him in to try to help us from the left side. Obviously, it was a mistake, and he didn’t get the job done. So you move on from your mistakes and you make life better for both sides, and that’s what we did.”

That’s easy for him to say.  To think it only took six months from the time Hendry suspended Bradley in mid-September to just last week for him to admit “a mistake.”

What’s even more perplexing - even beyond the fact that media outlets like ESPN continue to give Bradley a forum to prattle on - is that it seems Hendry was the only person in the entire baseball universe that seemed mystified by the outcome of the signing.  I wonder in Hendry’s heart of hearts if he truly believed that Bradley’s personal baggage would somehow be left behind at the Dallas airport?

The admission of error is just one case of too little, too late for the Cubs general manager.  I’m just thankful I wasn’t the sap that was following Hendry around the crap tables while he was concocting the 2009 club.

Bradley, for whatever “mistake” he proved to be, was but one of the many off-field errors turned in by Hendry last season.  Does Kevin Gregg and Aaron Miles ring a bell?  How about letting Mark DeRosa and Kerry Wood  go to free agency or not re-signing a productive Jim Edmonds?

If Bradley was Hendry’s “mistake” were all the rest of his general manager faux paux’s merely oopsies?

‘We moved on a long time ago — in St. Louis — and knew that would be the end of Milton’s days here,” Hendry said. ”We’re going to put it behind us today once and for all. That’s why I’m saying what I’m saying. It’s upset our organization and our players, our manager and our staff.”

Meanwhile Cubdom, the innocent bystanders to Hendry’s mistake after mistake, can only hope that’s the last it hears those words uttered.  After all, in baseball it’s three strikes and you’re out.