At least that team finished above .500.
This year, is now, officially worse. Like Milton Bradley at the end of last season, Carlos Zambrano has been suspended indefinitely after his little tirade in the dugout that got the normally robot-like Derrek Lee all pissed off.
We have Aramis Ramirez putting together a season that is so bad that historians are starting to talk. Derrek Lee went from being the best player in the NL for the last 4 months of last season to looking like an 80 year old man as he watches ball after ball slide past him into left field because he appears to have lost the ability to bend at the hips.
Soriano, one of last year's goats, has started to look pretty goaty again.
No body wants to watch this team...well, except to laugh at them. I have actually heard fans saying that they want to see this team lose because they dislike this team so much.
A typical Cubs fan.
I fully expect the Cubs will still have a relatively full ballpark for the next month and a half...but come the middle of August, Wrigley Field will become very empty and very quiet as fans abandon this once unabandonable (is that a word?) franchise.
We've seen it before in 2006. Cubs fans expect a winner now. Wrigley Field is not enough. As fewer and fewer games are broadcast nationally on WGN, the global appeal of the Cubs will also drop.
The attendance boom that started in 2003 didn't happen because of Wrigley Field or WGN...it happened because of winning baseball...and the Cubs have had a streak of good teams over the last 7 years that we haven't seen since the late 60's and early 70's. And the fans in this city expect a winning team...or attendance will drop.
The embarrassment of having a team with a $146 million payroll that is now sitting 9 game below .500 and has now fallen behind the Brewers in the standing is hard to deal with for the die-hard people out there...and the casual fans who use Wrigley as a local tavern will find a cheaper bar to sit in to watch and boo this team from.
So then we have to ask...what do we do? I have already said that the front office needs to change. Jim Hendry must go. Could Jim Hendry be the guy that turns this thing around? Yes, possibly, but the truth is, someone's head needs to role here.
If you want to read a really well balanced story about Jim Hendry as GM, to a look at this story by Bruce Miles. This is one of the best, well researched, stories that Miles has ever done, and that's saying something as I consider him to be the best of all the Cubs beat reporters right now.
As Aisle 424 reported yesterday, the Ricketts family has sent out notices to season ticket holders about a "Season Ticket Holder Appreciation Day" on July 8th...where season ticket holders can come to Wrigley, run around the field and meet with Cubs executives. Whoopee! That will get me to come to the ballpark more frequently. Blah!
Do I have the answers? No...not really. But I do know people don't like this team and they don't like most of the high priced talent (and I use the word talent loosely) on this team.
This is embarrassing.
