Looks like Mrs. Eyre doesn't want to have to run 30 laps, either.Jim Hendry seems like a nice, earnest, guy. Sure he has some problems. He tends to fall down the stairs, he combs his hair with his hand and for his entire run with the Cubs, his bullpens have sucked.

But, he’s not cheap when it comes to finding the sucky bullpen talent. You can’t hang that rap on him. No sir. He gave Mike Remlinger $10 million to be hurt and/or ineffective. He gave LaTroy Hawkins even more than that to pour gasoline on Cubs’ leads and his own career, and yesterday he gave $11 million over three years to a guy who’s just glad to sign with a team that won’t make him run. Oh, this is going to be great.

It’s true, in his conference call, new Cubs’ lefty Scott Eyre basically said three interesting things. All of them dumb.

First, he explained he’d have to turn the TV off to talk on the phone. I guess this is because of his ADD, but I live in a house where you can’t have the toaster and the microwave on at the same time, and it doesn’t matter how what kind of deficit your attention is at. The circuit breaker doesn’t care.

Then, he said:

”I know Dusty and Gene Clines and Sonny Jackson, and I was told it’s a fun clubhouse. Dusty runs the same type of clubhouse he ran in San Francisco.”

Wait, didn’t Dusty’s San Francisco clubhouse have Jeff Kent and Barry Bonds trying to beat each other up? The only thing that’s gotten that kind of treatment in Chicago is Sammy Sosa’s old boombox, and the tough guys in the Cubs’ clubhouse waited until Sammy was on a plane to Miami before they did it.

”Larry [Rothschild’s] not going to make us run 30 laps before we pitch,” Eyre said. ”He said, ‘If you’re ready to pitch every day, you can do whatever you want.”

Ahh, good. Always seems like a safe bet to invest $11 million in a supposed athlete who picks a team where he’ll be asked to exert the least amount of effort.

In today’s Tribune, Seabiscuit’s Jockey writes that Larry Wayne Jones has deferred some money to help the Braves go after free agents and to possibly re-sign Rafael Furcal.

Take a whiff. Breathe deep. You know what that smell is? It’s that familiar bullshit that the Cubs spout through one of their corporate mouthpieces to get fans ready to be disappointed.

Even with Larry Wayne’s benevolent move (he’s taking some of his 2006 salary in Hooters’ wings in lieu of cash), the Braves are cash strapped this offseason. They, like the Cubs, are run by a gi-normous corporation and have a phony-baloney budget they make their GM stick to. I find it hard to believe they’re going to pony up the needed funds to keep Furcal, and commit more than a third of their budget to three guys (the Joneses and Furcal, and that doesn’t even take Mike Hampton’s deal into account).

The only way the Braves will get to keep Furcal is if the Cubs go on the cheap and leave whatever offer the Braves make to Furcal in the ballpark. I don’t think Furcal is worth nine million a year for four years, I certainly don’t think he’s worth ten million a year for five years, but I don’t really care what it costs. If you think Furcal can fill two gaping holes in your team (shortstop and lead-off) then you pay whatever the cost of doing business is to get him.

Honestly, if you think Scott Eyre is worth $11 million, then Furcal probably is worth $50 million. Of course, on that same scale, Derrek Lee is worth the gross national product of Luxembourg.

But when the Tribune makes a big deal out of an announcement by the Braves, it just kind of points out that once again, they’ll fall short of sacking it up and paying what they need to make the team better. And they’ll think they’ve convinced you that it was the “right thing to do.”

The right thing to do would be to kick your toothpick chomping nincompoop of a manager to the curb, along with his cadre of incompetents on the coaching staff, but they don’t have the guts to do that, either.

The easiest thing to do in baseball is to buy a player. You don’t even need to know how to write a check, you just need to hire somebody who knows how to write a check and have that person write it for you.

It’ll be interesting, should the Cubs be unable to add either Furcal or Juan Pierre, to hear if they use their budget as an excuse. It’s hard to cry poor when you’re tearing the 90 year old bleachers down so you can cram a couple thousand more dopes at $50 a pop into your ballpark.

It’s also interesting to hear Hendry say that after signing Eyre they might not need to add another starting pitcher because now Glendon Rusch won’t have to go to the bullpen. Great. Sounds like another bag of money just got socked away for the winter.