The Interwebs is/are ablaze with talk about the Cubs blowing up their underperforming team and starting anew.  One rumor has the Angels in talks to acquire Derrek Lee.  Another says the Cubs are talking to the Angels about Xavier Nady, not Lee.  Other rumors have the Cubs trading Tom Gorzelanny to an undisclosed team.  There have been calls for the Cubs to dump Ted Lilly, dump Ryan Dempster, dump Carlos Silva, dump Carlos Zambrano.

Enough is enough!  Stop the madness!

The month of May just ended and the Cubs are approximately one-third of the way through the season.  During their two months of play, the Cubs have a record of 24-29, good for third place in the NL Central.  They are currently 6.5 games behind the first place Reds (I still have trouble typing that).

Like so many Cubs fans, I am disappointed in the way the team has played thus far this season.  The fact that the Cubs have lost seven-of-eight games to the lowly Pirates just makes the season seem that much worse.  But the fact is that there is still time to turn things around.  By no means is the season a lost cause (at least not yet).  Enough with the calls to blow up the team.

Let’s be practical for a moment.  The Cubs are trailing a Reds team that is over-performing.  Baseball history is full of teams that played well for two or three months, only to turn back into pumpkins as the season progressed.  A turnaround by the Cubs coupled with a Reds team that comes back to Earth could mean a happy second half of the season for the Cubs.

What about the Cardinals, you ask?  The Cardinals are not the juggernaut a lot of people make them out to be.  They are very vulnerable this year.  Already, we’ve seen two of their starting pitchers go down to injury.  A similar scenario of injuries among the Cards position players – especially if one of them is named Pujols – could spell disaster for St. Louis.  Again, a Cubs turnaround could land them in the catbird’s seat.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not trying to be pollyanaish here.  The Cubs have their problems.  No doubt about that.  But the problems can be overcome.  Already in the first two months of the season we have witnessed some pleasant surprises from the Cubs.  Who could have predicted the re-birth of Carlos Silva?  Starlin Castro has been a pleasant surprise early in the season.  He’s going through some struggles currently, but that’s all part of the rookie adjustment.  Tyler Colvin has continued his good hitting from Spring Training.  Marlon Byrd, Alfonso Soriano, and Kosuke Fukudome are all hitting well.  My favorite whipping boy, Mike Fontenot, has gotten his mojo back from 2008.  All is not lost.

Of course, you can’t talk about the good without talking about the bad.  Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez have both been in a season-long slump.  DLee appears to be pulling out of his.  Ramirez not so much.  But even this is good news if viewed in the proper light.  If the Cubs can stay in contact with the division leaders while their number three and four hitters stink up the joint, that bodes well for the team when Lee and Ramirez get back in the groove.  At least that’s the way I choose to view the situation.

I don’t have any such good vibes about the bullpen.  It stinks.  John Grabow has been horrible, the youngsters have been inconsistent (as should be expected from youngsters), and Carlos Zambrano did not solve the setup man role dilemma.  However, hope may be just over the horizon. 

With both Grabow and Esmailin Caridad on the DL, the Cubs have added Andrew Cashner to the bullpen.  Cashner has had a terrific year in the minor so far as a starting pitcher.  However, Cashner’s background is as a closer in college (one of the best), so in my mind, he is a welcome addition to an otherwise weak bullpen.  For the time being, Sean Marshall (who is having a very nice year) will handle the 8th inning duties, but don’t be surprised to see Cashner take over those duties in the very near future.

So can we please put the “trade everyone” talk away for another month.  Let’s first see what June brings.  If things don’t turn around for the Cubs, then let’s start talking about the future.  But for now, let’s concentrate on the present.

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Ken Griffey, Jr. announced his returement yesterday.  In all honesty, it was probably time.  The 40-year old Griffey really hasn’t been the Ken Griffey, Jr. we have come to know and love for many years.

But I don’t want to bash Griffey.  I’m sure he’d be the first to admit that the last several years have not been his best.  Instead, I want to remember the young Griffey.  The Seattle Mariners Griffey of old, before he was the Cincinnati Reds Griffey.  He was a young-faced kid with a smile a mile wide, a joyful personality, and a bat that could crush the ball.  He also had a Gold Glove-caliber glove.  In fact, my mitt is a Ken Griffey, Jr. model.

When I was a kid, I had the opportunity to go to the old Comiskey Park to see the White Sox play the Orioles.  I was by no means a White Sox fan, but my Dad somehow came up with the tickets, so we went.  We got to the game early and I got to see the two teams take batting practice.  We were sitting in foul territory down the right field line and I remember watching Jim Palmer (yes, it was that long ago) shagging flies in the outfield.

To that point, I was not a Jim Palmer fan.  I didn’t dislike him.  I mostly didn’t think about him.  He played for a team I didn’t care about in a league I didn’t follow.  Even so, that day I became a Jim Palmer fan.  The reason is that while he was shagging flies, I could see the joy with which he approached the game.  He was like a big kid out there.  He’d elbow out a teammate to get to a fly ball or he’d snag one behind his back.  He was just having fun.  The joy he displayed that day is the same joy I feel everytime I put on a glove and play catch with my kids or shag flies with one of the kid’s teams.  Ken Griffey displayed that same kind of joy in the way he approached the game.

Unfortunately for Griffey – and all of us who loved to watch him play – injuries took some of the joy out of the game for him.  His injuries got to be so commonplace that they became a punchline to a bad joke.  He played the outfield with reckless abandon (a trait I love) and he paid the price.  His legs betrayed him.  Then his glove betrayed him.  And finally when his bat betrayed him, he decided it was time to go.

Griffey didn’t end up having the kind of career a lot of people thought he would have.  And yet, he had a Hall of Fame career.  If he could be that good while dealing with one bad break after another, I have to wonder how good he really could have been with a couple of breaks going his way.