If the Chicago Cubs are to move forward in 2010 they’re first going to have to get by their past.

For as much as Cubdom wants to believe in this latest version of Chicago Cubs baseball, the disaster of 2009 still lingers fairly fresh in most of its minds.

Sure, some of the faces have changed - there’s eight new players on the Cubs’ roster this year. But that means there’s 17 players coming back, all of whom were there for all or part of that sinking season.

The same could be said for the Cubs’ front office as well as its coaching staff.  With the exception of new hitting instructor Rudy Jaramillo, the men who steered the Cubs’ ship in 2009 still have their hands on the wheel and the engines at full throttle.

By Cub standards last year wasn’t all that bad, however.  The team put together its third winning season in a row and entered September with slim playoff hopes.  One would have to go back to the late 1960s and early ’70s to find that kind of Chicago Cubs success.

Which is why last year was so perplexing and is precisely the reason knowledgeable Cub fans can only look at the upcoming season with some trepidation and a whole lot of half-hearted hope.

While these last four years under manager Lou Piniella has produced a new kind of club, these are, after all, still the Chicago Cubs. Which, unlike any of the other big market baseball teams, leaves nearly everything open to interpretation.

In the Piniella era, the Cubs have worked hard to establish a new aura, much like a freshly fielded new franchise team.  The Cubs are steeped in tradition, yet still look a little uncomfortable in their new skins.

All the parts appear to be in place, still one gets the feeling that something’s still missing. It’s as if Churchill was speaking of Chicago Cub baseball instead of the Soviets when he said they’re a “riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma.”

Puzzling, yes, that a team with the third highest payroll in all of major league baseball isn’t considered the frontrunner in a relatively weak National League Central Division and an afterthought in the discussion of possible World Series contenders.

Perhaps baseball’s pundits see what we as Cub fans refuse to -  that change is more difficult to come by that it would seem.  And tradition and a big payroll just don’t buy what it used to.

In the meantime Cubdom waits, hoping this is the year the mystery of Cub baseball is finally solved.