season over...

it's official...14 games into the season, the cubs are eliminated from contention. derrek lee broke two bones in his wrist (and i will spare you the "baseball players are pansies, i swung pommel horse on a broken wrist" speech). the cubs were surprisingly good so far this year...but without lee, they become a team awaiting three stud pitchers to return to give them a legit shot at the playoffs and possibly a run into october to a team that will desperately try to stay above the pirates in the cellar.

you would think i would know better by now, you would think maddux returning to the kid we all fell in love with in wrigley 20 years ago would not have made me think "my god, if this is our fourth starter...it's gonna be a fun ride"...you would think the kids ripping big league pitchers like it's A-ball wouldn't have made me wonder if they were too young to know any better come september and october...you would think the cubs 9-5 start behind two legit starters, a rookie with promise, and a couple fill-ins would've triggered a token "fun start, out of it by june" response. you would think the century of proof of the futility of hope would have prevented my seeking the light at the end of the tunnel. but no...i had hope, the eternal damning hope of a cubs fan...i believed there was something magical about this season already, i believed maddux's return to form, the discovery that the cub's farm system can produce players and a lights out bullpen were signs that this was going to be the ride i'd waited for since that night in the basement eating spaghetti and watching that ball scoot past durham and the padres take our spot in the world series, the dream that i gave up on long ago...only to have it painfully revived a few years ago just in time to be destructed by one of those padres in a different color and to watch in horror as the cubs self-destructed the next two years.

this year was supposed to be different...this was our year, this was a chance to see the kids play, a chance for dusty to redeem himself, a chance to see what d-lee and a-ram could do with guys on base in front of them and solid hitting behind them. everything was going to come together this time...

all we asked was that it not happen to lee...we are used to dealing with prior and wood...but lee has never been on the DL before...and he is the one guy everyone in cubbie blue knew we couldn't lose. which of course means he is the first one to go down.

why must i have been born into cubdom? why do you torment us so god?