Judging by the response of talk show callers and the only man in America who looks worse in a turtleneck than Greg Maddux, when Carlos Zambrano tried to bunt for a single in the fifth inning of yesterday’s 6-4 win over the Marlins, it was the dumbest, most reckless thing imaginable.

Consider that Zambrano is the ace of the Cubs’ staff and that by actually running hard he could get hurt and then where would the Cubs be?

I see your points, and they are all on top of your heads.

Zambrano did manage to reach on the bunt, mainly because Marlins’ third baseman Emilio Bonifacio was playing not so much a deep third as he was a shallow left field.  Zambrano hurt himself lunging for the bag (which has more to do with technique than effort), and at first tried to play it off like just another cramp, you know, until he couldn’t run, and then he left the game and we haven’t seen such an awkward display of maneuvering the dugout steps since the halcyon days of Mike Harkey.

So Zambrano spent part of Sunday night in his favorite spot, an MRI machine.  Remember last year when he hid from it?  That was great.

But here’s the thing.  The reason Carlos is the highly compensated ace of the Cubs’ staff is that he plays like this.  He plays hard, he plays to win, and he doesn’t try to act like a pitcher, but rather like a baseball player.  He runs hard on every ground ball, not just the one yesterday.  He takes extra batting practice.  He fields his position well.  And, of course, he’s a pretty damned good pitcher.  Baseball players get hurt, it’s why there’s a disabled list (not that the Cubs have figured out what the paperwork looks like in 2009, much to the detriment of their team).  Zambrano got hurt doing what he does best, busting his ass.  Playing hard, and playing smart has its risks, of course those risks are actually less than playing like Candy Maldonado or Moises Alou.  Most guys who get hurt do it by trying something out of character.  You know, like Moises actually trying to sprint to first two or three times every year, then tearing his legs into bits, or Maldonado trying to catch a fly ball in the air, rather than letting it safely hit the ground and stop rolling.

So get off of Zambrano’s back.  Save the hysteria for public schools closing because a janitor or one student has the swine flu.

Swine flu?  Hamstrings?  What do you people have against pigs, anyway?  Thursday’s CSI featured a woman being killed with a pork chop bone for chrissakes.

Oops, I said “you people.”  Sorry, Gordon.

Can you imagine the uproar if Zambrano had injured himself while pinch-hitting, which he did three games in a row last week?

I thought that far riskier than pinch hitting Carlos was who Lou elected to have run for Zambrano after he had to leave the game yesterday.  Rich Harden?  Look, I know he’s fast, and he actually showed pretty good wheels going from second to third after he’d tagged when he thought a ball that fell in was going to be caught, but how typically Cub would it have been for him to spike himself or shatter like glass by running into a Marlin just minutes after Zambrano got hurt?

As for the Zambrano injury, it sucks, but let’s all calm down.  The area the team is deepest in right now is starting pitching, and it’s a leg injury, not an arm injury.  They’ll get over it.

Speaking of leg injuries, E-ramis is supposed to come back from his calf muscle injury tonight, after missing all but one half inning (he pinch hit on Friday) of the last nine games.  With him basically unavailable, the Cubs have been playing with 22.5 guys.  You know, the 25 man roster minus half of Milton Bradley, all of E-ramis and the utterly useless Joey Gathright.

Paul Sullivan tried to guess what the new batting order would be and came up with a four-five-six that would make the lineup likely:

Soriano
Theriot
Fukudome
Lee
E-ramis
Bradley
Fontenot
Soto
Pitcher

Lou might flop Soto and Fontenot, and if Koyie is in he’d likely hit eighth.

Gordo stopped working on his upcoming Medgar Evers biography to espouse thought that it will be Ramirez fourth then either Lee or Bradley.

Nobody asks me, but I’m still in favor of:

Soriano
Fukudome
E-ramis
Bradley
Soto
Fontenot
Lee
Theriot
Pitcher

It’s got good righty-lefty balance.  Theriot hits well in front of the pitcher, a skill that not every player has, and it puts your best hitter third.  Then again, this lineup only works if Milton decides to get more than three hits a month.  Which is crazy, I mean he had four of them in April.  He doesn’t want to peak too soon.

(And before you throw Geovany under the bus, he’s hitting .364 in May–and yes, I know that’s three games, but hey, it’s something.)