By Arturo Mora, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist 2009

About six months ago I posted a piece predicting the Cubs would win the World Series. Not so much. When I wrote that, the Cubs looked great on paper. But you gotta play between the white lines, and now the Wrigley’s just look like a bunch of lazy millionaires. Don’t worry though, there’s always next year!

I don’t know if anything will change, besides new owner Tom Ricketts taking control. One question is if Lou Piniella will be back, and if so will it be the old fiery Lou, who can kick some lazy millionaire butt. Nice Lou needs to go. Let’s steal back Joe Girardi.

On the one hand, you have to be grateful for three years of winning records, the longest such stretch since 1967-1972. But mostly this team horribly underperformed. It’s like they believed all the hype about how great they were, and figured the wins would just be handed to them.

General Manager Jim Hendry got a lot of the credit for building such a strong team the previous two years, so he and his scouting team deserve a fair share of the blame for picking this munch of malcontents.

Just look at how some of the bad signing decisions played out, all of them big bucks for career-worst years. Sad case number one of course is the mercurial (and that’s being nice) right fielder Milton Bradley. 12 homers, 40 RBI and a .257 batting average. Pathetic for the money he’s getting. Add in the psychic grief he gave his manager, teammates and Cubs fans, and he deserves to be railroaded out of town.

Not that I miss Sammy Sosa, but the team has been jinxed in trying to find a powerful bat in right field since he left. Jacque Jones (who has 5 home runs for the Newark Bears now!) bombed out, followed by Koske Fukudome, another Hendry failure. Fukudome actually has decent numbers for a center fielder this year (11-54-.259), but again not for the money he gets.

Hendry got the team a new closer, Kevin Gregg, who is tied for second in the league for blown saves and has a 4.72 ERA. For many fans, that was a head shaker, since Gregg tied for the league lead in that despicable category last year. In my view last year’s closer, Kerry Wood, was pretty shaky and needed to go, but Carlos Marmol would have been a better choice, as he’s proven in September.

The ne’er do wells include those who were strong in previous years. There’s no way a talent such as Carlos Zambrano should have this bad a year (9-7, 3.77), especially after the big salary numbers he’s pulling in. Would a Tony La Russa or Dave Duncan stand for that? Zambrano has worn out his welcome at Wrigley by making it all about his poor bruised ego, while playing like he’d rather be on a beach with a beer (belly).

There were other disappointments, all in big ways. Geo Soto crashed and burned. China doll Aramis Ramirez got hurt for the umpteenth time. Ryan Dempster got a big new contract and went out and had half the year he had as a poor(er) man.

It’s just not meant to be for Cubs fans I guess. Maybe not in my lifetime. We are meant to suffer and build our characters. We should have the best characters of all baseball fans. Ever. Let’s go for 200 years!

This was my first year in about 10 to not actually go to a game at Wrigley Field, and I definitely miss that shrine, though maybe this was the year to be away. I went to a few Royals games and tried to get into cheering them on, but they definitely made it hard for me. It’s hard enough pulling for a new team after 50 years, but especially when they really stink.

They make the Cubs look like real winners!