Cubs reek, both night and day

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My buddy Gordon Wittenmyer, the fine Sun-Times reporter who covers the Cubs, wrote an excellent piece on the difficulty of managing the hopeless North Side sacks: READ IT.

As always, there were references to day baseball at Wrigley Field as a possible culprit to the franchise's 102 years of futility. (Not blasting Gordon here; he was just listing all the usual suspects.)

Maybe in yesteryear, day baseball was a valid excuse. Day game after day game after day game in the heat of July and August wearing out the lads and creating too much of a grind.

OK. Possible.

(Never mind that the Cubs usually were out of the race each year before summer began. Maybe the mere threat of hot days to come made them wilt in advance.)

But in the post-lights-at-Wrigley era, and especially the new millennium? Please. The Cubs play plenty of home night games.

Last season, they played 77 total day games (home and road). The Twins played 60, the Cardinals 58, the Yankees 56.

Trust me: Those few extra day games weren't what made Milton Bradley implode, what turned Carlos Zambrano into Cra-Z, what made Kosuke Fukudome do his spin-a-rama whiffs and what made Jim Hendry try to justify his signing of Aaron Miles.

Like every other team in the majors, the Cubs never have to play a road night game and then travel to play a home day game. Their schedule simply isn't much of a grind ... not because of day baseball, anyway.

If anything, day baseball at Wrigley should be a major advantage for the home team. Theoretically, the Cubs know how to play tough sun fields, are experts at dealing with wind patterns and otherwise are accustomed to the uniqueness that is day baseball at Wrigley.

Theoretically.