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.