On a day when Cubs fans were all a twitter with news that THE Enrique Wilson was coming to play for the Cubs, Derrek Lee knew he’d have to do something to get back the spotlight.

So he homered twice, went 4-4 and drove in all four runs in the Cubs’ 4-3 win over the Pirates. It was an improbably come-from-behind victory, not because the Cubs never come from behind, in fact they do it with regularity, but normally they give it right back.

They’re sort of like a demented Santa Claus. They’re going to give you your gift, but they might steal it back once before they let you have it.

Yesterday afternoon the news broke that the Cubs had solved their offensive problems for good by signing Enrique Wilson. I personally celebrated the news by dousing myself with champagne and then trying to light it with a match. Apparently I have champagne and gasoline confused.

Wilson is the chubby little middle infielder who started his career as an important reserve on the good Indians teams in the mid ’90s. He’s somewhere between 31 and 71 years of age. He looks a lot like a frog. He can’t hit and plays defense like he’s driving around in Ray Lankford’s Rascal.

You know who he is?

He’s a less talented version of Lenny Harris.

Oh, this is going to be great!

Bravo, Jim Hendry! Great job! Maybe next you can see if Roy Smalley Jr. still needs a job?

Last night on the one-hour edition of Baseball Tonight, they spent all night talking about Cy Young Award candidates in both leagues.

Any time you have a baseball discussion that is reliant on John Kruk and Harold Reynolds forming complete sentences you ‘re already up against it.

In the end they went around the table and had the “experts” pick who was going to win the award. It’s pure folly to do it a quarter of the way through the season. Kruk got a pick, Harold got one and the “Hall of Famer” Peter Gammons got two. One was his and one he stole from Steve Henson of the LA Times.

Of the four votes, Mark Prior didn’t get any. I don’t really blame them, considering he’s likely to finish the season 4-1 with a 2.02 ERA in 34 starts.

Case in point. Last night Prior went seven strong innings. He gave up homers to Humberto Cota (huh? — fine it was an RBI double, but for Humberto that’s a homer), Jason Bay and Rob F. Mackowiak, but otherwise he was cruising along much more comfortably than his mound opponent, Josh Fogg was.

The Cubs didn’t have any problem getting hits, just runs.

So why would Luh-loyd McClendon pitch to Derrek Lee with a runner at third and a one run lead in the ninth?

Because the “book” told him to never put the go-ahead run on base.

What the “book” doesn’t take into account is that there’s only one Cub capable of driving in a run right now. That Cub was at the plate. And that Cub made Luh-loyd pay.

Derrek Lee is as hot right now as any Cub has ever been. As hot as Hack Wilson in 1930, as Billy Williams in 1970, as Andre Dawson in 1987 and any of Sammy’s monster years from 1998 to 2001. I’m not saying it’s going to last, but right now, you don’t mess with D. Lee.

Pissburgh messed with him last night. Pissburgh paid for it.

You are starting to see Lee’s name pop up in the national media now under the guise of “Why doesn’t anybody realize how good he is?”

But it needs to start in Chicago. There are Cubs’ fans who don’t seem to realize what Derrek is doing.

So let’s pause for a moment to bask in it.

Games – 37
Avg. – .372
HR – 12
RBI – 37
SB – 8 (9 attempts)
OBA – .457
SLG- .730
OPS- 1.187

Yikes.

He’s like Albert Pujols, only faster and 10 years younger.

Then we read that Dusty almost gave Derrek the night off last night. Look, I’m all for resting the guy, but I’m pretty sure that the Cubs had Monday off and have Thursday off. I doubt Derrek needs a gametime nap this week. And who’s going to start in his place? Todd Hollandsworth? Derrek was in a 1-13 “slump” coming into last night. If Todd went 1-13 we’d throw him a parade.

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The curious thing about the move to sign Enrique Wilson is that Jim Hendry only seemed to get motivated to pull the trigger on a deal once Dusty started musing that maybe he’d play Ronny Cedeno at shortstop every day and move Neifi to second. It was a very un-Dusty move to decide to use a rookie when he had a veteran, but I found myself wondering if maybe Hendry made this move to force Dusty to keep using Jerry Hairston.

It’s like Jim said, “Hey, we can get Wilson for nothing and he stinks, so Dusty won’t have a choice, but to use Jerry until Todd Walker comes back.”

In some ways, if it’s true, that’s a good thing. Hairston, no matter how much we think he’s weird, is the only Cub other than Lee who has a clue about how to get on base. If you’re going to play Jerry, you need to lead him off. Last night Dusty admitted he was dropping Corey in the lineup because…gasp!…

“Corey hasn’t been getting on base as much as he would like or we would like.”

Gee, that .297 on base average wasn’t getting it done for you, Dustbag?

Dusty got a “vote of confidence” from Andy MacPhail last night. But check it out.

He has my complete confidence, and I know he enjoys Jim’s complete confidence. People forget that in ’04, despite a series of significant injuries early on, we hung around and went 13-3 the first part of September, and it really wasn’t until the last 10 days we just were spent and fell short of the postseason. And they forget we won more games in ’04 than we won in ’03.

Doesn’t it seem curious to go on and on about the job Dusty did in the past, but not make a single mention that you think he’s done a good job this year? Hmm?

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Glenbrook North’s Jon Scheyer picked Duke over Illinois yesterday. Much hand wringing is going on in the Illini Nation. But come on. Put yourself in Scheyer’s shoes. He grew up idolizing former Glenbrook North star Chris Collins (as disturbing as that might be) and Collins and Coach K have been recruiting him for four years. Illinois only even got into the race because of their impressive 2004-05 season, and if not for the fact that Illinois’ coach is Scheyer’s high school coach’s brother, they might not have even been in the hunt.

The kid had his heart set on Duke for a long time. He wants to play in the ACC. He wants to bang fat Duke co-eds, instead of androgynous Chinese girls at Illinois. It’s his choice. Besides, Coach K. had to shove Shavlik Randolph into the NBA Draft just to make sure he had enough scholarships open.