Despite Track Record, True Believers Dot Cubs' Camp

MESA, Ariz. -- You go to HoHoKam Park, the desert home of the Chicago Cubs, and you wonder the same thing that crazy people have wondered for decades.

Is this the year?

You've polled a few old ball scouts who are skeptical. The Cubs are getting long in the tooth, they say. Unless they get lucky, no dice.

Then you walk into the ballpark and are told about the former Cubs star who the other day was kneeling outside the ballpark, looking prayerful. Beseeching the heavens, perhaps. Calling upon Harry Caray. Begging the goat for forgiveness and Cubdom's deliverance.

Sounds like more Cubs hooey.

But when you find the former Cubs star, he tells you all about it.

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"I was walking into HoHoKam last week, and I just stopped and I had to get down on my knees," says Rick Sutcliffe, best known by Cubs fans for winning the Cy Young award after going 16-1 for Chicago in 1984. "It hit me more than ever before -- what an honor this is to have a uniform on. It just overcame me. I had to stop."

A jolly giant who stands 6-foot-7 and still looks good in baseball duds, Sutcliffe is advising Cubs pitchers in spring training, and throwing batting practice to Cubs hitters.

Being around so many Cubs, maybe he's gaining confidence that he should make a comeback. But it's another comeback that dropped him to his knees.

Sutcliffe survived colon cancer, 13 months after it was discovered in the 2008-09 offseason. If the Cubs can pitch and hit this year as well as Sutcliffe's surgeon cuts, maybe there's hope yet for Cubdom.

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"I went from a colon this long to one this long," he says of the surgery last year, moving his hands from nearly three feet apart to one foot apart. "They had to cut a bunch of it out that had the cancer in it.

"I'm physically good. I throw batting practice every day. To be 53 years old and having survived cancer, it's special. I mean, it's special."

Another baseball lifer who's in unusually good spirits these days is Cubs manager Lou Piniella, maybe because the Cubs have yet to play any games that count in the standings. The Cubs have new ownership. Piniella is in the final year of his contract, but he sees no reason to sweat it. He notes that all three of his Cubs teams finished the season with a winning record. The first two won the National League Central, although both of them were swept from the divisional playoffs by the NL West champion.

"I don't feel any pressure at all," Sweet Lou says. "I'm having fun, and I'm going to do the best job I humanly can do, and that's all I can do. No, I have no pressure at all."

Piniella also says he's mellowed. "Lou says that every year," says one of the scouts, laughing.

You try to picture a scenario where the stars align for these Cubs, and you figure the starting rotation is the most plausible source for it. Ace Carlos Zambrano and No. 2 starter Ryan Dempster have put together big seasons in their careers and neither is too old to to do it again. If Ted Lilly comes all the way back from arm surgery, he'll give Piniella one of the better lefty starters in the NL. The No. 3 spot, for now, belongs to sophomore Randy Wells, who as a 26-year-old rookie was 12-10 with a 3.05 ERA.

Maybe it's more Cubs hooey, but Sutcliffe sees greatness in Wells.

"Watch him. Watch him. Watch him," he says. "They're calling him a No. 3. I don't call him a No. 3. He's a potential No. 1. Watch him. It starts in the bullpen. He throws as many strikes as anybody as I've ever been around -- his command is that good. And when he gets out here (on the main field), it seems like he adds velocity. He's more aggressive, and then when you add the crowd, he's able to handle that as well.

"I look for a terrific, consistent year out of this kid."

The closer, Carlos Marmol, is average or better when he's healthy. Like Wells, he started out his Cubs minor league career as a catcher.

As for the rest of Piniella's bullpen, it seems capable of turning Mellow Lou into Volcanic Lou well before Chicago's summer heat and menu of day games wears down the Cubs. And that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Who in baseball is better at stomping and yelling? At kicking up dust? At baseball vaudeville?

"When I managed in New York," Piniella says, "George [Steinbrenner] used to tell me all the time: 'You've got to provide a little entertainment. It's part of your job, get some people in the stands.' Basically he's right, but now, the way the game has evolved, I think you just do your job, and you do the least amount of arguing as possible."

In a fantasy world where a Cubs season goes deep into October, the team draws horsepower from a capable left-handed hitter or two to lend balance to the offense's strength -- a trio of dangerous yet aging right-handed hitters -- Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano. You'd think the Cubs finally could get a lefty hitter who could exploit all of the right-handed pitching that the teams faces.

Instead, being the Cubs, they've gotten heartache. General manager GM Jim Hendry invested $48 million in outfielder Kosuke Fukodome three offseasons ago and $30 million in outfielder Milton Bradley two offseasons ago. Bradley fizzled last year, then moved to Seattle in a trade for pitcher Carlos Silva and, because someone other than Bradley is always the culprit, recently blamed Chicago for his struggles. Fukudome enters the third year of his contract. A year ago, coming off a dismal second half to the 2008 season, he batted .259 with 11 home runs, 112 strikeouts and 93 walks. Little wonder that Hendry, whose contract runs through 2011, is sitting on a hot seat.

The Cubs, as you may have heard, have gone since 1908 without winning a World Series,

Is this the year?

"It's going to happen eventually," Piniella says. "I hope it's soon."