As the Cubs death march to end the season continues, they’ll have to do it without Milton Bradley.  It’s fitting, because there’s nothing worse than going to a funeral and having a guy try to pee into the casket.

Signing Milton never seemed like a good idea for a lot of reasons.

1) His reputation as a world class pain in the ass.

2) The fact that he was brought in to be a left-handed hitting run producer, despite the fact that his career numbers are all much higher when he bats right handed, and that he’s never driven in more than 77 runs in a season.

3) The Cubs were to be his seventh team in nine years.

4) His career has been even more plagued by injuries than it has by weird volatile behavior, and there was an awful lot of that.

So the fact that it didn’t work isn’t much of a shock.

But maybe the reason it flamed out so quickly is because Milton was simply around too much?  Maybe he was too healthy?

It’s like on last night’s excellent season premiere of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Larry ran into his ex-wife Cheryl in a restaurant and they shared a nice moment and both said they missed each other.  Larry asked where it went wrong and Cheryl said that once “Seinfeld” ended, Larry was just around too much.  Instead of going off to work for much of day he was always there.  She liked three hours of Larry a day.  Twelve hours of Larry was too much and didn’t work.  Larry agreed and said he has a hard time having to spend 24 hours a day with Larry.

Maybe if Bradley had taken a few of his normally scheduled long vacations on the disabled list, the Cubs wouldn’t have gotten sick of him so fast?  If he’d had the good sense to have torn an Achilles or maybe broken an arm, he could have been gone and been missed.

It’s hard to miss a guy who won’t go away.  Especially one who seems hell bent on being miserable and making everyone else feel the same way.

In the end, what ended the Milton Bradley era wasn’t his comments about hoping games only lasted nine innings so he could go home, or his claims that Cubs fans were yelling racist things at him.

Chicago sports fans can forgive a lot.  What doomed Milton wasn’t just that he acted like a complete asshole.  What doomed him was that he acted like a complete asshole and he didn’t produce.  He was mediocre at best, and terrible when the Cubs needed him to be good.  When E-ramis Ramirez got hurt, the Cubs needed Milton to shake off his slow start and pick up some of the slack.  Derrek Lee did.  Bradley didn’t.

If he were hitting, his strange, pouty antics could have been dismissed as him being eccentric, or playing with an “edge.”

An ass who hits .320 is one thing, an ass who hits .247 is an ass.

Already writers from around the country are wondering who would take Milton and what kind of bad contract will the Cubs have to take back.

If you can get something serviceable for him like Hendry did when he somehow turned Todd Hundley into Mark Grudzielanek and Eric Karros, then fine.  But if you have to take back somebody who actually has more years of a bad contract than the two Milton has left, you’d be better off doing the unthinkable.  Cut him, pour gravy on the money and just eat it, and make him a free agent when nobody claims him on waivers.

Would the Cubs actually do this?  It’s not likely.  The worst thing a general manager can have on his books is completely dead money.  That’s especially true when he’s about to get a brand new boss.  Funds will be tight this offseason and the idea of having $9 million of your payroll tied up in a guy who is either playing for somebody else, or not playing at all is a little scary.  In 2011 that number will grow to $12 million.

Say for some reason the Mets decide they want Bradley (they’d be insane) and they trade you Perez.  He’s owed $12 million each of the next two seasons.  And he sucks.  So instead of paying Milton $21 million to not hurt your team, you’d pay Perez $24 million to hurt it?  On the off chance he has one decent year of the two and it’s not a complete loss?  Screw that.

It’s interesting to look at the Rangers and try to find someone they could foist on the Cubs for Milton.  The only overpaid guys they have past next season are Michael Young and Kevin Millwood, and honestly, Young is still good and Millwood is in the last year of his deal and is owed $12 million next year.  So you wonder what incentive there’d be to do a deal with the Cubs for either of them.  Young might be able to shift back to second base, but he’s done a nice job at third for Texas, and I would guess they’d like him to continue to do a nice job for them there.

If they trade Milton to Texas it’ll be for a prospect and they’ll have to take on most of his salary.  And that’s what you assume is going to come out of this.

Instead of waiving him and eating all $21 million, they’ll find a team who will take him for cheap, get a middling prospect and eat $15 million or more of his salary.  And then for two years we can hear baseball experts tell us that the Cubs would “be in on this great player, but their payroll is tied up with all that money going to (insert big league team name here) to pay for Milton Bradley.”  Guh.

The best take on all of this comes from our pal George Castle who now writes for something called trueslant.com.

No doubt Bradley talked a good game in persuading the Cubs to sign him last winter. He briefly seduced me during his introductory press conference in January the situation was different and Chicago would finally provide a baseball home for him. I even wrote he could rack up MVP numbers with that kind of attitude. Unfortunately, it was wishful thinking for Bradley, the Cubs and me. The real Bradley was soon exposed. See a previous blog about my experience with the outfielder, who stiffed me three times in four days after he had committed to doing an interview for my syndicated baseball radio show “Diamond Gems.”

Wait, Milton stiffed Castle?  Of all the nerve.  Why not beat up Santa Claus in a Macy’s or steal little kids’ tooth fairy money out from under their pillows?  Of all the nerve.  George Castle is a national treasure.

(In what nation, we’re just not sure.)

But in the end, I have to hand it to Milton.  He not only stole more money from the Cubs than Jock Jones, he managed to get his three years of cash from them and only play one year, Jock had to hang around for two.