I got a slap for you too, Nevin!
There are some things that you don’t even try to explain. Your head will explode if you think about it hard enough, so instead you just accept it and move on. How can a team that as recently as eleven days ago was polishing off the second of nearly impossible back-to-back home losses to National League laughingstocks Houston and Colorado, go on to win nine of their next ten games including a ludicrous six of seven streak on their West Coast roadie?

Yesterday, the Cubs got a wobbly gem from the coolest player in Cubs’ (and just maybe Major League) history, Carlos Zambrano. After walking the first three guys he faced, he still managed to shut out the Padres for seven innings. After the game we found out that in the dugout during the top of the second inning his catcher, Henry Blanco threatened to slap him if he didn’t start throwing strikes.

Nobody messes with Carlos Zambrano. Ever. So what does it mean when Carlos won’t mess with Henry Blanco?

It’s just what we’ve always assumed, absolutely nobody messes with Hank White. Ever. Under any circumstances.

Think about this. What would happen if Michael Barrett were to threaten to slap Carlos?

Michael’s a nice guy. His teammates seem to geniunely like him, and he’s actually learned how to hit, which is nice. Nevertheless, if he threatens Carlos in the dugout, you just know that play would be stopped because a foreign object would be rolling around the infield. Michael’s skull.

What if Gabor Bako II had threatened Carlos last year? They’d still be picking chunks of Gabor out of a dugout wall.

But Hank does it, and not only does Carlos listen to him, but it’s Carlos who happily tells the story in the postgame? And you all thought that the Hank White Fan Club was just some lame attempt at humor on our part. Hah!

Last week, we identified Hank as one of the Cubs’ leaders, along with the improbably excellent Neifi Perez and the freakishly productive Derrek Lee. Let’s just say none of the three did anything this weekend to diminish that opinion.

The Cubs actually lost a game on Friday night. It’s tempting to blame it all on Sergio Meat Tray. So let’s do it.

The Padres won, largely because of the four runs they put up in the fourth inning. All came after two crucial Meat Tray blunders. The first goof up was on a 3-6-1 double play chance. Sure, Neifi’s throw was to the home plate side of first base, but Sergio could have caught it if he hadn’t done the very Albert Pujolsian move of stretching before he knew where the ball was coming from. Pujols gets around this by just leaving the bag and catching the throw, then sprinting off the field. Sergio made an awkward lunge at the ball, missed it completely and it went into the Padres dugout. Could Neifi have made a better throw? Sure. Should Sergio have caught it anyway? Of course.

His second one was more unforgivable. Sergio’s not a first baseman, he’s a pitcher. Not only that he’s swarthy in a boy band kind of way. But he’s a pitcher, right? So why the hell did he throw Phil Nevin an 0-2 cookie, that Nevin blasted into the outfield?

Regardless, the Cubs’ offense looked to be spent after scratching out two runs against Adam Eaton, so the Cubs were probably doomed anyway.

The win streak was over at seven games, and the media was wondering if the Cubs would respond, or if that was just their cute, little “hey, we’re good! Oh, not really!” tease for this year.

Well, they scored seven runs in one inning on Saturday, then won again Sunday. So that’s something.

The Cubs now have the third best record in the National League and if the season ended today (not only would everyone be shocked, but) they’d be in the playoffs. There’s no reason that the Cardinals and Cubs shouldn’t have the two best records in the NL at the end of the year. The NL Central is a cesspool and both the NL West and NL East are going to be much more competitive. Thanks to Uncle Bud’s unbalanced schedule, the Cubs and Cardinals get to load up on Astros, Pirates, Reds and Brewers, while the NL East teams all beat each other up and the NL West tries to figure out if the Diamondbacks have already won half of their total for the year (they just might have) and if the Dodgers are ever going to get their heads out of their hineys.

We kept telling you that the rest of the NL would wait around for the Cubs and they did. Now it’d be nice to see the Cubs slowly, but consistently just pull away from them. They need to avoid undoing the last ten days progress before the end of June.

Hey, that sounds easy!

Most of the Cubs “problems” have temporarily been solved. The bullpen has been solid, if not always spectacular, ever since Ryan Dempster got moved down there before the Mets series. E-ramis has woken up which gives the offense a much better look, Todd Walker’s back, Neifi’s playing so far over his head he can’t even see how’s he’s playing, Michael Barrett’s hitting, and the leftfield arrangement that consists mostly of Jason Dubois with Todd Hollandsworth getting starts against guys he’s traditionally hit well against, is an improvement. Even Jeromy Burnitz’s move to the cleanup spot seems to be working out. Going with three-fifths of a real starting rotation isn’t all that exciting, but the million dollar babies are on track for returns sometime this month, and Jerome Williams is sitting in Iowa trying to avoid carbs and waiting for the John Koronka experiment to end (tonight seems about right).

So that just leaves one gaping, glaring hole. Where could that be?

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I want Corey Patterson to be good. I want to see him harness what obviously an impressive talent set and use it for good, not evil. Unlike some others, I think he honestly wants to be good, though he doesn’t show it, and that drives people insane. Corey’s expression rarely changes, whether he’s playing poorly (which lately has been most of the time) or playing well. He’s lost his temper exactly once this year and he threw his helmet, halfassedly, at an umpire in Milwaukee and got thrown out.

But the sad fact is that if Corey never figures it out and never becomes more than a mediocre Major Leaguer he won’t be the first or the last talented player to end up that way. In fact, tonight, the other guy playing center field, Toronto’s Vernon Wells is on just the same track.

Their careers are pretty similar. Both showed flashes of being good in 2002 (Wells even drove in 100 runs, though he posted a .305 on base average), both were tremendous in 2003 (only Corey blew out his knee in July), and both dropped off last year and are struggling this year.

Vernon doesn’t strike out as much as Corey (but who does?), but doesn’t have Corey’s speed (but who does?).

You know what these guys could probably use?

A trade.

For each other.

Tonight, just before game time.

Just a good old fashioned, “I’ll trade my talented but underachieving center fielder for your talented but underachieveing center fielder.”

They’re roughly the same age (Wells is 26, Corey will be 26 in August) and make the same amount of money (Wells makes $3 million, Corey $2.8 million). Toronto could probably use a little extra speed in their big, turfed outfield and the Cubs shouldn’t be against finding a centerfielder who could comfortably (production wise) fit in one of the corner outfield spots upon the arrival of Felix Pie, whenever that happens. Hopefully, for Felix’s sake, it happens when he’s ready, not before.

It’s just crazy enough to work.

Too bad I’m not.

(By the way, Vernon’s warming up. He hit four homers last week. But Hendry can tell JP Riccardi all about Corey’s big hitting streak. Or something.)