Getting across home plate has been a big problem for Derrek Lee, tagged out here, and his teammates lately (Image via Getty Images).

I’m sitting in the Wrigley Field pressbox, fortunate to have the windows closed on a cool afternoon. Right before me, Derrek Lee has just struck out leading off the bottom of the eighth against the Pittsburgh Pirates as the Cubs try to make up a one-run deficit.

Life is tough these days if you follow the Cubs. The whole atmosphere has the scent of a 90-loss season, or worse, in the making. Heads should roll, but whose? Lou Piniella’s managerial contract runs out after this season. Other contracts, like Carlos Zambrano’s and Alfonso Soriano’s, have years to go. Everything just doesn’t feel right.

Especially the interminable slumps of Lee and Aramis Ramirez. Through all the typical chaos and nonsense associated with the Cubs, they’ve been as close to steady as possible. Yet the abject failure of the lineup to produce is traced back to them, and the typical streakiness of Alfonso Soriano. And you can only conclude that their tenure as a run-producing unit has come to an end.

That’s not unusual. It’s the cycle of baseball, like the four seasons. Groups of hitters are acquired and placed in the batting order. They produce for awhile, depending on circumstances. And then their “freshness” date expires, much like old food. The combination of Lee, Ramirez and Soriano are now stale.

The Cubs actually are fortunate they got enough out of them. Ramirez, one of the best clutch hitters in modern Cubs times, and Lee have been middle-of-the-lineup Chicago staples together since 2004. Soriano joined them as leadoff man in 2007 before being dropped down in the order two years later. The majority of such combos probably don’t enjoy such a long run.

Going back, the famed Sixties threesome of Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ernie Banks had the longest run in franchise annals — basically 1961 to 1970 before Banks’ bad knees and old age finally claimed him. But Santo and Williams only had two more effective seasons as Cubs hitters before they went bad. Nothing can be forever in baseball.

The most powerful top-to-bottom Cubs lineup in memory was the 1984 NL East champions. Six players had 80 or more RBIs. Remember the Daily Double of Bobby Dernier and Ryne Sandberg, followed by Gary Matthews, Keith Moreland, Leon “Bull” Durham, Ron Cey and Jody Davis? They proved to be one-year wonders who led the NL in runs scored, but couldn’t put the Padres away in three playoff games in San Diego. That order was largely injured and/or less effective in 1985. They were a year older and not productive in 1986 and then they broke apart.

The Cubs won the NL East in 1989 with a lot of home-grown kids. Sandberg was the only holdover from ‘84. Andre Dawson had come aboard two years earlier, winning the NL’s MVP award after signing a blank contract during the collusion era. But Dawson had a sub-par year due to knee surgery in ‘89. His dip in production was made up for partially by rookie of the year Jerome Walton, runner-up Dwight Smith, golden-boy Mark Grace and Shawon Dunston, all products of the Dallas Green’s temporarily-revived farm system. Joe Girardi and Rick Wrona were rookie catchers also home-grown, but they did not hit much.

Young and enthusiastic, and productive. The ‘89 Cubs also led the NL in runs scored. But by 1991, Walton’s great break-in season was just a blip on a mediocre career, Smith was on the bench, Grace had settled in as a high-average hitter with only a hint of power and Dunston advanced no further in his abilities. That lineup spoiled quickly.

Nine years later, the Cubs tried to capture lightning in a bottle two years in a row by re-signing 40-year-old Gary Gaetti to play third base after he gave the Cubs a late-season boost to the 1998 NL wild card. But the Gaetti deal was symbolic of yet another lineup that had a one-year shelf life. That productive ‘98 batting order devolved into two successive years of 95 or more losses. Gaetti was retired by the time a new century rolled around.

Lee-Ramirez-Soriano was constructed to win quickly in 2007-08. They got the job half done, winning the NL Central, but also getting swept six in a row in two Division Series against the Diamondbacks and Dodgers. Once a veteran lineup fails that miserably in the playoffs, the chances of a future breakthrough are not great.

It’s an hour or so later after I penned the first word here. The Cubs have lost 4-3, stranding the tying run on third with just one out in the ninth. Ramirez has said the players have to get it done between the white lines. They’ve always said that. But often it’s just not possible. You know how hard it is to bite into stale bread? That’s how hard it is to win with a lineup that just doesn’t work anymore.

The cryin’ shame is young, invigorating blood from the farm system, so long deferred in its arrival, is knocking on the door. But the Cubs can’t clear out the pantry to re-stock fast enough. The first couple of years of the Ricketts family ownership will indeed be challenging.

Corey Patterson in his first exile stop as an Oriole; care must be taken to make sure the same kind of fate does not happen to Starlin Castro (image via Wikipedia).

When the record of Starlin Castro’s big-league career is written, you hope the three-run homer he belted in his first big-league at bat on Friday (May 7) isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to him.

And then a bases-loaded triple two at-bats later. Who’s penning this  — a second-rate scriptwriter?

How can Castro top that act? Slug a walk-off homer in Game 7 of the World Series?

Many posts ago, I argued against a promotion of wunderkind shortstop Castro to the Cubs this season. Given the franchise’s record of impatience, and mishandling and over-hyping top prospects, I figured too much time in the minors was better than one day too less.

But now that Castro’s here,  as a very young catalyst to a sluggish lineup, keep your emotional distance, inhabitants of Cubs Universe. Don’t expect too much of him, don’t tout him as a savior, leave him be to get his feet wet in the majors.

You know what happened to Kevin Orie, Corey Patterson, Felix Pie and a slew of others. Too much attention on one guy as be-all, end-all of a position-prospect-challenged farm system. Throw in impatience with the likes of Lou Brock and Oscar Gamble, both promoted well before their time in the 1960s. Or the memories of Shawon Dunston, touted as the next Ernie Banks before he even knew what the original big-league Shawon Dunston could be like.

Castro worked the count deep before he sliced his homer to right at Great American Ballpark. Let the kid take pitches  the majority of the time and he’ll convince me he wasn’t promoted four months too soon. Let Castro not throw the ball all over the ballpark, and I’ll know he’ll be able to handle his position defensively and not toss games away. Let him be happy and not feel the weight of the world on him in pressurized Wrigley Field, and he’ll prove he can be a winning ballplayer.

From the Cubs’ perspective, the move was necessary. The lineup with Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez, middle of the order staples since 2004, is dangerously close to moving past its expiration date much like milk that’s about to sour. The Cubs, like the White Sox in recent years, have too many power types in the batting order. They desperately need some dash and speed.  Fresh blood is desperately needed.

The infield defense will be tightened up if Castro proves not to be an error machine. Ryan Theriot was game but below average defensively with his range and arm at shortstop. The Riot was the proverbial minor-league shortstop who was an acceptable big-league second baseman. Now as he moves into his 30s, he can provide dependability at second while Castro does the acrobatics at short.

The bottom line is keeping expectations away from Castro. Over-eager fans called Oldsmobile Park in Lansing, Mich. in the summer of 1999, urging that Patterson be promoted directly from Class A to the Cubs, if only to use his speed in center even if he couldn’t hit yet. Two years earlier, Orie was supposed to plug a 25-year-old hole at third left by Ron Santo’s departure. And way back in 1962, a befuddled Brock didn’t know whether to swing full for power, as suggested by one coach, or drag bunt, as counseled by another, during the Cubs’ wacky College of Coaches scheme.

If Castro hits .260, shows some improvement at the plate, works hard with hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo and is somewhat steady at shortstop, that’s a fabulous rookie year. No more, no less.

His memorable debut was the bonus. There’s a lot of people who can screw up this kid, on and off the field, and in the stands. Make sure this time history does not repeat itself as it has for the team as a whole for 101 seasons.

Erin Andrews and Sweet Lou Piniella gab about baseball in Milwaukee in 2008.

The damn story had legs that wouldn’t buckle.

It’s more than a week later and I still get questioned on asking Cubs manager Lou Piniella why he didn’t bunt the tying run to third base when his team was scuffling for runs. The question was legit, agreed 99 percent of those I encountered. Piniella’s offended reaction wasn’t, in the eyes of that vast majority. Remember, I recently posted that the hubbub was much ado about nothing, that yelling and screaming are as part of a baseball as scratching and spitting. I wasn’t upset at all with Sweet Lou, whom I knew would be hot and bothered after a tough loss.

But I wonder if I would have gotten a more calm and cogent answer from Piniella if he had been in his cramped manager’s office or if I would have saved the question for the next morning and taken him aside on the field.

That’s the problem with covering coaches and managers today. You can’t really get close to them anymore. They’re stage-managed to the 10th degree. Piniella dislikes the interview room in which he must do his post-game talks. There’s a heavy element of public speaking here that is not good for a baseball lifer who likes to hold court in his office. Piniella told me his office was his “comfort zone” back in 2007,  and he was torn away from it to accommodate the slew of TV cameras and reporters toting audio recorders who otherwise can’t be accommodated in his little cubbyhole.

Almost all of sports is carefully managed by media relations and marketing types. It’s the way of the world now with so much money and so much image to be protected, and too many media swarming about even with the massive cutbacks of the Great Recession. That takes away from the relationships that enterprising reporters could build up one on one with authority figures. And in turn, it stems the flow of information and explanations that fans, investing so much of their time and money in teams, deserve on a daily basis.

Here’s what I was able to glean from Piniella the past couple of years on the handful of occasions I could get him aside on the field or in the dugout. Why was he so agitated at Chicago media questions when he had to deal with a far larger — and tougher — pen-and-mic crowd in New York? Because we had gotten “inquisitive.” Why did he leave Carlos Zambrano an extra inning or two in a 2007 game against the Reds to be belted around for seven runs and 13 hits? Because Zambrano’s arm slot, which had dropped too much too consistently, could only be corrected via live pitching, not in the bullpen. And why was he pushing Sean Marshall out of the rotation in 2007 in favor of retread Steve Trachsel? Because he had questions about Marshall’s endurance.

Some questions are best asked in a quiet, more genteel manner off to the side or in the privacy of a manager’s office. Even in a group, the cozy surroundings of an office seems less confrontational than the grilling of a lecturn facing camera lights.

The trend of stage-managing  managers, coaches and front-office execs promotes either angry coaches or innocuous, bland answers. Does anyone in Chicago know what Lovie Smith really thinks?  Has Gar Forman ever let down his guard?  I bet Joel Quenneville would be entertaining in a smaller group in his office, but we’ll never know with the Blackhawks becoming a big, big deal.

I’ll let you know about one proud holdout of the old system. Before and immediately after Piniella’s higher-decibel response to me, the Washington Nats’ Jim Riggleman twice invited me into his visiting manager’s office at Wrigley Field. We had a nice 30-minute chat before one game. Minutes after Piniella’s voice-raising, Riggleman confirmed he would have called for a bunt based on the hitter and situation. “Rigs” and I have a longtime rapport going back 15 years when he sat in Piniella’s Cubs seat. We used to have post-batting practice chats in his office about once a homestand. The subject wasn’t always baseball. Riggleman believes a primary job of managers and players should be helping publicize the game. After all, everyone has to sell it given the economy and consumer choices.

Too bad Bobby Cox is retiring after this year. The Atlanta Braves’ longtime managerial guru does not like press conference settings. He prefers holding court on the bench for 30 to 60 minutes before each game. We ink-stained wretches learned a lot from Cox in homespun fashion over the decades. And I’m sorry Jack McKeon is retired, but he couldn’t last forever. “Trader Jack” was another one-on-one guy.

As you can see in the accompanying photo, there are exceptions to all access rules. Erin Andrews can get her one on ones with Piniella and most other big shots. National media affiliation and, well, personal presentation have their advantages.

I’ve dieted down, but I could never look and sound that good. Ah, back to the press conference-scrums to gauge a manager’s mood on whether he can be asked about bunting or hitting away.

Little Cubs Field

I felt like a kid again picking up a plastic bat to swing at Denny Garkey’s strikes from 40 feet away. I had no range in the outfield, but it didn’t matter. Neither did the fact I couldn’t get the ball from the mound to a Little League catcher on the fly throwing out the first pitch of the 2010 season. Good thing the kid can block the ball. Un-intentional grounding, Jacque Jones-style.

On a cool Monday night in Freeport, Ill., some 130 miles northwest of Chicago, I played ball with local entrepreneur Garkey; my daughter, Laura, dressed in a pinstriped Cubs shirt, and her boyfriend Trip, the best athlete of the bunch. When Garkey pitched to Trip, manager of the fabulous Glen’s Diner in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood, he served ‘em up good. Trip, nearing 30 and not having played since youth leagues, kept powering ‘em over the left-field wall.

The ballpark was Little Cubs Field, and its environs can’t magically turn your arm into Kerry Wood’s on that 20-strikeout extravaganza back in 1998. But it gives you the best baseball feeling, stripping away all the politics and egos and money that envelop the game today. You experience an absolutely pleasant feeling, throwing a ball around in a cozy little park in a small city with frame houses and really good people. Americans at their best.

Garkey and us should not have been there if all logic had prevailed. No way could Garkey, with no more than $100 in the bank for this crazy project at all times, have built a miniature replica of Wrigley Field, complete with red-brick walls, classic green scoreboard and clock, and ivy. But he did, and that’s why Little Cubs Field, starting its third season, is the real Field of Dreams.

The lil’ stadium is no prop carved out of a cornfield for a movie, then turned into a tourist attraction. That “Field of Dreams” is some 50 miles up U.S. 20 from Freeport in Dyersville, Iowa. This is a true story worthy of a Frank Capra treatment, of ordinary folks pulling together to craft the improbable. It is us at our best, showing that we have each other’s back, making something out of nothing. The arch-conservatives — the “I Got Mine” crowd — call it volunteerism, forgetting a responsible role from both government and private industry. I call it Americanism, and we need a lot more of it to get out of the jam we’re in.

Tinkerer Garkey, a red-blooded baseball fan, desired to build a small-scale replica of Wrigley Field that would serve as a youth-baseball center, and a place where people could just play ball and have fun. Sounds like a multi-million-dollar project. But the economy was starting to nosedive in the area in 2007-08. Now there’s nearly 20 percent unemployment in the nearby industrial center of Rockford. There’s a huge Chrysler plant east of Rockford, so when that company caught the industrial version of a near-fatal illness, the whole area suffered.

In that environment, the love of baseball and the Cubs in particular helped Garkey in Hollywood-style fashion. Retired bricklayers laid the 18,000 bricks in the replica wall, free of charge. Ironworkers built the scoreboard, gratis. Trucking companies hauled in the material without invoicing Garkey. The Cubs themselves donated flags and pennants, and some ivy to plant in the wall. The team has endorsed the project. It is called Little Cubs Field, not Little Wrigley Field, because Garkey did not want to infringe on the name of the present William Wrigley, son of last Wrigley to own the Cubs.

Instead of ghost 1919 White Sox appearing out of cornfields in the 1989 movie, real-life greats have trod upon Little Cubs Field. Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins and buddy Lee Smith, who should be in Cooperstown, have visited. Ron Santo showed up in the opening season. Harry Caray’s widow, Dutchie, was another pleased attendee.

Garkey truly has the community energized. A local sports memorabilia dealer opened his store across the street. Playing off the Cubs-in-miniature angle, he erected a replica of the famed “EAMUS CATULI” sign that hangs on a rooftop club across Sheffield Avenue from Wrigley Field. On Garkey’s Opening Night, the sign unveiled the duplicate of the code on the Sheffield sign: “AC164101.” That means after a Cubs achievement — one year since the last divisional title, 64 years since the last World Series appearance and 101 years since you-know-what in the Fall Classic.

Garkey’s story is so good I’m proposing a book on how he built something from nothing. The odds are against such a tome being published, but, hey, they aren’t as great as the ones Garkey faced when he started out. Dreams do come true in the harsh reality of the 21st century.

Do travel out to Kevin Costner’s movie creation in Dyersville. But on the way, you must stop at Little Cubs Field. You’ll knock a lot of years off your birth certificate and some cares off your daily burdens, if just for an hour or so. You’ll be in the heart of what made our country so great in the first place.

Lou Piniella walks away from a discussion with an umpire in 2008 (image via Wikipedia).

It is the baseball “money shot” in the eyes of video producers from the 200th market to ESPN: Lou Piniella erupting in his post-game news conference.

Been there, done that, the most famous being in 2007 when Sweet Lou responded to my question, ” What isn’t working?” with his famed “You saw the damn game!” blowback. Most recently, on April 28, when I asked why he didn’t have Mike Fontenot bunt Marlon Byrd over to third to get the tying run in scoring position, Piniella retorted, “Bunting what? With a left-hand hitter up?…What kind of baseball are you playing? Really, what kind of baseball do you play?”

That became the most replayed video clip and sound bite all over TV, radio and the internet along with reams of published quotes. For the next 24 hours, I got e-mails and people stopping me all over Wrigley Field, all saying the question was appropriate, all reacting in astonishment to Piniella.

What a waste of energy. It all was much ado about nothing.

Remember Tom Hanks’ classic line from “A League of Their Own?”  “There’s No Crying in Baseball!” his Jimmy Foxx-manager type yelled at a trembling female ballplayer. Well, Ralph Branca cried after serving up Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in 1951. But tears are not advisable. What is ingrained in our grand ol’ game is yelling and screaming. If you haven’t been yelled at by a manager, exec or player in three decades of covering the game, you haven’t been bar mitzvahed. You are not yet a man!

Sweet Lou told me in 2007 he’d rather be known as a smart baseball man than a colorful baseball man, the latter for all his verbal and physical histrionics dating back to his clutch-hitting days with the Royals and Yankees. At the same time, Piniella suggested the lords of the game want to squeeze out all the color from the game. Managers used to yell all the time. There was no such thing as political correctness.

Media sat in manager’s offices and heard off-color comments and earthy analysis in the laughin’, scratchin’ and spittin’ style. Now the skippers are staged-managed in press conferences, carefully looked over by handlers nervous about any awkward comments. Piniella himself said he was yanked out of his “comfort zone” by doing a press conference in a too-cozy interview room rather than his office. He has never blown up in his office or pre-game on the bench, holding court.

Media across the board must be hard up if they have to wait for Piniella to raise his voice and make an issue out of him getting a bit chippy with a reporter. It happened all the time back in the day. Leo Durocher almost fought with scribe Jerome Holtzman, an ex-Marine.

At least the latest Piniella verbiage had a short shelf life. Too bad Tiger Woods’ confession of 121 affairs during his marriage or another Milton Bradley bird flipped to the fans did not take place on April 28.

The advice here for sound-bite mongers is look somewhere else. Piniella is not his vintage volcano about to blow. Wife Anita has mandated he calm down. More interesting stuff is available every day from a thousand originating points. If the producers are waiting on Sweet Lou, they might have a long vigil.

Lou Piniella will be visiting Carlos Zambrano at a different time in the game this season. (image via Wikipedia).

For those reading this post distant from Chicago, you cannot believe the lather the city is in with the switch of  Carlos Zambrano to the eighth-inning setup role that no other Cub has been qualified to fill so far in 2010.

You’d think they were coming to take Lou Piniella away to a rest home, with all the fans and media who believe Sweet Lou is nuts for making the change. Of course, so few are well-versed in baseball history, so they don’t remember the long line of prominent starters being switched to the bullpen (yo, Dennis Eckersley and John Smoltz) or relievers being called upon to start.

At the same time, the frothy crowd does not realize the implications of Zambrano filling a role not addressed coming into the season — and which was so apparent to anyone with half a baseball brain analyzing the Cubs. Big Z lumbering in for the eighth should be a nice shot across the bow to new Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts. You want to compete with the big boys, you’ll have to spend like one and you cannot slap on a budget ceiling.

The Zambrano move is the end of a chain of falling dominoes that has padlocked Ricketts’ wallet on the issues of the payroll and flexibility of GM Jim Hendry to trade. Let’s start from the beginning, in the middle of the last decade:

–The Cubs fail to fulfill World Series predictions when Kerry Wood and Mark Prior get hurt, and the Cubs cough up a sure wild-card berth, in 2004.

–Cubs president Andy MacPhail confirms in July 2005 what many had long suspected: he spends far less than he needs to, he prefers that his front office be understaffed, had the wrong philosophy for player development in over-emphasizing pitching, and that he is too arch-conservative to run a successful big-market baseball team. A year later, his Tribune Co. masters conclude the same thing and ask him to resign at the end of the 2006 season. Meanwhile, constant Wood and Prior injuries cause the Cubs to crater by ‘06.

–Trying to correct MacPhail’s penury in one fell swoop, his successors mandate massive overspending on free agents starting with Alfonso Soriano in the winter of 2006-07. The honchos had no choice with the post-World Series White Sox a viable alternative for fans and sponsors, and few position-player prospects in sight to fill holes in the lineup. The strategy might have worked if the Cubs, dramatically improved in winning back-to-back NL Central titles in 2007-08, hadn’t been swept out of the playoffs in six straight games both seasons rather than reaching a Fall Classic, and thus making the hundreds of millions spent palatable.

–In attempting to fix a perceived flaw of too-little left-handed hitting after 2008, with the team for sale and Tribune Co. in bankruptcy, the Cubs are forced to jettison closer Kerry Wood (along with the heartthrob Mark DeRosa) because he’s due for a big raise, and in order to sign Milton Bradley. Wood’s departure leaves a hole in the bullpen, new closer Kevin Gregg doesn’t fill it and Bradley disrupts the entire organization with his wacky, anti-social behavior.

–Ricketts closes the deal to buy the Cubs after the 2009 season, but is saddled with big debt-service payments into the foreseeable future. He has to raise ticket prices in a recession to fund improvements to Wrigley Field. There is no extra money to boost the payroll and either sign a free-agent reliever or trade for the same.

–The Cubs open the 2010 season with too many inexperienced relievers to bridge the innings gap from the starters to Carlos Marmol, finally promoted to closer. Veteran lefty John Grabow, overexposed in the eighth, is pounded. The predictable occurs with a series of eighth-inning collapses in the season’s first two weeks.

–Desperate times call for desperate measures, so Zambrano is tapped to fill the setup job. Ryan Dempster already had been a failed closer. Carlos Silva and Tom Gorzelanny can’t handle late-inning relief. Randy Wells is fine where he is as a sinker-balling-type starter. Big Z wins by process of elimination.

It’s difficult to tie MacPhail’s old-fashioned, skinflint philosophy to Ricketts’ own financial power or lack of the same. But past is prologue in baseball, the most timeless game of them all.

I hope Ricketts, a good person along with his fellow owner-siblings, is learning a lesson. You can apportion untold millions to buy a team and spruce up antiquated facilities. Yet for every dollar you budget, you better add at least another 25 cents. There will be cost overruns and cleanups of past mistakes that go back more than a half-decade. You cannot freeze expenditures or raise money from the fans, who are at the breaking point about what they can continue to afford to pay.

The brand-new Cubs players lounge and weight room, along with the fresh paint all over the ballpark, were years late in being instituted. Urinals in the men’s room with dividers on each side were necessary for the bashful among us who cannot abide the famed troughs.  The promotion of the new bison burgers and hot dogs, some of the meat coming from the Ricketts family bison ranch in Wyoming, was a nice touch, particularly on the first Thursday of the year when the media had a free lunch with the entire new menu, including bison chili, available for taste-testing.

But first, above everything else, is attention to the roster. Patchwork and desperation is not the right way to run a flagship franchise like the Cubs. Next season, Tom Ricketts ought to know his funding has to be properly lined up before  Hendry, or whomever, starts filling out the player ranks.

The Twins are full of good, even colorful people like manager Ron Gardenhire (image via Wikipedia).

Michael Cuddyer calls spanking-new Target Field in Minneapolis “pristine.”

I’ll term it something better — good as gold. It will separate the Minnesota Twins from the rest of baseball’s pack.

The Twins already know how to develop players just about better than anybody. They have had some of the hustling-est rosters — the famed “pirahnas” as dubbed by Oswaldo Guillen — and one of the cagiest managers in Ron Gardenhire. Now Target Field will enable the Twins to keep most of the home-grown players that had beaten a steady exodus out of town going back to the Calvin Griffith ownership days.

The Twins are used to doing a lot with a little. Now they’ll have a lot more. That’s all they need to do it as well as the Yankees and Red Sox, if not better.

And to think this franchise was targeted for contraction by the Lords of the Game nearly a decade ago.

Signing Joe Mauer, the reigning American League MVP, to a virtual half-a-career contract is the biggest first step. But the Twins will be nuclear-armed by baseball standards if the constant sellouts at Target Field and attendant revenue from suites and sponsorships enable them to keep the talent core around Mauer.

They can build upon their quality player development system that’s the envy of bigger-market teams like the Cubs. What other franchise has grown four 30-homer, 100-RBI types in Mauer, Cuddyer, Justin Morneau and Jason Kubel? Hey, the Cubs haven’t developed their own 30-homer, 100-RBI player that they’ve kept since Billy Williams 50 years ago. Thrown in leadoff man/center fielder Denard Span, and the majority of the lineup is home grown.  This time, the cash flow from the new ballpark will enable the Twins to prevent history from repeating itself as stars ranging from Rod Carew to Bert Blyleven to Torii Hunter have been let go once they qualified for market-level paydays.

Stability and loyalty are the Twins front-office bywords. Former GM Terry Ryan did not bail on the team when contraction was threatened even though the scouting maven would have been a great addition to any franchise. I wondered why Andy MacPhail, fresh from a run as a “boy wonder” Twins GM who won two World Series in 1987 and 1991, did not recruit the Twins player development experts for the Cubs when he took over as Chicago team president in 1994. MacPhail simply responded that none of the scouts and farm-system officials wanted to leave. They liked the family atmosphere. Indeed, the turnover has not been heavy in the front office.

Ryan’s successor, Bill Smith, wondered the other day what he’d do with a Yankees-sized payroll. It probably wouldn’t compute. The Twins are used to working smart in lieu of tapping into a king’s ransom budget. They won’t need a New York or Boston-level payroll if they keep developing their own players but don’t have to automatically let them go after six years.

The most positive aspect of the Twins’ ascendancy is the decency of the people involved. Ryan answered his own phone and gladly held court at his pressbox seat. Smith seems not ego-filled. Gardenhire is a funny guy and  just crusty enough if you misfire on a question. The entire clubhouse is marked by approachable players. They’ve mimicked the Atlanta Braves’ longtime successful strategy of emphasizing character in the people they hire.

It’s about time a center of power in baseball shifts to the Midwest and down-to-earth people. Maybe now the Twins won’t be lost in the “ESPN Flyover Zone” (or “Eastern Seaboard Programming Network) that forgets the middle of the country and makes it appear the Yankees and Red Sox are the only teams that matter.

Carlos Zambrano has to work too hard because of his high pitch counts (image via Getty Images).

I never thought I’d see the day when a big-league pitcher said he’d be fine throwing 120 pitches, start after start.

But, then again, you never know what’s going to come out of Carlos Zambrano’s mouth, or is swishing about in Big Z’s noggin.

The plain fact, which Zambrano seems to ignore, is that too many pitches and too many walks over too many seasons are taking a toll on his valuable right arm, one the Cubs thought was worth a $91 million contract in 2007.

Beyound his histrionics for which he is most noted, Zambrano has been periodically plagued by shoulder and back problems along with cramps in his arm and fingers since ‘07.  That same season, he began dropping his arm slot much more frequently as if to protect a diminished fastball. All seem to coincide with pitch counts that frequently ran into the 120 range before seven complete innings were finished. The totals have necessitated earlier-than-desired removal from starts and surely have crimped Zambrano’s ability to become the consistent 18-to-20-game winner worthy of his stuff.

On April 15, Tax Day, Big Z taxed his arm like never before. He struggled through five innings against the Brewers, allowing eight hits, four runs (three earned) and three walks while striking out seven. And threw 121 pitches in the process, most he tossed since a 125-pitch game (seven innings, two runs allowed) on July 25, 2008 against Florida

Amazingly, Zambrano said he was fine with the massive workload.

“One hundred twenty-five pitches (he first miscounted) in five innings,” Zambrano recounted. “I was feeling good. They hit too many foul balls today. It was 3-2 many times. I felt good. One-hundred twenty-one pitches for me. That’s good. I’m in better shape. I’m ready to go 120 every time if they need me to.

“Sometimes I’ll go seven innings, 120. Sometimes I’ll go 100 pitches in eight innings. It depends what kind of swings they have that day. It’s nothing I can do about it.”

But his manager can do something about Zambrano at that pitch count – send him to the showers. Lou Piniella was going to take him out anyway after Zambrano suffered cramps in his calf and index finger in the fifth. He also had cramps in his arm in 2007 and 2008 – leading to earlier-than-desired hooks by Piniella — that were attributed to lacking enough potassium.

Zambrano’s traditionally high pitch counts were greater than the star-crossed former Cubs duo of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior.

In one 2006 game, Zambrano passed the 120-pitch mark in the seventh while pitching a no-hitter. Then-Cubs manager Dusty Baker would have had to take him out despite the budding hitless gem, but right fielder Jacque Jones misplayed a fly ball in the sun that was credited as a double, making the hook academic.

Zambrano helped his previously shaky conditioning by dropping 15 pounds in the off-season. But he has to go much further. He must alter his style to get quicker outs,  a la Greg Maddux, and not run up pitch counts. If he doesn’t change, he’ll be punching himself an early exit from the majors. At 29, he should be in his prime. Recent developments suggest he’s closer to the decline than anywhere else.

Big Z is fooling himself if he believes a slimmer physique can better handle his high pitch counts. The body may be toned, but the arm has too much mileage on it.

The clock is ticking on Zambrano faster than he realizes.

Henry Aaron (left) and Ernie Banks, shown at Banks' statue dedication in 2008, were both on duty in 1971, the year of George Castle's first of 40 straight Cubs openers (Image via Getty Images).

The surest evidence that life is too short is presented in the feeling that I’ve just forged my mother’s handwriting in a note excusing my absence from Mather High School to sneak off to the Cubs home opener against the Cardinals on Tuesday, April 6, 1971.

And on Monday, April 12, 2010, I would have attended 40 Wrigley Field “lid-lifters” (a 1950s newspaper slang term) in a row.  My “Diamond Gems” radio show co-host, Les Grobstein, has got me beat, though. He has 44 in a row going.

Might as well keep the streak up ’till I can’t make it anymore. Why did Cal Ripken, Jr. keep his string going? Because he could do it and he enjoyed it. Same with me, although I still can’t fathom how fast the decades have whizzed by.

I still feel it’s just yesterday that I arrived at Wrigley Field around 9:30 a.m. for a first pitch four hours away, finding only a seat in the shaded right-field lower-deck grandstands. I paid $1.75. Of course, I made the rookie mistake of not bringing gloves. The chill morning was under 39 degrees. My fingers grew so stiff I could not keep score, scrawling just the name “Brock” in the visitors’ part of the scorecard before I gave up.

Trying to get a few suns’ rays, I ambled down to the box-seat wall as the Cardinals warmed up. Some smart-ass hollered at outfielder Matty Alou: “Hey, Mateo, how’s your brother “Gee-sus?”

Fortunately, the giants of the game made sure I didn’t freeze too long. This contest was the only season opener when future Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Fergie Jenkins dueled each other. They pitched to form both in performance and endurance, locked in a 1-1 tie going into the bottom of the 10th. Then another Cooperstown-bound fella, Billy Williams, broke it up with a one-out homer off Gibson. Gametime: One hour, 59 minutes. They don’t make players like that trio anymore — and that inaugural opener in the Bench Jockey annals still remains my favorite. Other eventual Hall of Famers on the field that day were Ernie Banks, Lou Brock, Leo Durocher and Red Schoendienst. The two third basemen, Ron Santo and Joe Torre, should be in Cooperstown, but mysteriously are not.

Through the ensuing decades I’ve seen some strange sights and run into the most interesting people at Cubs home openers.

In 1973, we were raving lunatics when Montreal Expos closer Mike Marshall, who seemingly liked to wiggle out of impossible jams, loaded the bases in the ninth inning against the Cubs in a tie game. We were begging for, as broadcaster Jack Brickhouse liked to implore on the air then, “any ol’ kind of a run.” Santo was replaced as a pinch-runner at third by veteran utility infielder Tony La Russa, the 25th man on the roster. Marshall issued a bases-loaded walk. La Russa scored the run in his only game as a Cub. It is a moment La Russa probably likes to mentally submerge, as he has been so closely identified with the Cubs’ top blood rivals, the Cardinals and White Sox.

Two years later, in 1975, the opener was delayed two days because of a nine-inch snowstorm on April 2. Big mounds of snow still remained outside Wrigley Field. In the 37-degree air, the fans acted like they were at a December football game. One wild-eyed guy threw ice balls from the right-field bleachers at Cubs outfielder Jerry Morales.

Then, in 1978, a record opener crowd of 45,777 showed up. Some 8,000 people were standing, blocking aisles or sitting on laps. So many people showed up in line before dawn the Cubs opened the bleachers at 8 a.m. I waited until chaos erupted at the front of the line, then blended into the maelstrom to get admitted quickly and claim my accustomed right-field seat. With 5 1/2 hours to kill until gametime, the crowd, which had left countless items of outerwear behind just inside the bleachers, got restless. They began throwing food back and forth from left field to right field. Two fans rumbled in the blocked-off center field bleachers.  Cubs outfielder Larry Biittner finally ended the long morning and afternoon with nine-inning homer against the Pirates.

Fast-forward to 1994. Cubs outfielder Tuffy Rhodes had the day of his life with three homers off Mets ace Doc Gooden. Throwing out the first ball and singing in the seventh inning with Harry Caray that day was First Lady Hillary Clinton. Amazingly, I walked right up to Clinton in the pressbox with no Secret Service interference. Famed for being a childhood Cubs fan in suburban Park Ridge, I asked Clinton when she had last attended a Wrigley Field game. She responded, “The 1984 playoffs.” Hmmm. Several million fans applied for tickets in a lottery in ‘84. But Clinton, wife of a governor of a small Southern state who hadn’t been around Chicago for the previous decade-plus, got in. Must’ve been her Whitewater connections.

Like Rhodes, Opening Day impressions can be false. Kosuke Fukudome belted a dramatic game-tying homer in the ninth against the Brewers in 2008. Fukudome mania swept Chicago as a result. Six months later, the Japanese import couldn’t crack .260 for the season and was  Lou Piniella’s controversial choice to start in the ill-fated Division Series against the Dodgers.

The gap between 1971 and now is both cultural and economic. The Cubs no longer sell the cheese sandwiches, milk and cigarettes on the ‘71 concessions menu. The 40- and 55-cent concessions items now cost between $4 and $7. Tickets have inflated far more. That $1.75 grandstand seat, along with the $1 bleachers, have been hiked more than fifty-fold.

But no matter what the cost or change in culture, for good or worse, Opening Day is the ultimate comfort food. The long season begins again with all the inevitable surprises waiting. And only one more decade to 50 in a row.

The Ernie Banks statue outside Wrigley Field (image via Getty Images).

Finally, the Cubs are honoring their history, even if they did it backwards.

I’ll be thrilled when ol’ friend Billy Williams gets bronzed via a statue outside Wrigley Field on Sept. 7. Should have happened years ago. A lot more should have happened years ago in honoring the Cubs’ all-time greats. It’s a proverbial better-late-than-never situation.

That’s the end result of fans as owners. The Williams statue was the idea of the Ricketts family. And that shows class. None of the Ricketts are native Chicagoans who were around when Williams played.  But in their time in the Wrigley Field bleachers, they obviously were a quick study, absorbing the stories of the Cubs’ legends from old-timers.

So now the player statues outside Wrigley Field — Williams and Ernie Banks — will outnumber that of a broadcaster — Harry Caray. If the franchise had its priorities right over the decades, Caray wouldn’t even have a statue. Or there would be one of Jack Brickhouse ahead of Caray. Brickhouse was the Cubs’ TV announcer for 35 seasons; Caray for 16.  Caray earned himself a statue in 1999, a year after his death, because in the dearth of contending teams and compelling players through much of his tenure, he became bigger than the team. Plus Jim Dowdle, the Tribune Co. broadcasting-division honcho who went out on a limb to hire Caray back in 1981, was in charge of the Cubs by the time the statue was commissioned. Brickhouse, who died six months after Caray, was out of sight, out of mind to Dowdle. Brickhouse has his own statue, but it’s exiled to Michigan Avenue just outside Tribune Tower, where he worked for the better part of two decades in the 1940s and 1950s.

When Banks’ statue was erected early in 2008, Henry Aaron spoke at the dedication ceremonies. The Hammer claimed the statue was 10 years overdue.  How any team exec could not commission a likeness of Mr. Cub ahead of  Caray is beyond comprehension, but such was the state of Tribune Co. corporate politics and Cubs bread-and-circuses in the Nineties.

Now Williams gets his just due. With the scheduled construction of the Triangle Building just west of Wrigley Field to house team offices and perhaps a Hall of Fame in the next few years, the statue could find a permanent home here, not far from the Banks statue.

The team can do even more to honor its history. They so far lack an Alumni Association, a staple of small-market teams like the Brewers and Rangers, but strangely absent in a franchise so rich in history. Alumni Association members could connect with each other again in person or via the internet. They’d do appearances and special events, which would be a hit all over the Midwest and in Arizona, wherever Cubs fans congregate.  Endorsing the Alumni idea in 2007, ex-closer Randy Myers suggested former players could tap into the Cubs’ medical staff via this kind of connection.  The Alumni idea was explored in the early 1990s, and the Cubs even staged a kickoff party for the concept. I recall 1960-vintage  first baseman Ed Bouchee attending.  Then it was abandoned just as quickly.

A team Hall of Fame in the Triangle Building should be extensive given the amount of memorabilia available. Since the Cubs probably televised more games than any other team in the video era and have been on radio since 1925,  an interactive audio-visual exhibit should be commissioned that should be second to none in the major leagues.

The Cubs can also expand the former player presentations at the annual Cubs Convention.  The same 1969 and 1984 Cubs are invited back year after year, decade after decade. But team history is not limited to these ol’  reliables.  I cannot tell you how many former Cubs I’ve encountered who ask how they can get invited to the Convention. For instance, who in the front office remembers Dick Ellsworth, the last Cubs lefty to win 20 games? Ellsworth had a 2.11 ERA in 1963, lowest of any Cubs starter since World War II. How ’bout George Altman, a true gentleman who was the first regular African-American outfielder in team history in 1959?  Big George, a spry 77 and conducting internet projects for a living, considers himself a true Cub even though he lives in suburban St. Louis.

It’s also great to see the Cubs not remaining chintzy on retired numbers after No. 31, for Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux, was taken out of circulation last May. Used to be the strict qualification for a retired number was Hall of Fame membership and the majority of one’s career spent as a Cub.

The Williams statue is only a start. Past melds with present in baseball better than any other sport. And despite the lack of championships, the Cubs — through the players who so identify with the franchise — have a more honored past than many teams that are drunk with titles.