Middle of the Road

The middle of the season has come and gone. The All-Star Game, for those who still care about such things, is history. And the Dog Days of Summer are just about here.

By this point in the year, most Chicago sports fans are already looking ahead to Bears training camp and the preseason, and such is the case this year. Cub fans, however, have sufficient reason to delay their interest in last year's Super Bowl runners-up, if only for a few weeks.

Because the Cubs are playing good baseball. No, really.

It took a while for new manager Lou Piniella to find the right on-field combination; it seemed for some time that he tried a different lineup every day. It also took a while for his staff ace, Carlos Zambrano, to find his groove and pitch the way everyone knows he can, and for Alfonso Soriano, the team's high-priced free agent acquisition, to re-establish his home run stroke.

Once both players found their respective grooves, they complemented the efforts of younger players like Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot, and of seasoned veterans like Ted Lilly (another free agent pickup) and Aramis Ramirez (finally delivering clutch hits in games that actually matter, instead of tearing the cover off the ball only after the team was well out of contention). Even injuries to players like closer Ryan Dempster haven't slowed them much.

The turning point in the Cubs' season, strangely enough, was also their most embarrassing: An in-dugout slugout between catcher Michael Barrett and Zambrano, who took exception to Barrett's poor performance in the previous inning (when he'd allowed a passed ball and made a throwing error) and pointed to his own head as if to say, "What are you thinking?" or "Get your head in the game, man!" Barrett responded, Zambrano punched him, they were seaparated by teammates, and the fight continued in the clubhouse, where Zambrano beat Barrett badly enough to send the catcher to the hospital for stitches. Barrett's play had been erratic all season, and this incident was the final straw--he was traded to San Diego shortly afterward. That's another significant change in this Cub team from previous managerial regimes: No running interference. No coddling. No "player's manager" nonsense. Just perform up to expectations, or don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. The Cubs are lucky enough to play in the weakest division in the Major Leagues, and with the Brewers suffering the loss of their ace, Ben Sheets, and the other teams in the division well out of it, the Cubs could make a run. The race will, at least, be interesting.

The same cannot be said for the White Sox, whose World Championship in 2005 is rapidly fading into the fog of yesteryear, replaced by the bitter reality of the present: This team sucks. Hard.

Just as the current success of the Cubs cannot be attributed to one player or aspect of their game, so the current failure of the Sox cannot be attributed to one player or aspect of their game. It's been a combination of things: injuries to key players (Scott Podsednik, Darren Erstad, Joe Crede), subpar years from others (Jermaine Dye, Jose Conteras), a general lack of run production and, worst of all, a bullpen that appear to believe that the most effective way to fight a fire is to pour kerosene on it, blowing lead after lead after lead.

Manager Ozzie Guillen hasn't helped matters any with his abrasive, outspoken, If There's-A-Bus-Passing-By-You'll-Find-One-Of-My-Players-Under-It style, which was tolerated and even embraced when this team was winning, but now it just grates. Meanwhile, over at the Sun-Times, Jay Mariotti, whom Guillen called " a fag" last year (thereby achieving the near impossible feat of making Mariotti seem, by comparison, at least, to be less of an asshole), is doing a happy dance and calling for Guillen's ouster at least once a week.

It's exceedingly unlikely that general manager Kenny Williams or owner Jerry Reinsdorf will fire Guillen, at least not in the immediate future. This team's nucleus still has potential, with All-Stars like Paul Konerko, Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland and Bobby Jenks to build around. Williams may deal other players, though, like Dye, whose bat could still be of value to a team in the pennant race, or Contreras, who has been ineffective the last couple of months and may need a change of scenery to revive his career (or, at least, someplace else to end it--it won't be in Chicago).

In a town where baseball season has usually fallen before the first autumn leaves have hit the ground, it's nice to see a couple of races still going on: the Cubs competing to win their division or, at least, the wildcard playoff spot; and the White Sox competing to stay out of last place--a race we're all too familiar with in Chicago.