Why am I in the big leagues?  Why are the Cubs still a franchise?  Why does anyone care?I’m not even sure if ordinate is a word, I know that inordinant is one, and I know that all of us, yes that means you, have been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about, watching and yes, sadly, at times, worrying about the Cubs.

Well, for two weeks now they’ve played like they just don’t give a damn. You can call it what you want. Dusty and his apologists (namely, his pastry loving boss) want us to believe that the guys are just “Trying to hard.”

That sounds good. It sounds like their passion and zest to please us, is causing them to struggle. They want us to be happy so much that it’s taking them out of their game. See, they care! They care about us!

There’s just one problem with this. It’s a tiny little problem.

It’s complete bullshit.

It’s not that they’re trying too hardly, it’s that they’re hardly trying.

Hustling teams don’t allow a runner to score from first base on a single. They just don’t. They don’t spend 45 minutes trying to get through the bottom of the second inning when the other team can’t get the ball out of the infield.

They don’t play Jose Macias, and they don’t choose to give Jeromy Burnitz a night off so their outfield can consist of two left fielders and a utility infielder.

What the Cubs are doing right now is what we’ve become accustomed to over the years. When they start to lose it, they go all out. They don’t half ass their demise, they throw their whole ass into it. We’ve seen it before, we know what it is. This team won’t finish anywhere near .500 now. They are in complete freefall. Remember those glorious years of 1999 and 2000? The Cubs, who were actual contenders for half of 1999 had a stretch where they lost forty of fifty games. Think about that. 10-40. Holy crap. Then, in 2000, to prove it wasn’t a fluke, they did it again.

I’m not sure if the 2005 Cubs can pull that off. But they certainly will give it a shot. If they can’t quite lose thirty-five of the next 45 games, it’ll only be for one reason.

They just tried too hard.

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The Cubs plan is to put Kerry Wood on the shelf when their playoff hopes are gone. I’ve got news for you Kerry. Feel free to schedule your operation any day now.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to start worrying that Grady Little might replace Dusty. I’m just worried that Dusty’s not going to be replaced.

Here’s my favorite part of Jay’s “column.”

get plenty of hate mail myself, including death threats. But I don’t complain to the world about it, recognizing that public jobs involve public criticism.

Uh, Jay. I think you just did. Moran.

Felipe Alou quit his radio show because a guy referred to some of his “brain-dead Carribbean hitters” and said Felipe’s brain had turned to oatmeal. So why did Felipe quit the show, exactly?

Corey Patterson’s average is way up over .270 (wow!) and he should be up this week, to end the Jose Macias centerfield hostage crisis. You knew Corey was close when they didn’t bring up anybody to replace Jerry the Lesser. Will Corey be better? I’d say there’s a 20 percent chance he’s actually changed something drastically enough to be better, so…probably not. Dave Kaplan was on WGN this morning making it sound like Corey might be in Chicago today. Since it’s Kaplan, we have no idea what the truth actually is.

And finally…(yes, I know, mock applause fills the Internet, and yes, this is all you get today, which is actually more than you’ll get tomorrow)…the Bears are on Monday Night Football tonight, where I’m sure they’ll show dozens of replays of the one game the ’85 Bears lost, and they’ll pretend like beating the Bears was so great for Dan Marino that it didn’t matter that the Bears actually won a Super Bowl, something he never did. But, over the weekend I picked up this, from NFL Films, The Complete History of the Chicago Bears and it’s tremendous. There’s a two-hour documentary on the history of team (and it glosses over what a cheapass George Halas was), a week-by-week breakdown of the ’85 Bears and two of the funniest bonuses you’ll ever see, one where they miked the Bears’ mascot in 1970 (he’s hilarious) and one where they miked another Bears’ mascot, head coach Abe Gibron and he proves to be the biggest (and funniest) dope, ever, and you watch him fight a losing battle with his pants during a Bears-Broncos game. He also gives the Broncos fans the “Polish salute” at one point and tells his assistants to help him pick up the coins the fans were throwing at him to help him pay the fine he’s going get. It’s great.

It’ll tide us all over until Apex fills us in on the quality of the DVDs he ordered of every game of the 1985 season.