Some people just can’t let go. Or turn the page. Or find enough intestinal strength to pick up the needle and move it to another groove.
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.
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.
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 
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Cubs’ Hendry Finally Admits Bradley “a Mistake”
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.
”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.