So that's what it takes...

EULOGY FOR THE 00s CUBS, AND THE PLAYER WHO PERSONIFIED THOSE DAYS

I kept meaning to get back to this blog. Like many of us, after the playoffs, I wasn't feeling it. And when the election grabbed my attention, whatever was left for sports went to the Series, and Da Bears. (Yes, I'm in Michigan right now, but the Lions just don't cut it).

Now I have been given the jolt that snaps me back to Cubs consciousness: the Cubs traded for Kevin Gregg, last year’s Marlins closer, and Jim Hendry was quoted as saying that Kerry Wood, last year’s closer, was ‘deserving of a three- or four-year deal, which we were not prepared to do.” In other words, don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya?

Now I would like to call on the usual suspects to ruminate on the end of Kerry Wood’s long tenure with the Cubs. Going back to the middle 90s, when we kept hearing how awesome kerry Wood was going to be (when he was a minor leaguer), to early 98, when Andy MacPhail and Ed Lynch called him up for a night game in Montreal for his big league debut on a cold April night (what a good scam that was, for several reasons). His unbelievable 20-K game against the Astros. The heartbreak of his arm getting sore late that year and leading to surgery, which kept him out all of ‘99 as the Cubs fell apart. The mediocre return the next year. The return to dominance in the early ‘00s, including 266Ks in 2003, and over 200 IP. The home run the day after the Bartman game (amazing that didn’t help!). The re injury and the heartbreak in 2004, and yet again in 2006 as he teamed with Mark Prior to crush Cubs’ fans hope in three straight years, when we all yearned to avenge the 2003 playoff loss. The tentative return late last year, and finally, his 2008 reinvention as a full-out closer, proving those who said he couldn’t wrong (including Steve Stone).

OK, I do understand the real logic here. The REAL plan is for Gregg to be here and to keep the closer job until Marmol can seize it, even if that only means spring training. Then, Gregg would be nest year’s set up man, possibly along with Jeff Samarzija and Sean Marshall. OK then, Kerry, thanks for the memories. It makes me sad that we never won it all with you here. This is the hardest separation since Mark Grace left. Letting Prior go last year was easy; letting Maddux leave a second time seemed right when he was 40 and we were hopelessly out of it. With Kerry Wood go the days of me living in the city and the north side being all about the Cubs, all summer long. Now they’re all gone: Kerry, Prior, Dusty, Corey… all the cornerstones of the team we thought would take us to the Promised Land.

So take a second and vote for your favorite current Cub. I’m voting for Carlos, as I would have done even with Kerry here. Carlos has now been here longer than anyone. Only he and Aramis remain from the team that lost the Bartman game.