Oh, this offseason is going swell!We’re Cubs fans, we’re used to being disappointed. It’s part of the job. It’s actually on the job description just above delusional and right under drunk. So when we all found out that Rafael Furcal had spurned the Cubs’ alleged five year offer to sign with the Dodgers for three that feeling in your stomach had that “oh, here we go again” tinge to it.

Rafael Furcal’s not a superstar, but we knew that going in. What he is, is a solution to not one, but two of the Cubs’ biggest holes. Now he’s the solution to two of the Dodgers’ biggest holes. Losing a player to another team isn’t that big of a deal. It happens all the time. It’s just that in this case, he was the Cubs’ Plan A, Plan B and Plan C. That sound you heard was Jim Hendry getting royally screwed (in his two biggest holes) by an inability (either his, his bosses’ or likely both) to pony up enough cash to get the one guy they really needed this offseason.

Now the Cubs will do, again, what they always do. Actually it’s a multi-step process, all of them bad.

1) They’ll make at least one panicked free-agent signing. Think Scott Eyre plus Bob Howry times the square root of Neifi Perez plus a billion. This one will be epic and lousy. I’d tell you who it’s going to be, but even I can’t conjure up a notion absurd enough to be accurate.

2) A trade for a player whose team doesn’t want him, who doesn’t really fill a need but costs more, has flashes of brilliance and flashes of Corey Pattersonitis. Hello Alfonso Soriano! When he’s good, Cubs’ fans will love him. That’ll happen about once a week. The rest of the time it’ll just be strikeouts, botched grounders and a startling inability to hustle.

3) More, lesser free agent signings that keep Ronny Cedeno and Matt Murton pinned to the bench forever. Cedeno’s future is cast in stone when the Cubs trade for Alfonso Soriano (and I’m telling you, this is now a certainty), he’ll be wasting away on the bench watching Neifi! and Alfonso bat 1-2 and the Cubs go 72-90. Murton’s future dies the minute the Cubs find the next Todd Hollandsworth. Dusty already doesn’t like John Mabry, so Hendry will have to try again. Hey, maybe it’ll be…Todd Hollandsworth?

The real losers in all of this, my friends, are we, the Cubs fans. We’re losers because every year we find a way to sort of believe they’ll do what it takes to win. Every year, right around this time, they remind us why they never will.

Guh.