By now, I’m sure you’re tired of reading frustrated bloggers and their ilk complaining about how the Cubs are lousy and how everybody needs to be fired. I’m not saying that’s not all true, I’m saying you’re probably tired of it. Becasue I know I am. So, it seems about time somebody does something about it. How big of a mess are the 2006 Cubs? Surely they can’t be as bad as the Tom Trebelhorn ’94 Cubs which didn’t win 50 games (sure, I know, the season ended in August, but believe me, they weren’t a safe bet to win again that year anyway). They can’t be as bad as the Preston Gomez-Joey Amalfitano 1980 Cubs, either.

As bad as the Cubs have been over the years. And really, they are undisputably the worst professional sports franchise of the past 135 years, they have only lost 100 games twice. Well, this could be three, I guess.

Imagine for a moment that like Mark Cuban before you, you blundered into (and had the good sense to capitalize on) some emerging technology and suddenly, you’re a billionaire. Instead of buying Roy Tarpley’s old basketball team, you buy Todd Hundley’s old baseball team.

It’s yours. No board of directors to answer to, just you, your checkbook and the Chicago Cubs. Your first instinct might be to sit back, get a feel for the organization and how it works, then evaluate your front office staff, the manager, the coaches and the players. By the time you finished this, your Cubs probably just went 54-108 and you’ll end up firing everybody.

So fight that urge. Why wait? All you need to know is that the team you just spent somewhere between $600 and $800 million to buy hasn’t won a World Series in 98 years (you knew that, everybody knows that), they haven’t won a pennant in 61 years (everybody knows that, too). But they also haven’t won as many as 90 games in a 162 game season in 17 years, they haven’t had back-to-back 90 win seasons since 1929-1930. They haven’t had back-to-back 100 win seasons since 1909-1910.

The feel for the organization? Feels like a grab bag full of cat shit.

How does it work? It doesn’t.

Who do you fire? Anybody cashing a paycheck.

But since you bought the team in mid-May, you might as well see what you can salvage this year, right? After all, the trade deadline’s still 10 weeks away.

Back in 2003, as Cubs’ fans know first-hand, the Florida Marlins were circling the drain in mid-May and fired their manager, and replaced him with crazy old Jack McKeon. They won a pennant that year in Wrigley Field, then won a World Series in Yankee Stadium. Let’s say that kind of worked out for them.

So the first thing you get to do is call your club president, Andy MacPhail into your office and give him a task. His job is to tell Jim Hendry to fire Dusty Baker and his entire coaching staff. Then you explain to him that his next task is to fire Hendry. Finally, the last thing you want him to do is to write his own letter of resignation.

See, how hard was that?

You’re going to hire a new president of baseball operations, eventually. But for now, it’s your money and damnit, you’re going to do that yourself. How hard can it be. Judging by MacPhail, all you do is drive a company car, wear sweatervests and hold your pinky out at an odd angle when you drink.

The GM can wait, too. You’re going to be too busy fixing things for a while.

So who do you hire to try to salvage this mess?

How about Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog? Sure, he hasn’t managed a team since 1990, but he’s younger than McKeon (who isn’t?), managed the Cardinals to three pennants and a World Series in 12 seasons and his hiring would piss off every Cardinals fan in the world. How can any Cubs fan not get behind pissing off every Cardinals fan in the world?

OK, so we convince Whitey to sign on for a couple years. He can pick his staff, but he can’t pick Red Schoendinst (is Red even alive?) and we don’t want Darrell Porter around the young players or the free Budweiser in the clubhouse.

Now it’s time to take a look at the roster. Since you’re rich, you really don’t care about the pointless “we’re paying this guy too much to let him go.” You’ve always wondered why you’d commit the double-sin of overpaying a guy, and letting his piss-poor play cripple your team at the same time.

So you give Neifi Perez his outright release, and designate Freddie Bynum for assignment. If somebody claims Freddie, who cares? If not, he can hang out in Des Moines.

Next on the list of guys who need to leave is Glendon Rusch. Signing Glendon to a two-year contract after the 2004 season seemed like a good idea. That good idea doesn’t seem so good any more. He can stick around to be the lefty batting practice pitcher if he wants. Otherwise, good riddance.

Since you just hired Whitey, you probably want him to have a chance to figure out which players he thinks he can use and which ones he can’t. But one thing is indisputable. There is no long term home for Jock Jones on any team you own. Even if Whitey thinks he can somehow squeeze four good months out of Jock, Jock is on his way to the Bronx for whatever bum prospect Brian Cashman will take for him. This isn’t about getting maximum value for Jones, this is about getting him off your team and out of your outfield as quickly as possible.

You call down to Des Moines and fill your three open roster spots with some hack kid named Kerry Wood, your new right fielder, Felix Pie and since you’re going to be shuffling your roster around quite a bit you bring up Adam Greenberg (even though he’s hitting a whopping .118 at Iowa) so he can try to get through one plate appearance in what promises to be a very brief big league career without taking a pitch off his melon.

Whitey can make out the lineup card any way he damn pleases, but chances are, since he’s not a complete dumbass, it’ll look like this.

cf Juan Pierre
ss Ronny Cedeno
2b Todd Walker
3b E-ramis Ramirez
lf Matt Murton
c Michael Barrett
1b John Mabry
rf Felix Pie
p Carlos Zambrano

Now it’s time to do something about first base. Derrek Lee has two and a half weeks in a cast before he can start trying to get his broken wrist into game shape. As optimistic as you can be about his return would have him back in a month at the very earliest. It’s more likely sometime around the fourth of July.

So you can’t keep trotting out John Freakin’ Mabry to play first base. Thankfully you can’t put Todd Walker at first with Neifi at second anymore, because Neifi’s off to play in the Mexican league with Randall Simon.

Hendry was paralyzed in trying to pick up a stopgap first baseman because for some odd notion he attached a number of provisos any acquisition. He wanted a right-handed hitter who could play more than one position so that when Lee came back the player would still have a role on the team. That’s fine. It makes sense. But it can’t preclude you from making any move, thereby crippling your team. If you had to settle for trading a middling prospect to the Red Sox for Hee Seop Choi, then you look at your lineup and ponder “would we be better with Walker at second and Choi at first, or with Walker at first and Neifi at second.” Hendry kept saying that he wasn’t going to find a first base replacement who could out hit Walker. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Walker wasn’t only in the lineup because Lee was out. Walker was in the lineup when Lee was around, so in effect all he had to do was find a first base replacement who could outhit Neifi or Jerry Hairston.

That’s not that tough to do.

As I wrote back in the days immediately after Lee’s injury, the guy I’d go after to replace Lee at first is Eric Hinske. He’s not a great player (how could he be, he played in the Cubs minor league system), but he’s useful. He’s got some power, he’s a switch hitter, he can play first, is adequate at third and though he runs like Rob Deer he can play some outfield. He’s wallowing on the bench in Toronto. He got two at bats last week, and only 46 for the season. You can’t tell me they have great plans for him anymore.

He’s also insurance for when E-ramis tears something in one or both of his legs. Yeah, like that’s not going to happen.

Now let’s say that even with Whitey actually knowing when to hit and run and steal and squeeze and take out a pitcher without double-switching, that the Cubs (gasp!) don’t climb back into the thick of it in early July.

Now’s the time you prove your mettle. Who are you going to trade?

Are you going to sit down and make a list of all of your “untouchable” players? Remember, over the winter, Rich Hill was on Hendry’s “untouchable” list. Maybe he was on the “unloadable” list and Hendry smeared jelly doughnut all over it, or something?

Here’s my “untouchable” list.

1. Derrek Lee

And the only reason he’s on it is because he has a full no-trade clause foolishly given to him by Hendry and Mac Phail. It’s not that I’d want to trade him, it’s just that I’d like to know I could.

You ought to be ready to trade anybody. You probably don’t want to trade Carlos Zambrano, but everybody has a price. If another team is willing to pay it…sold.

You own the Cubs and you are the first one to do it with a clue as to how you don’t need to hang on to players for their “name” value to sell tickets. You need to win. You want to win. You’ll trade anybody if your price is met, and you’ll hang onto anybody if it’s not. How difficult is that concept? Not very.

So at the trade deadline, who would be your most sought after players?

Juan Pierre — Assuming he gets his on base average up to at least .300 (.350’s more like it, but he’s shown little sign of that), somebody will come after him.  Kenny Williams has openly pined for him, and though having both him and Scott Podsednik in the same outfield seems daft, the Sox thought about it hard over the winter.  Just think of all the lame Ebony and Ivory references Hawk could make?  Even if not the Sox, some contender is going to see Juan as a low-risk, high-potential pickup for the last couple months of the season.

Michael Barrett — Barrett is a player who is more highly valued by the teams he doesn’t play for than the one he does.  He comes across as a smart, hard working, athletic catcher with some pop and a decent eye at the plate.  In reality he can’t catch worth a damn and is streakier than a used set of Pull Ups.  There are a lot of bad catchers, even on good teams, sombody’s going to want to upgrade.  You should not think twice about shipping him out.

Kerry Wood — He’s got a no-trade clause and a team option for next year, so you need to let him know that you’re not going to be executing that option.  You might, however, be tempted to execute him.  If he shows he’s healthy (yeah, sure, whatever) he’d have a lot of value to a team like the Yankees or Red Sox, and you might actually benefit from the ill-timed move to the bullpen last year if you can tempt a contender by dropping hints about how great it would be to have him available for the rotation or the bullpen in a first round three of five series.

E-ramis Ramirez — He, incredibly, is in a walk year, though the option is his and he’s almost guaranteed to take it.  He’s still young, has stopped his regression in the field and you’re going to have to live with him not hitting until mid-May, it appears.  So why trade him?  Sometimes you have to trade a good player to get a good player.  I’m not saying you give E-ramis away, but he’s 26 and coming off an all-star season, which was actually less productive than the one before it.  He’s got value.  If you think the value coming back is better than he is, trade him.

Todd Walker — Proving he can play a competent first base only added to his value.  If you’re ever going to trade him, now’s the time.  He’s not getting any younger and he’s getting to the point in his career where his offense is dropping off, making him easier to replace.

Mark Prior — First he’d have to actually pitch.  In fact, unless he pulls a miraculous turnaround and tears through June and July, there’s no sense shopping him until the offseason.

Bob Howry and Scott Eyre — Their only value is if you think you can contend next season.  You should be able to do that, but you ought to listen to offers anyway.

Scott Williamson — His injury history suggests that if he makes it to July healthy, you should trade him, regardless.  Get what you can, let some other team sign him for next year and pay him to sit in the trainer’s room.

Ryan Dempster — You signed him to a below market deal, which makes it tempting to keep him off the market.  Fight that temptation.  One of the pennant contenders will be leaking badly in the ninth inning.  See if they’ll give you an uber prospect and some others for a “proven” closer.  If they do, go for it.  If not, bring Ryan back to close next year.  Most teams aren’t the Yankees or Padres, they have to find a new closer every couple of years, it can be done.  Look at the White Sox.  They found theirs at an AA meeting for chrissakes, and by the end of this year they’ll probably have a different one anyway.

You could say you’re going to build around the young core of Matt Murton, Ronny Cedeno, Felix Pie, Carlos Zambrano and Prior, and owners say that kind of crap all the time.  It’s crap, of course.  Of those players, Carlos and Mark have shown flashes of being great, the kind of guys you actually build around.  Murton looks like a guy who’s going to be good for a long time and Cedeno looks like a real-live, bona fide, big league shortstop, but they’re not franchise players.  We have no idea about Felix yet.  Given that he’s a Cub prospect, he’ll wash out, but we don’t know either way.

How many teams built a consistent winner around home grown pitching prospects?  The Yankees certainly didn’t, nor the Red Sox.  The Braves?  Go through their really good teams, Smoltz came up a Tiger, Maddux a Cub…so that leaves Glavine and…Steve Avery?

So what am I saying, that the Cubs took the wrong approach in trying to build a winner around Wood, Prior and Zambrano?  Of course not.  After the 2003 season they were set.  They had three dominant young pitchers of which only one made serious cash.  That’s a tremendous advantage.  So how did they capitalize on it?  They went cheap in their bullpen, they left huge holes (center field, shortstop) in the field and the lineup and relied on a pair of 40 year old sluggers in the outfield.  Had Wood and Prior stayed healthy, that plan was flimsy enough to collapse under its own weight, once they both got hurt it was inevitable.

Basically, what I’m saying is that you don’t have to tear the Cubs down to the bare bones like the Marlins have done to rebuild.  However, if you were offered either the current Cubs roster or the current Marlins one to build a team, you’d probably take the Marlins, as sad as that is for Cubs’ fans.

What you have to be willing to do, however, is to trade anybody.  Explore every option, don’t just say “oh, we’re set at third base now” and never take offers for E-ramis.  Theo Epstein threatens to trade Manny Ramirez every year.  All Manny does is put up Hall of Fame numbers every year.

You want to change the culture around the Cubs, like Dusty claimed he was going to do?  You change the culture by demanding your players work hard and play smart, and you show them that every player is accountable for whatever he does.  You show them that the best players will play, regardless of age, salary or status.  You show them that anybody can be traded and that good play will be rewarded.

Basically you change the culture by doing everything the opposite of the way the Cubs have done things for a century.

When you go into free agency in the offseason you do it with the idea that there’s no such thing as a hometown discount.  You don’t try to factor in intrinsic values into contracts.  You don’t go after Carlos Beltran and figure that the Mets can offer him $18 million a year, and that equates to $15 million in Chicago where the fans are nicer, the media is more docile and there’s fungus growing on the friggin fence.

I don’t know why this is news to Chicago area ownership in every sport, but players go where the money is.  Players consider their contracts to be a show of what they’re worth in comparison to their peers.  In their minds if they have to choose between Pissburgh and the Yankees, they’re going where the money is.  The Yankees know this, and have always known this.  That’s why they always offer more money.  They have the mystique to try to pull the crap the Cubs are always trying to pull, but they don’t.  Because they want to win at all costs.  They don’t screw around trying to sign guys.

If you had owned the Cubs three offseasons ago, A-Rod would be the shortstop.  Why?  Because there should have been three teams clamoring to take him off the Rangers’ hands.  The Red Sox were, the Yankees were, but you weren’t.  You don’t think if he’d have been forced to choose between brokering a trade to the Yankees, where he’d have to change positions and defer to an inferior player, Derek Jeter, or coming to the Cubs and proving over and over again that he’s the best shortstop ever, that he’d have done it?  Of course he would have.  But the Tribune’s and Andy Mac Phail’s Cubs never even entertained it.  Why should they have?  They had Alex Gonzalez at shortstop.  It’s not like he’d just booted the pennant or anything.

The Cubs will be fixed when they decide to act like what they are.  They’re a major market, deep pocketed team with a history of losing so long and so cumbersome that the only way to get over it is to stop acting like they’re doing players a favor to ask them to play for them.  You want to pull that crap?  Win something first.