Look and Learn

It's always nice to see a team clinch something at Wrigley Field. In 1998, it was the Cubs and the Wild Card. In 2003, it was the Cubs and the Division. It was also the Marlins and the pennant. This year?

The freakin' Cardinals and the Division.

There's only one possible good outcome from this: Anger at Tribune Tower for the sheer embarrassment of what occurred.

If at least one someone on the Cubs (read: Dusty Baker or Jim Hendry) doesn't get fired for wasting $100 million of Tribune earnings on payroll, there is no justice.

However, if Cubs fans don't demand change, then they don't deserve any justice.

On the other hand, perhaps, some of us deserve to get crapped on by the team we support with our interest and dollars. Sox fans are already lining up with their bile. You just know that if their team collapses there will be hate spewing from all 50,000 of them. There will be no fond remembrances of the 2005 team the way Cubs fans dote on the 1969 team. Cubs fans celebrate near winning instead of getting angry about losing.

If we are foolish enough to trust our dollars and time to Jim Hendry and the 22 new players he's brought in since the Cubs qualified for the playoffs and to Dusty Baker and his inane use of players, we don't deserve a winner.

If Cubs fans show up in January to that insipid convention and cheer anyone other than Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Greg Maddux, Mark Prior, Matt Murton and Carlos Zambrano, they deserve another season like this.

Many more.

And many more pictures like the one above.