Game Over

In Chicago, baseball season ended yesterday.

Actually, yesterday was merely a formality. In reality, baseball season was over for this city some time ago.

That's not how it was supposed to be. The Cubs and White Sox were both supposed to contend for their respective division titles. The Cubs were even viewed as World Series contenders by some.

Not by me, though. I knew this year's team chemistry was in trouble when general manager Jim Hendry signed free agent outfielder Milton Bradley to play right field. Granted, Bradley was coming off his best season in the Major Leagues, and the Cubs lineup needed a left-handed bat (Bradley is a switch hitter), but his record of injuries and public blowups, plus the fact that he'd been with seven different teams in his 10-year career, should have screamed "BUYER BEWARE!" at Hendry.

Instead, he signed Bradley anyway, and the predictable mayhem ensued: Bradley underperformed; fans got on him; he argued with manager Lou Pinella and the media; and he blamed damn near everyone but himself for his failings. (He also claimed more than once that fans had hurled racial epithets at his, but refused to go into specifics about who allegedly said what when.) By the time Hendry suspended Bradley for the remainder of the season for his constant bitching, it was too late--the season was well out of hand.

Hendry also stumbled in his other off-season dealings, like trading popular utility man Mark DeRosa (and then missing him mightily when third baseman Aramis Ramirez went down with a separated shoulder), signing free agent infielder Aaron Miles (who was injured much of the season and his poorly when he wasn't hurt) and trading fifth starter Jason Marquis (who went on to be an All-Star for the Colorado Rockies).

To be fair, it wasn't all Hendry's fault. As mentioned above, Ramirez was injured early and was missing for the middle of the season, and four of the Cubs starters--Ted Lilly, Ryan Dempster, Rich Harden and Carlos Zambrano--spent time on the disabled list. Underachievers Alfonso Soriano, Kosuke Fukadome and Zambrano didn't help matters either.

Under the circumstances, they probably did better than they should have. Given the pre-season expectations, though, they didn't do well enough.

The White Sox weren't expected to win their division, but they were expected to put up more of a fight than they did. Instead, injuries to key players (Carlos Quentin) and underachievement by others (Jermaine Dye had a great first half, but tailed off badly in the second half, and none of the starting pitchers truly excelled, even though Mark Buerhle threw a perfect game in August--and then lost most of his starts thereafter) sank the team well before they were formally eliminated.

So. Baseball season continues in Boston, New York and Los Angeles, as it usually does, and in Detroit, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Anaheim, too. Chicago's baseball fans will go into their usual winter slumber, awaking again next spring with hopes renewed. Fans on the South Side, at least, have the comfort of knowing that they've won a World Series in living memory (2005, to be exact).

For Cubs fans? The best they can hope is that some year soon, "next year" will finally arrive.