See, it’s fun to make bad “rush” puns today. The Cubs solidified their stranglehold on fourth place in the Central Division by re-signing Glendon Rusch for two more years. Rusch will make $2.75 million in 2006 and $3.25 million in 2007 for the purpose of being half-assedly pulled out of and thrown back into the rotation on Dusty’s whim.

As underwhelming as the news of signing a guy like Rusch (and his glorious 57-86 career record) is, it was a solid move by Jim Hendry. Glendon has pitched better for the Cubs than anybody dreamed he would when he was plucked off of waivers from the Rangers in the spring of 2004. When he finally was put back in the rotation for good last year he responded by going 4-0 with a 3.41 ERA in five September starts. He also posted ERAs of 7.82 and 8.87 in July and August respectively. Is that bad? I suppose it is.

But the best news about this signing is that Hendry says he’s still looking to sign another starting pitcher. If you include Carlos Zambrano, Mark Prior, Greg Maddux, Kerry Wood, Glendon and Jerome Williams, another starting pitcher would give the Cubs seven of them. Given that Mark and Kerry treat the disabled list like it’s a Carribbean resort, that seems about right.

Seabiscuit’s Jockey goes as far as to say that Hendry will go after AJ Burnett and Kevin Millwood. Both would be solid choices. Neither is likely to actually end up playing for the Cubs.

Burnett will be the subject of another insane bidding war between the Yankees and Red Sox this winter, the kind that earn guys like Matt Clement obscene raises after lousy years. Even if Burnett eschews the Sox and Yankees he’s interested in Baltimore and their new pitching sage Leo Mazzone and Toronto because his wife is a polar bear or something.

Millwood seems like a guy the Cubs could get, but the Indians were so emboldened by their late season surge (which ended when Grady Sizemore went all Brant Brown in Kansas City) that the notoriously cheap Dolan family is more willing to give Millwood an offer closer to what he actually wanted. Of course, Scott Boras is Millwood’s agent, so who knows?

Other than those two there’s Matt Morris (oh God no) and Scott Elarton (pass) and pretty much nobody. Yikes.

OK, suddenly re-signing Rusch went from nice to necessary.

What’s a little disconcerting in the Jockey’s article is that he says that even if Rusch doesn’t earn the fifth spot in the rotation this year, he can have it next year when Greg Maddux is off playing golf in Vegas every day. You would like to think that a franchise that pretends it has young pitching prospects coming out of its nose could piece together at least one guy (Angel Guzman, Rich Hill, Ricky Nolasco, etc, etc, etc) in two years. Right? Or who knows, maybe they’ll just let those guys go to Kansas City in the Rule V draft. That’s always a good time.

Another mention of note is the Jockey’s assertion that Brian Giles is already tagged and bagged to go to the Cardinals. First off, you’d think Giles might want to stay in San Diego. Secondly, there’s another team in the NL Central with a hole in right field so large you’d have thought Bill Holden would have fallen in it during the last 200 feet of his walk from the desert to Wrigley.

The Jockey also says that both Matt Murton and Ronny Cedeno have “earned” starting spots for the Cubs. I think he and Dusty need to get together and figure out that sitting on the bench while Ben Grieve and Neifi are playing left and short is not “starting.”

There was no mention of Nomar in the article, but we’re pretty sure that he’s spending his days in the outfield of a little league park in southern California with Mia kicking him flyballs.

Of immediately interesting note is the decision of boy genius Theo Epstein to walk away from a three-year $4.5 million offer to remain general manager of the Red Sox. Theo who “built” the 2004 World Champions seemed set to sign the deal, then apparently realized what a prick Larry Luccino is and decided he’d rather take a year off.

He might still pop up in one of the open jobs in Los Angeles or Philadelphia, but Peter Gammons said on the four-letter network last night that he thinks Theo will spend this year “doing social work.” Which, I guess means working for the Cubs, doesn’t it?

You can argue all you want about just how good Theo really was at being a general manager. The biggest thing, of course, is that he won a World Series and that’s kind of the point of the whole exercise. Even if he did at times do things that made you scratch your head.

He couldn’t get management to pull the trigger on the A-Rod deal which would have netted him not only the game’s best shortstop, but a then-healthy Magglio Ordonez, too. If Maggs is in Boston he doesn’t trip over Willie Harris and his knee never dies. But really, that was John Henry’s fault, not Theo’s.

So then he had a very pissed off Nomar to deal with, and he dealt with it by trading him for pennies on the dollar for Doug Eyechart and Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera played well, and the Eyechart didn’t add much, except he did hold the baseball that was used in the final out of the 2004 season hostage for a while.

Theo waived Manny Ramirez and then played it off as “motivation.” He traded for Curt Schilling, which obviously worked out, even if when you trade for him you have to put up with him. A former Phillies’ teammate of Schilling once said of him, “Every fifth day he’s a horse. The other four days he’s a horse’s ass.”

But he also signed Clement, dumped Cabrera for a more expensive Edgar Renteria, tried to build a rotation around a one-legged Schilling and a 400 pound David Wells. He tried to trade Manny at the deadline then backed out at the last minute.

But he also hired a manager who won the first World Series in Boston since 1918. He traded for, the same day he made the Nomar deal, Dave Roberts.

But he also traded Roberts for Jay Payton who bitched his way out of town in half a season. He threw Matt Murton into the Nomar deal, and it’s now clear he traded gave up the two best players in the deal.

He gave up on the bullpen by committee idea after a disaster in 2003 (when current Cub Scott Williamson rendered it moot by pitching better as the closer in the playoffs than he had all year), and got Keith Foulke. Foulke was tremendous for the Red Sox down the stretch and in the playoffs that year.

Theo also signed two guys in the offseason last year that had Cubs fans yelling at Jim Hendry, Matt Mantei and Wade Miller. Both were broken down and stayed that way.

He let Todd Walker go and replaced him with Mark Bellhorn, which seemed like a good idea for a while. When you point to the big hits Bellhorn got in 2004’s playoffs, remember who the Red Sox’s best playoff hitter was in 2003. It was Todd.

He was part of the management team that decided not to give Pedro Martinez a contract extension during the 2004 season and saw him get a huge offer from the Mets and walk during the offseason. The Red Sox were one good Pedro year away from repeating. Pedro went 15-8 with a 2.82 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP for the Mets in ’05. Oops.

So where does this leave us? Theo’s a very active general manager. He’s made some bad moves, but he’s made some good ones and like all good general managers he’s made more good ones than bad ones.

Can he be replaced? Sure he can. There’s any number of general managers who can take a championship-level team, like the one Theo inherited, and keep it there, catch some breaks and win a title. There are a lot of guys who could inherit that team and completely screw it into the ground, too.

Gammons asserts that Theo’s decision to leave had as much to do with the culture of the Red Sox as anything else. Theo was tired of the excess scrutiny he got as part of his job. He just wants to go to a team where he can be judged on the moves he makes as a GM and not be gossip fodder if he goes to a bar or a restaurant or an all-night gay rave.

Who can blame him? Jim Hendry’s got a pretty good job. We know he fell down the stairs a couple offseasons ago, that his wife left him last year and that his pants size has doubled since 2002.

Ken Williams is able to keep stuff pretty private. You know except for the stuff that the police refuse to expunge from his sons’ arrest warrants.

But what do we know about other World Series winning general managers?

We can barely spell Larry Beinfest’s name. We couldn’t pick Bill Stoneman out of a police lineup. We thought Joe Garagiola Jr. was working on the weekend Today Show.

So Theo can take a year off and end up next season in San Diego or someplace and get some privacy. He also will get a payroll about a third of what he had in Boston.