Cubs What If?

(Apologies in advance if the readings from my crystal ball prove faulty. It's something about the neighborhood. Even the cable reception is erratic around here.)

by Paul Sullivan, Tribune Reporter
2:17 p.m., CDT, May 6, 2010

PITTSBURGH – If you thought that watching his team lose to the perennial doormat Pirates, 9-3, on Wednesday night and plummet into the NL Central basement was the toughest thing Jim Hendry has ever had to do as a baseball man, an hour after the game you were proven wrong.

Hendry informed the assembled media and all of Cub Nation that he was firing his good friend and Cub manager for the past 4+ years and 526 games, Lou Piniella.

"There's no two ways about it. This stinks," said an emotional Hendry, "but after a very disappointing season last year and the awful start we've had this year, we're going to have to take the team in a different direction. Alan Trammell will be taking over the ballclub for the rest of the year, and I know that he and the other coaches are going to do everything humanly possible to turn this thing around.

"There's still time to make this a special season, but the ballplayers have to start doing the things they're capable of. I know that, Alan knows that, and the ballplayers know that."

You are traveling through another dimension...

Having shared baseball's best, regular-season record, the Cubs and the surprisingTampa Rays, making their first-ever trip to baseball's post-season, enter the 2008 playoffs assured of home-field advantage in the first two rounds.

In the NL, Lou Piniella's Cubs, reaching the post-season in
consecutive years for the first time since 1908, when they also won
their last World Championship, will hope to continue their superb play
at Wrigley Field this season as they host their National League
Division Series with the NL West champion, Arizona.