Uhh...Carlos?  Hank?  Can you take that somewhere else, I've got a simulated game to towel snap for the next 20 minutes.  Thanks.It’s a balmy 32 degrees today and icicles are falling off the house and smashing to the ground below (the neighbor’s pug better look out our he’ll look like Ming the Merciless at the end of Flash Gordon), so what better day than today to crank out our first Cubs Report of the year?

For those of you who are new to these, let me catch you up.  Periodically (whenever I get around to them) I take the time to take a look at each of our heroes and see how he’s doing.  Early in the year I tend to be optimistic about their chances (if not really optimistic, I’ve learned to fake it) and later on, as reality sets in…well, let’s worry about that when the Cubs are out of the race this year (probably by Memorial Day). Later on in the spring, we’ll bring you a full-blown preview of all 30 teams and where they’ll finish.  I’m not going to tell you where I think the Cubs will finish, but it rhymes with turd.

 For now, let’s just look at the players.

Derrek Lee: Lee started hot and stayed that way last year, setting career highs in batting average, home runs, RBI and times that an inning ended with him standing at second base, putting his batting gloves in his helmet and handing them to Gary Matthews to take back to the dugout.  His numbers would have made him a serious factor in any MVP race, his team’s performance left him lying on the couch throwing pretzel rods at an ESPNews press conference where Albert Pujols got the trophy and showed off his Juan Cruz hairline.

Can Lee duplicate his 2005 season?

No.

Can he still put up huge numbers, win another Gold Glove and make the Cubs look bad every day that passes without signing him to a contract extension?  You bet.

E-ramis Ramirez: E-ramis’ season went like this.  He signed a big contract in the spring, didn’t get a hit until June, didn’t make an out in June or July, fell face down on first base after pulling his quad and never got back in the lineup.  He ended up hitting .302 with 31 homers and 92 RBI and he started at third base (across the field from Derrek) in the All-Star Game.  If he stays healthy, he’s a legitimate candidate to win a batting title.  If he keeps pulling muscles connected to his crotch…well, it’s going to get really, really old.  Defensively, all of the strides he made in 2004 kind of went out the window.  E-ramis is at his best going to his right and making longer throws.  He moves to his left like he’s trying to miss the school bus and when he has time to throw, the fans in section 32 are as likely as Lee is to end up with the ball.

Ronny Cedeno: The Cubs spent the first month of the offseason chasing Rafael Furcal around (any highway patrolman can tell you how much he swerves) so they could give Ronny’s shortstop job away.  Eventually, they did what they always do (fail) and now Cedeno’s the undisputed shortstop.  Unless Dusty decides to go with Neifi Perez.  Guh.  Cedeno geared up for the season by hitting .350 in winter ball and giving his uniform number away to the new rightfielder.  Cedeno will wear Nomar’s old number five.  So at least E-ramis will have some company in the tub.

Todd Walker: The Cubs spent the winter investigating the market for Walker and found out it was overwhelmingly underwhelming.  So he’s still a Cub.  For now.  Todd can do something that few Cubs have been able to do in the last decade.  He can get hits while standing in the batter’s box closest to first base.  He also draws walks and in his own words, “Can ground out to second base like nobody’s business.”  So what’s not to like?

Well, there’s this:
Who's ready to watch me shot put one to first?

Also, why do baseball players insist on wearing their “stirrup” socks when they have shorts on?  Just wear the white ones until you’re ready to put your freakin’ knickers on. 

Anyway, the stated reason the Cubs give for trying to send Walker along to another team is his defense.  He moves at a glacial pace to either side and you never know how he’s going to deliver the ball to first base.  He might try to underhand it from 40 feet, or he can break out his really neat (not so much) shot put throw.  Honestly, if the Cubs had any brains, they’d just put him in the lineup, bat him second and if they manage to get a lead late in the game, take him out and let Neifi run around over there for the last couple innings.  Alas…

Neifi Perez: Neifi is a folk hero in waiting.  Cubs fans want to like him.  He’s got a cool name, his brother is allegedly a popular singer in the Dominican (where he enjoys enchanting the puppies) named Rubby, and last year when he filled his role as a utility player, he did it very well.  The more he plays, the less he hits, and the less folk heroish we feel about him.  It’s the Hank White Theory.  If you play a little bit, contribute a little bit and seem like a nice, cool, respectable player, the fans enjoy exaggerating how good you are.  The more you play, the less you produce and the more fans are tempted to throw rotten vegetables at you.  In the two months in which Neifi batted fewer than 100 times he hit well over .300 both months.  When he played more, he hit less.  He’s still got a good glove and decent speed and he can play second, third or short.  He’s valuable.  But only in a backup role.  If Dusty Baker feels the need for all-Neifi all the time, the season’s already beyond salvage.

Jerry Hairston Jr.: Sometime last spring there had to have been a Cactus League ceremony that we weren’t invited to.  I’m sure it involved Jerry, Moises Alou, the second base bag and some poorly calculated Mapquest directions.  How else to explain that the Cubs could send away their worst baserunner in a decade (and given the Cubs who’ve run the bases in the last 10 years, that’s saying something) and replace him with somebody even more clueless?  Only the Cubs.

Hairston claimed that an ankle injury suffered during the 2004 season still hadn’t healed completely last year and robbed him of some speed.  I’m not sure what robbed of the ability to make three left turns on the bases, but I’ll go with this explanation for now.  Jerry played a lot of outfield last year, and we’re all hoping he doesn’t do that again.

Juan Pierre: The Cubs history of postseason brilliance has always depended on one thing. Having a leadoff guy who can actually get on base.  Kenny Lofton did it in a two month run to end 2003, Jerome Walton somehow pulled it off for most of 1989 and Bob Dernier stole hearts and bases in 1984, and…uh…guh, is that it?  After repeated reminders that Corey Patterson was not, had never been, nor ever will be up to the task of getting on base in more than three of any ten at bats, the Cubs finally gave up and traded for Juan Pierre.  In true Cubs’ style they were only able to pull it off with Juan coming off a season in which his batting average and on base averages both fell by more than 50 points each and his former employer was holding an ‘everything must go’ sale.  Whatever the reasons, Juan is a Cub, and is ready to become the first player in big league history to steal more than 70 bases in the same season in which he scores fewer than 50 times.  This is going to be great!

Pierre is going to go by the moniker “Lucky” (if it kills us) and honestly, with him supposedly getting on base in front of Lee and Ramirez, the Cubs offense should be light years ahead of last season in which they became the first team to have more homers hit than runs scored.  Huh?  OK, I made that up.

Jock Jones: Our buddy Len Kasper keeps pointing out that Jock Jones had roughly the same season last year that Jeromy Burnitz had in right field for the Cubs last year.  This would be great, except for the fact that Jeromy was 38 last year and Jock was 29.  When you’re in the prime of your career, what does it say for that career when your season matches up in line with the death rattle of Burnitz’s?

There is some thought that Jones will excel with the Cubs, given that he’s a fastball hitter and that the National League has a reputation as a fastball pitcher’s league.  We will for now ignore the fact that the reputation was probably last correct during Gerald Ford’s administration.

Jones is more athletic than Burnitz, though probably not quite as good an outfielder.  He’s also faster, though not as good a baserunner.  (And consider that Burnitz’s most famous baserunning play of last year was being the tying run a game against the Nationals and being picked off third base.)  But Jock does have a three year contract.

Great?

Matt Murton: Everything wrong with the Cubs was on display last year on August 19 when Murton, sporting very un-Cub like batting and on base averages of .339 and .412 was sent to Iowa.  Now it’s fun to listen to Dusty try to take credit for “easing” Murton into the lineup.  He points out that Murton hit only .261 against righthanded pitchers, compared to .380 against lefties.  Well, gee, he only hit .289 at Wrigley and .359 on the road.  So you might as well only play him in road games this year, too.  There’s a lot to like about Murton.  He struck out only 26 times in 140 at bats, while walking 16 times.  He struck out five times in 10 pinch hit at bats, and hit .331 in his non pinch hitting at bats.  Pinch hitting’s a rough game for anybody, much less a just off the bus rookie.  He’s got better speed than you’d expect from someone of his tint and his outfield play was…OK, fine, it was kind of awful.  But as a wise man once said, “Anybody can catch a fly ball in minor league and spring training parks, let’s see how you do when they add another deck to the stadium.”  Chances are Murton’s defense will be much better this go around.

Murton is almost assured of leaving a much more lasting legacy to the Cubs than the more famous guy he got traded with.  Well, except for this.  I mean who can forget this?
Cut it out, Nomar.  Don't go all David Cone on us right out here in the open!

But there’s always the fear that Dusty will take advantage of the inevitable 1-20 slump that every hitter will go through, to give Murton’s job away to somebody older, somebody fossilized like…

Marquis Grissom: At the press conference to announce Marquis’ signing, not only did the Cubs open a fake sarcophagus and unwrap him, but Jim Hendry mentioned that Grissom wasn’t their first choice for the Cubs’ fifth outfield spot.  Otis Nixon’s apparently not available.  His brother Donell, not surprisingly, is.

Grissom was a great player with the Expos in the early 90s but hasn’t posted an on base average of better than .323 since (get this) 1996, and hasn’t stolen more than 11 bases since 2000.  He has stolen 70 or more twice in his career, but hasn’t stolen 30 since 1994.  He’s not just past his prime, he drove away from his prime, then got on a plane, then a cruise ship.  The only thing he has going for him is his consecutive days lived without dying streak.  You know the kind that Dusty values so much.

John Mabry: In a move sure to upset both Bobby Hill and Cal Murray, the Cubs have given 17 to yet another player.  This time it’s the moderately talented John Mabry.  Mabry traditionally has worn 47 in his big league career but Scott Eyre has that number this year.  All Mabry has to do is challenge Eyre to a race and the number’s his.  He must not have thought of that yet.

Mabry bats lefthanded (though saying he “hits” that way is a little overly optimistic) and throws righthanded, which allows him to butcher not just first base, left and right fields, but also third base.  Though at least to this point, not at the same time.

The catching situation for the Cubs has never been better.  Not even in the two years that Tim Blackwell and Barry Foote were Cubs’ teammates.  Michael Barrett has made the US team in the World Baseball Classic and Hank White himself, Henry Blanco, will catch for team Venezuela.

Barrett won the Silver Slugger at catcher last year, proof that a) you don’t need to hit that well anymore to win it and b) that throwing the ball into left field to lose a game and not scoring from second on a double two days later won’t disqualify you.

Blanco changed jersey numbers from 9 to 24 at the All-Star Break and hit .318 to finish the season.  Will he keep it up?  Should he catch every day?  Why do both Mark Prior and Carlos Zambrano prefer pitching to Hank rather than Michael?  Why am I writing in all questions now?

Honestly, the “platoon” system with Barrett and Blanco works pretty well for the Cubs.  Barrett’s not the most durable guy, so having him catch three of every five games probably keeps him fresh enough to minimize his injury risk.  Blanco’s a good receiver, though historically he’s one of the games most inept hitters. 

Carlos Zambrano: Few players are as beloved and yet as misunderstood as Carlos Zambrano.  Younger fans love Carlos, not just because he’s good, but because he’s nuts.  He stomps around on the mound, he beats up his glove, when he gives up a hit he’s likely to pull his hat down so hard you expect the little red button to pop off the top.  He yells at umpires, he yells at himself, and he yells at Todd Walker.  At the plate, he switch hits, with legit power from either side.  He runs the bases like the goal is to stomp each bag completely into the dirt before you can advance to the next one.  Older Cubs fans are dubious of Carlos for all those very same reasons.  Me?  I love the big nutcase.  Carlos is the perfect kind of crazy, the harmless kind.  You never hear stories of him acting up off the field.  His teammates seem to geniuinely like him.  Hell, Frank Beltran used to put on boxing gloves and he and Carlos would smash the hell out of each other right in the middle of the clubhouse.  What you can’t help but admire is that Carlos shows no fear.  In his mind there’s no spot too big for him to handle.  Bases loaded and Albert Pujols at the plate?  You know who’s in trouble? 

Albert.

What’s not to love about that?

Mark Prior: It’s bad enough that he’s been the freak injury poster boy, now we’ve got Web sites claiming an offseason sore throat ended up in his pitching shoulder? 

Prior as we all know, got a late start on the 2005 season, but when he showed up on April 13 he was ready to roll.  In April alone he was 3-0 with a 0.95 ERA.  He was similarly dominant in May striking out 40 and allowing only 28 hits in 40 innings.

Then, in June he caught a Brad Hawpe line drive right between his upper dorsimus and his ublius muscles, breaking his arm.  Ouch.  When he came back he was still pretty good.  He was 6-4 with a 3.88 ERA and 117 strikeouts to only 37 walks in 92 innings.  He was good, but he wasn’t Mark Prior.  He didn’t even look like the same guy.  The results were there.  In 27 starts he gave up more than three earned runs only three times.  He did have a couple of doozies in there, though.  The eight run inning at Minute Maid rings a bell, as does the six run chuck fest in the first game of a Turner Field doubleheader.

But what was noticable was that after his injury (to be fair, the Minute Maid shellacking came before he got hurt) was how many more pitches he was throwing.  He was trying to get guys out without letting them hit their way into outs.  Was it a fear of having another liner smash his arm to bits, was it a quick glance at the anemic defense being played behind him?  It was probably a little bit of both.

If he comes back this year and is Mark Prior, it won’t take long to remind all of baseball, just how freakin’ good that really is.  If he comes back and he’s the other guy?  Well, honestly?  You trade that guy.  That guy’s gonna throw his arm out before he’s 30, trying to strike everybody out.

Kerry Wood: Speaking of blowing your arm out before you’re 30 trying to strike everybody out, it’s Kerry Wood!  I want you to follow along with me.  Close your eyes and picture game five of the NLCS against the Braves.  I know it’s tough to read with your eyes closed, but work with me here.  The Cubs are ending 95 years of postseason frustration by finally winning a series, Kerry Wood is the undisputed hero of the series, winning games one and five in Turner Field.  You know what you just pictured?  The last time Kerry Wood pitched well in the big leagues.

Since then he’s struggled in one NLCS game, then burst into flames in another, then made three different DL stints plus a pretty cool, though completely foolhardy and unnecessary stint in the bullpen.

Kerry claims that he hasn’t had an elbow problem since he first fully recovered from Tommy John disease in the 2001 season.  He claims that now that his shoulder’s fixed, he’s excited about being completely injury free for the rest of his career.

They’re so cute at this age, aren’t they?

Ryan Dempster: If you had to pick just one thing to be upset at Dusty Baker for last year (and picking just one is a chore) it has to be his incredible decision during spring training to leave Ryan Dempster in the rotation, move Glendon Rusch to the bullpen and leave LaTroy Hawkins in the closer role.  In one decision he managed to thrust almost a third of his pitching staff into the worst possible roles for each of them.  Bravo, Dusty!

Dempster was lousy as a starter, Rusch struggled in the bullpen and Hawkins stood on the mound night after night pouring gasoline all over himself and watching opponents throw matches at him and whatever the Cubs’ slim lead was that game. 

Finally, Dusty moved Rusch to the closer role, demoted Hawkins to middle relief (before Hendry sent him packing) and eventually Rusch went back to the rotation.  How’d they do?  Dempster was 33 of 35 and 2-0 as the closer.  Rusch finished the season on a four game winning streak.  Hawkins is on his third team in two years now.

To be fair (why start now?), Rusch had a lousy year.  Opponents hit .320 off of him coming out of the ‘pen, but they also hit .296 against him when he started.  But after the abysmal 2004 season, you knew the only way to salvage LaTroy’s Cubs’ career was going to be as a set up man. 

In 2001 the Twins finally stopped pretending LaTroy could close and he responded with ERAs of 2.13 and 1.87 in more than 150 innings between 2002 and 2003.  With the Cubs before he had to take over Joe Borowski’s ninth inning job in 2004, LaTroy had an ERA under two.  Some guys just can’t close.  Isn’t that supposed to be Dusty’s great gift?  Putting players in the spots where they are most likely to succeed?  Apparently not.

Dempster appears to be perfectly situated as a closer.  He’s goofy, and the demands of coming back 24 hours after you lost a game aren’t likely to phase him much.  He’s got a good fastball and slider and they look enough like each other to make it tough on the hitter.  Plus, he’s now being paid to be the closer, which in Dustyworld means nobody else can have that job now.  So it’s all good.

Scott Eyre: It’s never a good sign when a player says at his press conference that one of the reasons he signed with a team is because the manager told him he won’t have to run.  I understand that baseball players, expecially pitchers, can get away with a little girth.  But you have to wonder about just how hard a guy is willing to work when he says he picked the team that does the least laps around the warning track.  That’s precisely what Scott Eyre did this December at Wrigley Field.  He said he picked the Cubs because Dusty doesn’t run his pitchers that much.  Nice.

Eyre had a good year in San Francisco last year.  In fact, he pitched in more games last year, than the other Cubs’ lefty Will Ohman has in his entire career.  Yikes.

Ohman was a pleasant surprise for the Cubs last year.  Three arm surgeries after his last appearance in the big leagues, Ohman made it through the entire season and other than a memorable stint on the Yankees Stadium mound, during which he likely soiled himself, he acquitted himself rather well.

Bob Howry: Cubs’ fans turned into rabid Indians’ fans down the stretch last season, hoping against hope that the Tribe could finish off their incredible late season run at the White Sox.  They didn’t, but it wasn’t Bob Howry’s fault.  Howry was the best righthanded set up man in the American League last year.  Fully recovered from past arm woes, he threw harder than he had since his own closing days with the White Sox.  He was the most trusted reliever in the Indians deep bullpen, and every time the ball went from Howry to rotund closer Bob Wickman, we were reminded of the folly of having guys set for “roles” in a bullpen.

Jerome Williams: Eyre’s former Giants’ teammate, Williams first became famous to Cubs’ fans as being the pitcher “too fat to pitch.” After the trade that sent Hawkins to the Bay for Williams and AAA reliever Dave Aardsma.  Williams went to Iowa where he lost some weight and came up to split time between the bullpen and the rotation.  Jerome just turned 24 and in 14 starts after the All-Star Break he posted an ERA under four, including a September when he went 2-2 with a 2.10 ERA.  There’s talent there, and given the relative (un)health of the Cubs’ starters, Jerome should get plenty of starts in 2006.

Greg Maddux: The fact that Maddux has announced he’d like to pitch in 2007 just compounds the folly of his manager wondering out loud in August last year if Greg might be hanging them up.  He will turn 40 on April 14, and he’s not the Greg Maddux who ran off four straight Cy Youngs with the Cubs and Braves back in the early nineties, but unlike Marquis Grissom, he still can do some things.  Maddux has been the Cubs second best starting pitcher in each of the past two seasons.  That probably says more about the Cubs than Greg, but over that time only he and the 24 year old Zambrano have been around to take the ball every fifth day.  While others may want him to give it up, I’m in no hurry to see him leave.  Watching him pitch, even at this point in his career is a pure joy to see.  How can a guy throwing 82-85 MPH at the hardest consistenly befuddle big league hitters?  How can a righthanded pitcher throw a ball in to a lefty hitter and have it break away from him at the last second?  He just won his 15th Gold Glove.  He’s still the master at slapping the ball into the spot left open on the wheel play where the second baseman used to be.  He still makes all of it look so easy, when we all know it’s the exact opposite.  As somebody who still bristles at the thought of those years he was in Atlanta when he should have still been a Cub, I’m enjoying his second act in Chicago.  It hasn’t been legendary, save for a couple of historic moments, the 300th win in San Francisco and the 3,000th strikeout of Omar Vizquel, but it’s been fun.  And unfortunately, the history of the Cubs is more about fun than legendary anyway.

Rich Hill: He’s got a big curveball.  Huge, even.  But we’re still not sure if there’s a second pitch to go with it.  You’d think that at the very least he’d be a dominant LOOGY.  But there’s a big difference between a useful lefty in your bullpen and an “untouchable” trade commodity.  Right?

Angel Guzman: Last year was now or never for Angel.  His history is that of dominant minor league performances and injuries.  Last year it was far more the latter than the former.  I suppose this year is now or never…again, if such a thing is possible.  But I have a hunch, now has sailed away.

John Koronka: The myth of the pitching deep Cubs’ farm system eroded for good that May night in Dodger Stadium when the guy who took Kerry Wood’s scheduled turn was Koronka.  Guh.

Roberto Novoa: He’s large, he throws hard and he blinks every few minutes.  Novoa shows flashes of brilliance.  They are, however, too often followed by flashes of incompetence.  Such is life, I suppose.

Todd Wellemeyer: He’s out of options now, so the Cubs will have to find a spot for him when spring training breaks, or find him a new home.  The good Todd Wellemeyer throws strikes and can’t be hit.  The bad Todd Wellemeyer can’t find the strike zone with a GPS device and can’t be hit, either.

Scott Williamson: Given what we know about Tommy John Disease, last year means nothing in the recovery process.  This is the year Scott Williamson should be healthy enough to show what (if anything) he has left.  Last year he had an inordinate amount of hair.  This year, let’s hope he has an inordinate amount of movement on the old fastball.

Michael Wuertz: Other than Dempster, Wuertz was the best Cubs reliever last year.  Before you get too excited, he narrowly outpaced Will Ohman for that honor.  What he does have, though, is one of the game’s best sliders.  When he’s throwing it for strikes, bad things happen to opposing hitters.  When he’s not?  Michael Barrett gets lots of exercise chasing it to the bricks.

Dusty Baker: Dusty’s contract expires in 252 days.  Will there be another with the Cubs?  It all depends on how the club does.  Like most managers, Dusty will have a lot to say about that.  At this year’s Lemming Festival at the Hilton and Towers, a disgruntled Cubs fan (is there currently any other kind?) said to Dusty, “There are 10 to 15 games each year that a manager has a direct effect on the outcome.  I don’t think we won any of those last year.”  That’s probably an exaggeration.  The Cubs may have won two of them.  Dusty’s talents were alleged to be the ability to promote clubhouse harmony, to get good seasons out of previously assumed to be washed up veterans and winning.  Well, zero out of three ain’t bad.  No wait.  It is.

At the same convention, Dusty said all the right things.  He promised to play Ronny Cedeno and Matt Murton.  He promised the Cubs would stop waiting for the three run homer that never comes, would stop throwing the ball to the wrong base and would stop turning right on the bases.  Saying all the right things and doing them aren’t the same thing.

There’s no doubt that Dusty’s reputation and the success he enjoyed with the Giants and in his first season with the Cubs will get him another job after this year.  Whether that job is with the Cubs, however, seems unlikely.  What seemed unlikely in November of 2002 when he was hired is that four years later, he’d be primed to leave and we’d all be happy about it.

Jim Hendry: I have no doubt that Jim Hendry wants to win very badly.  I have no doubt that he works hard to try to better the Cubs.  I am however, full of doubt that it’s going to happen.  In four years as GM of the Cubs, the Cubs have fielded better teams than they had during the regimes of his immediate predecessors, and a lot of that has to do with players he either drafted or acquired.  But each year the Cubs have had at least one glaring deficiency that was never addressed.  In 2003, the Cubs blew a 3-0 lead in the eighth inning of what should have been the deciding game of the NLCS, because the awful bullpen had gone all year without being fixed.  In 2004, the bullpen still contained huge holes and played a big role in the club’s final week demise.  Last year the bullpen was worse than ever, and the top of the order went without meaningful repair.

Hendry has certainly acquired some excellent players.  But the Cubs continue to lack what our governor would call the testicular fortitude necessary to make the one last bold move needed to seal the deal.  That was never more evident than in 2003 when Cubs fans watched a pair of players that for a while looked like sure bets to be Cubs, Marlins’ catcher Ivan Rodriguez and closer Ugy Urbina make out on the field celebrating a pennant.  Guh.

Bob Brenly and Len Kasper: Baseball, more than any other sport, demands we spend a lot of time with the announcers.  For those of us who watch most if not all of the games, we spend upwards of 20 hours a week with the Cubs’ TV broadcasters.  While it’s tempting to laud Len Kasper for just not being Chip Caray (you could have mic’ed a kidney-stone suffering wolverine and it would have been an improvement over Chip) it goes beyond that.  And I’m not just saying that because he reads Desipio,is likely reading this, and always is quick to give Desipio a plug when he’s asked what “blogs” he reads.

I may be easy, but I’m not cheap.  If Len had stunk on ice, I’d have said it.  But if you go back and read my many (many, many) rants about Chip, the one thing I wished for, was for him to just shut up.  Just let the game be for a while.  Baseball games have a unique sound.  The background rumble of the ballpark, the bat on the ball.  Carlos Zambrano swearing in Spanish loudly enough to get picked up by the field mic.  We never heard it during the Chip years.  We heard it last year.  Len told us what we needed to know, shared a few stories with Bob and got out of the way.  It seems so simple, so obvious, but it’s a skill.  One we probably didn’t notice until a six year reign of terror that pointed it out to us.

As for Brenly, there will be some who will never warm up to him because he’s not Steve Stone.  Stone was the rare broadcaster who was actually as good as his devotees claimed he to be.  But he landed on his feet.  They’re not holding clothing drives for him in Phoenix.  He’s on ESPN and the Score and cashing big checks. 

Brenly kind of grows on you.  He’s funnier than he’s given credit for and he tries to be positive.  That positivity would reek of Pollyanna except for the fact that when somebody needs a good ripping, Bob points it out.  He doesn’t insult the audience by telling us something’s good when we could clearly see it was awful. 

Pat Hughes and Ron Santo: Thanks to the beauty of XM Radio I was able to prove something I long suspected.  Pat Hughes is the best radio play-by-play guy going.  Nobody does a more succinct job of describing the play than Pat, and that comes in handy, considering he has to work in the call of the game around more important things, like he and Ron talking about the difference between khakis and chinos, or Ron retelling (for the 12,000th time) the story of the doubleheader he played in his first day in the big leagues.  Thanks to XM, you could listen to every other radio guy in the bigs.  Some are very good, but with Vin Scully doing only west coast games now, and mostly TV, Pat’s the new king.  As for Ron?  We don’t need him to give us insightful analysis or be two steps ahead of the manager (honestly, I’ve had housepets that could stay two moves ahead of Dusty).  We just need him to be Ron Santo.  Baseball’s not brain surgery, and who better than a guy who has set his hairpiece on fire with a space heater to remind us of that every day?

So that’s where we stand as spring training gears up.  We’ve seen worse, and we’ve seldom seen better than the 2006 Cubs, but like always, we rest easy knowing that no matter what, it’s still not enough.