Last Wednesday, Chicago Cubs center fielder Marlon Byrd (below) made every highlight reel with his no-look circus catch. It may not be the top catch by a Cub outfielder in recent memories, but it’s a close second to Reed Johnson’s amazing stab in 2008. Coincidentally, both catches came against the Washington Nationals.

“It was all luck,” Byrd said afterwards. “It was one of those last-minute, sun-is-in-your-eyes (situations). I try to get to a position and stick your glove out. If you get a ‘W’ it’d be a lot better.”

The Cubs lost to the Nationals that game, 3-2.

Do I hear 102 years and counting?

It’s very likely for the short and long term, considering the group of overpaid and under-performing players Cubs GM Jim Hendry has managed to assemble. But that’s old news to an equally as ancient of an issue.

For proof, one has to look no further than the Chicago bullpen where the $18 million set-up man, Carlos Zambrano, is practicing his trade these days.

Or look at the three Cub players who make up the heart of the lineup. At a club 2010 payroll of $144.3 million, up over $9 million from a year ago, the core of Cubs hitters (Alfonso Soriano, Aramis Ramierez and Derrek Lee)  have managed to combine for a .210 batting average, 10 home runs and 36 RBIs.

If that wasn’t troubling news in itself, consider AAD (Alfonso, Aramis, Derrek) will collect $46.75 million this year, or roughly one-third of the Cubs player payroll.

Of the three, whoever would have thought that Soriano would be the most consistent hitter of the three?  Well, he is at least for this week.  And despite his offensive production this year, Soriano’s shoddy glove work has probably given up at least half of many runs as he’s driven in.

And these three aren’t getting any younger.  At 32, Ramierez is the kid of the group with both Soriano and Lee at 34 years old.

So the question that needs to be asked – and should have been asked when these three were penning their names to long term contracts – is how many good swings do they have left anway?  For Hendry and Cubdom, one would hope many more than what they’ve shown thus far this year.

But that’s alot to ask out of Hendry.  While the Cubs’ GM has shown the occasional flash of common sense in his choice of players, there’s been more misses than hits.

Like the Cubs hitters.   Hendry, in fact, has shown the same amount of foresight in his general manager capacity as BP executives have demonstrated in planning for an oil spill.

Only Lee’s contract is set to expire after the 2010 season.  While a class act and an overall good guy, Lee has long been regarded as one of the game’s most overpaid players in terms of dollars spent for production.

Unfortunately for Lee and the Cubs offense this year, the biggest smash he’s had in 2010 came during spring training when he crashed through a chair – while sitting on it.

But there is good news.  If the Big Three’s bats eventually do get going, this could be a year worth remembering.  Maybe then, the new owners will not only reward Lee with a renewed contract, but a chair that can hold his weight.

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.

Seldom are a team’s fortunes determined by what transpires during the course of those first few games.  Thank goodness that’s the case for Chicago Cubs baseball.

With today’s 3-1 loss to Cincinnati, the Cubs dropped to 2-4 overall and have looked every bit the part of a sub-par team.

All the question marks developed during spring training, Chicago seems to have forgot to leave behind.

The bullpen, which was the biggest source of doubt entering the 2010 season, has done nothing to alleviate those fears. With four of its seven pitchers with two years of experience or less , the bullpen has been borderline atrocious – having had a direct hand in three of the Cubs’ losses.

The offense, meanwhile, frankly has been offensive.  As in pee-yew. And this time there’s no Milton Bradley or injuries to blame.

In the six games, Cub hitters have accumulated 37 hits, scored a grand total of 18 runs and have stranded 37 runners on base, with 25 of those coming in two of the three losses to Cincinnati.  If not for the eight home runs from seven different players, the Cubs could easily be looking at an 0-6 start.

One can only imagine what doldrums the Cubs offense might be in without new hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo.  Wait.  The offense is in the same place as his predecessors, Von Joshua and Gerald Perry, had it.

And while I’m pointing out the Chicago Cubs opening week deficiencies, I’d be remiss without writing that Alfonso Soriano still can’t field, Geovany Soto’s best year is likely behind him and Carlos Zambrano shouldn’t be allowed to ever pitch an opening day ever again.

Other than all the above it’s shaping up to be yet another – unfortunately- typical Cubs season.   Then again alot can change in the remaining 156 games.

If you answered no, you’d be correct.  For what you don’t hear is the beautiful sound of silence.  And what a pleasant melody it’s playing.

For the first time in a long time, Chicago Cubs baseball is readying itself for a new season without the expectations, distractions or controversies that have become baseball’s version of March Madness.

Maybe it’s the Arizona sunshine.  Maybe it’s the promise of a new season. But the Cubs are playing baseball – yes, baseball – with a peaceful easy feeling that manager Lou Piniella hasn’t enjoyed since his arrival three seasons ago.

Good for Lou.  Good for the team.  And good for the Cubs faithful following.

Despite the modest success the Cubs have enjoyed under Piniella, one thing is certain – none of it has come easy.

Since coming to Chicago it’s been nothing short of an uphill task for Piniella, the Cubs and the organization itself.  None of it, I might add, was or has been through Piniella’s doing.

The Cubs manager, entering his fourth season, inherited a club that finished 66-96 and dead last in the National League Central.  And if stripping the “lovable losers” tag off the Cubs’ jerseys wasn’t a task daunting enough, Piniella also has had to contend with a stubborn lead-off hitter (Alfonso Soriano), a contentious starting pitcher (Carlos Zambrano) and a personality afflicted outfielder (Milton Bradley).

And that’s just the short list for players.

On the organizational side, there was an ownership in bankruptcy court and the eventual protracted process of the selling of the Cubs.  And please don’t get me started on general manager Jim Hendry’s record-setting payrolls with nary a division series win to show for it.

Piniella has faced all this and more without a mere mention from me of the annual parade of “Cubbie occurances.”

Yes, the Chicago Cubs manager has deserved the peace and quiet of this spring camp. Enjoy it while you can, Lou.  The season starts in five days.

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.

Ex-Chicago Cub outfielder Milton Bradley is one of those such persons.

Barely pitches into the 2010 spring training schedule, Bradley put on his best – or worst – jilted lover face to give his former team some offensive shots he obviously couldn’t deliver while wearing a Cubs uniform.

In an interview with the New York Times last week, Bradley touched on his new team’s – the Seattle Mariners – 2010 potential.  But not without re-opening some of the wounds most fans of Chicago Cubs baseball would just as soon forget.

But that’s one of the many differences between the Chicago Cubs and Milton Bradley.  The Cubs and its fans have had over 100 years of practice of letting the past quietly pass. Evidently, for Bradley, eight different teams in 11 years is still part of his bitter learning curve.

Bradley’s arrival to Chicago and subsequently too long of a stay, was brought about by the Cubs need for a left-handed bat, and Bradley’s desire for that fat three-year, $30 million contract.  For better or worse (and the answer is now clear to all), it was the business of baseball at work.

And the world of baseball knew it was an ill fit, a mismatch, even before the ink on the contract had dried.  Everyone with a lick of common baseball sense – with the exception of Cubs’ general manager Jim Hendry and Bradley, knew this was neither a match made in heaven nor conceived in the bowels of hell.   It was simply a transaction that never should have taken place.

Milton Bradley is a big time bat for a small to medium baseball market.  But as his track record shows he’s not nor ever will be a ready-for-prime-time player.  Not for Chicago, not for New York or anywhere else where it demands a cool head and steady play on the big stage and the bright lights that accompany it.

He’s simply not wired that way.

Hopefully, last week’s comments will be the last from Bradley on the Chicago Cubs.  Hopefully, he’ll find the right tutelage with Ken Griffey Jr. and some inner peace with his new team – Texas Rangers North.

In this, the most disastrous season since 2006, the off-field and on-field Chicago Cubs have given its fans plenty of directions to point fingers.  From an incompetent front office to an anemic offense to just plain lackadaisical performances all around, the Chicago Cubs once again have resumed their place as baseball’s lovable losers.

Except, whether these Cubs are “lovable” is open to debate.  These aren’t your father’s Chicago Cubs.

In fact, this group of players assembled under the misguided hand of Chicago general manager Jim Hendry isn’t even close to resembling the 2008 ensemble.

You remember those guys.  That was the group that won a National League best 97 games during the regular season and for the first time in a long time, made back-to-back playoff appearances.  But most of all, when the 2008 Chicago Cubs took the field it looked and acted like a team.

As in T-E-A-M.

Thanks to Hendry’s off-season decisions instead of that we got this: a group of surly, selfish, overpaid, under-performing players whose only interests seem centered on individual statistics and getting away from Wrigley as fast and as far as possible.

Since Chicago Cubs baseball began its near-free fall in early May, with each passing month its become clear that a darkness resided in the underbelly of this year’s team.  And before more is read into that statement than intended, it has nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with attitude.

Step up to the plate, Milton Bradley.

Thanks to Bradley, the volatile Chicago right fielder has provided the perfect fodder for Cubdom’s ire.  Whether deserved or not, Bradley has become the poster child for everything that’s gone wrong in 2009.

Cubdom, as a rule is a forgiving lot.  Lord knows its fans have had decades of practice.  There’s just a few basic requirements, including playing hard and embracing the city that the player represents.

Bradley did neither of those this season.  Instead he chose to go his own path – like he’s done with every team he’s been associated with.   And for that’s he’s paying the price in the hearts and minds of Chicago Cub fans.

As such, the Cubs brass are stuck with a problem that will undoubtedly be harder to get rid of than it was to get. Bradley is not going to change.  Not this year. Not next nor during any length of time he has left in the majors.

The only thing that Bradley has accomplished this season is giving what’s left of interested Cub fans something to jeer about.

While Gregg undoubtedly will remain in a Cubs’ uniform through the end of this season, his days as the team’s closer unofficially ended Monday night.  Chicago manager Lou Piniella made the call following Gregg’s sixth blown save of the season, pushing the Cubs deeper into the National League’s playoff abyss.

Monday’s debacle was just the latest for Gregg in a season-long string of save opportunities gone awry.  And when the veteran right-hander wasn’t blowing opportunities, he seemed forever on the  edge of doing so.

Along with his six blown saves, Gregg also has accumulated five losses.  He could have more of both if not for late-inning Cub heroics that took him off the hook.

While I applaud Piniella for making the move, it was just another one of his managerial decisions that could be filed under “Too Little, Too Late.”  Like moving slumping underachiever Alfonso Soriano from the lead-off spot to sixth in the Chicago Cubs’ batting order.

In Piniella’s defense, it was a call he shouldn’t have had to make in the first place.

”Look, I can name a few of these, believe me,” Piniella said, following the 4-1 loss to San Diego. ”They all end the same way, with the home-run ball.”

Gregg’s struggles as a big-league closer isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.  Just last year the Florida Marlins made a similar decision regarding his role as the club’s closer.

In addition to compiling a 7-8 record, Gregg also led the National League with nine blown saves before being demoted.  Not exactly the kind of numbers that would warrant a one-year, $4.2 million contract.

One would think.  Somehow that didn’t stop Cubs’ general manager Jim Hendry from pursuing Gregg and bringing the franchise to the brink of another World Series-less season.

Which brings me to my point.  Despite his miserable performances, Gregg isn’t the lone culprit in this fine mess Jim Hendry hasn’t gotten the franchise into.  With each off-season or in-season move Hendry seems bent on dismantling a team once filled with promise.

Today, Kevin Gregg is either villain or victim, depending on one’s perspective.  And while it’s unlikely Gregg will be back next season, unfortunately, Chicago Cubs baseball is stuck with Hendry.

For one, the Cubs have proven they still have enough talent to kick the crap out of the also-rans of major league baseball.  As evidenced by Friday’s 17-2 drubbing of the Pittsburgh Pirates Triple A team, it’s good to know that a $140 million payroll can still buy mediocrity.

Another reason for optimism is the amount of young talent, especially among the pitchers, the Cubs have been able to parade out this season.  Thus far, the Cubs have used nine rookie pitchers, one shy of the franchise record from 1958 and 1962.

There’s at least some comfort in knowing the next time Ryan Dempster breaks his toe hopping the dugout railing or Carlos Zambrano finds another way to the disabled list, the Cubs have developing young talent that will serve them well into the future.

But most of all, Chicago fans can be thankful that they don’t have to wait till October for their beloved Cubs to fold. The choke came early this year, starting about a week ago in Colorado and followed them all the way to Wrigley.

There will be no agonizing this year.  The wondering whether “this is the season” the 101-year streak without a World Series championship ends is, simply put, moot.

Forget about another Central Division flag flying above Wrigley Field.  Don’t even think about who the Cubs NLDS opponent might be.  And the thought of a ticker-tape parade through the heart of the Windy City is simply out of the question.

Despite what you might read or hear from the players and the Chicago Cubs baseball brass, this disastrous Cubs season is surviving on life support.

Don’t believe me?  Think of this. When paid-mouthpiece and WGN baseball announcer Bob Brenly begins questioning this team’s heart you know you’ve got problems.

And when the Cubs’ manager feels he has to respond to the charge, it only can mean one thing: the problems on this team are as much internal as they are external.  As fans we only see them manifest themselves on the field.

”I’ve said all along I haven’t seen [a lack of hustle],” Cubs’ manager Lou Piniella said. ”We got few hits with men on base, and our pitching went bad in this stretch, too. Since Colorado, we’ve given up runs — quite a few runs. But I haven’t seen a lack of hustle.”

This is not a new phenomena.  As early as this April, Chicago Cub outfielder Alfonso Soriano began questioning this team’s desire.  And when the Cubs brass refuses to recognize or address the situation when there still was time, Cubdom ends up with a team that looks like this in August.

So Chicago sports fans be thankful.  Jay Cutler and the Chicago Bears take the field in four weeks.