A pitcher’s mound is just a pile of dirt, right? I know it’s more involved than that, there’s a slope that has to be just right and they nail that rubber onto the top of it and throw one of those cleat cleaners on the backside next to the rosin bag, but that’s about it. So why are Cubs’ pitchers so afraid of it?Mark Prior might step onto the mound tomorrow. Kerry Wood and Wade Miller might get on there in the next week or so. I’m not a highly-paid baseball expert, but I’m pretty sure that getting on the mound isn’t the hardest part of pitching. Only the Cubs can make the trek to the top of the damn thing so involved they need a sherpa.

Today’s Sun Times has an interesting take on Jerry Hairston’s chances of winning the second base spot. It’s interesting because it doesn’t include the words “over Dusty’s dead freakin’ body” anywhere that I can see. It’s true that before he snapped his foot in half in the outfield a couple years ago that he was considered an excellent defensive second baseman, and of the three guys vying for the job he’s the best combination of speed-defense-and the ability to bat second in the lineup, a spot that Dusty seems to think is mandated by the baseball rulebook to be manned by your second baseman.

Todd Walker’s a better hitter, but fields like he’s carrying a griddle instead of a glove. Neifi’s a good defensive player but at the plate he might as well change his number from 13 to 4-6-3.

In the article it says that Dusty and Jerry have a good relationship. Huh? Is it good compared to Scott and Lacy Peterson or Nick and Jessica Simpson? I didn’t just imagine that Dusty ripped Jerry in the papers all season long last year, an event only made unusual by the fact that Jerry was the only player Dusty would publicly criticize? Who wrote this, Kiley or Sneed?
Now all of a sudden these guys are Ennis and Jack sharing a sleeping bag? I’m not buying that.

The fact remains that the Cubs have three second baseman, which is akin to the old saying about having two quarterbacks. If you have two, it means you don’t really have one.

You picture infield practice as having Jerry, Neifi and Todd standing in line over at second, and Ronny Cedeno standing alone at shortstop trying to be quiet so that nobody notices that Dusty’s left a “rookie” alone at the most important position on the infield.

Any optimism about Dusty’s newfound player rating skills went out the window with this comment about Hairston’s defense, though.

”Harold Reynolds told me that maybe he should have gotten a Gold Glove over Bret Boone,” manager Dusty Baker said. ”That’s pretty good company right there.”

Harold Reynolds? The same guy who insisted that breaking balls would be easier to hit when baseball stamped their logo on the ball because it would create a big dot for hitters to aim at? The same Harold Reynolds got his job at ESPN in the first place because he had access to the biggest superstar in the game at the time, and few others did?

Though I still love the stories about how Ken Griffey Jr. would call Harold in Bristol and complain that ESPN was showing too many highlights of Jim Edmonds (then in Anaheim) flopping to make unncessary diving catches because Jr. thought ESPN was trying to help Edmonds’ Gold Glove cause.

Back to the mound, Larry Rotschild was excited yesterday (and we all know what Larry looks like when he’s excited:)

because Kerry Wood and Wade Miller had good throwing sessions. In the outfield. Wait, doesn’t that mean they were playing catch? If I take my nine year old nephew out back and we play a mean game of 500, should I call Larry so he can have another reason to do this?

When did it come to this? When did we go from “World Series or bust” to “Kerry played catch and almost knocked the Iowa pitching coach’s glove off! Whoo! Season tickets on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m.!”

Something tells me that this isn’t the stuff the Yankees’ beat writers write about.

Actually, they had something pretty good to write about. Gary Sheffield met with Yankees’ GM Brian Cashman on Tuesday and left the meeting all happy. He ran into some reporters and told them that the Yankees had promised to pick up his $13 million team option for 2007. Minutes later, Cashman walked out of the office, the same reporters jumped him and asked him to comment on why they had picked up Sheffield’s 2007 option so early, and Cashman looked exactly like…well, this:

Apparently, Cashman made no such promise. Uh oh. You don’t want to see Gary Sheffield angry.

Today is the NBA trade deadline. The Bulls, that finely tuned machine running in ninth place in the NBA East, are not expected to do anything. Honestly, that’s probably the best thing to do. They have huge sums of money expiring off the salary cap this summer and two first round picks. If they don’t make up the two game deficit for the final playoff spot (the Sixers are in eighth right now), that will give them one lottery pick, and they have the first round pick of the hapless Knicks, which is certain to be a lottery pick. Seems like having two lottery picks, good young players like Luol and Ben and cap room to dangle (and who doesn’t enjoy a good cap room dangle?) leaves them in pretty good shape. Groucho looks around the league and tries to figure out who’s going where.

Meanwhile, those Knicks are at it again. Yesterday they added to their stable of unstable “point” guard by trading Anfernee Hardaway’s decaying corpse and Trevor Ariza to the Magic for Steve Francis. Look how thrilled Larry “Stanley Roper” Brown was at the press conference:

Phil Rogers practically demands that the Cubs give Jim Hendry a contract extension right now! Why? Is he going someplace? I mean other than the Golden Corral?

The Cubs are all fired up about Bob Howry. That’s great. It’d be better if they had other things to be all fired up about, too.

Teddy G. talks with Will Carroll. Will seems to be a bit confused. What’s new?

Bruce Miles looks at Juan Pierre and Dusty ponders what has happened to all the elite leadoff men. He wonders if maybe they’re playing other sports. Could be. There are 14 potential lead off mean playing point guard for the Knicks now, for instance.

Barry Rozner demands a trade…for Ben Gordon.

How do you interview Carl Everett and come away with nothing? You do that if you are the Seattle PI’s Jim Moore. Oh, there’s good stuff in there. But all of it is from a Maxim interview Carl gave. Including this:

“Peter Gammons sucks. He hears something and then throws it out there, and some of it is true, so it makes him sound like a genius. But he knows nothing. He knows nothing unless somebody tells him something. That’s it.”

Huh?

Ken Rosenthal on Jim Leyland. No mention of how often Jim stopped to fire up a smoke, though.

Baseball America’s top 50 prospects. Read through the quotes and see how many of them actually say nothing. Most of them, actually.

America’s finest news source with the tragic tale of a New Jersey woman dumped after a Valentine’s Day candy related weight gain.