Here’s what the Chicago Tribune’s Rick Morrissey passes off in his column today as “a little eye opener to go with your daily dissatisfaction with Dusty Baker”:

A month or so ago, Baker opened a letter from a Cubs fan. He gets a lot of letters. This one was different. This one was uglier, nastier, viler than the normal fare. This one … well, this one was almost beyond comprehension.

“This guy wrote that he hoped I would hurry up and get my cancer back and die so the Cubs could get a real manager,” Baker said.

A vile sentiment, no doubt, but not exactly the dose of reality Morrissey promised. Yes, there are lunatics who write letters to public figures. Welcome to Earth, Rick.

The reality is that just about nobody worth listening to believes that Dusty Baker is entirely at fault for the Cubs’ mediocrity. That’s a classic strawman, just as this anecdote so willingly dished out by Baker and happily lapped up by Morrissey is classic misdirection.

The Cubs have suffered devastating injuries to key players and disappearing acts by others. That is largely responsible for their subpar performance. But on the margins, Baker does deserve some blame. Baseball is a game of averages, small differences in which make the difference between success and failur over the course of a 162-game season.

Baker, for example, is responsible for fielding yesterday’s lineup. That lineup included Jose Macias starting in centerfield and leaving Matt Murton and his .500 on-base percentage on the bench. The way things played out, the choice didn’t make much of a difference to the outcome of the game. I suppose the best that could be said about Baker’s recent tenure is that his bad management of the club has been overshadowed by factors beyond his control.

Baker’s like the captain of a submarine that simultaneously crashes into an iceberg and gets hit by an incoming torpedo. We can’t honestly say that the sub’s sinking is entirely his fault, but neither can we honestly say his captainship was stellar.

I call this girl Melissa Bean. Click here for a couple of other photos from my trip to “Cloud Gate” in Millennium Park.

… making my swing a little shorter. It got out of whack. It was pretty long. That’s really the only thing.”

— Corey Patterson, explaining why he expects to be back with the big-league club sooner rather than later.

My take: Corey, you could have the shortest, quickest swing in baseball, but it won’t help you hit balls in the dirt or over your head.

(Also posted to CubsNet.com.)

Since Dusty Baker inexplicably reinstalled Corey Patterson into the leadoff spot June 23 and through July 1, Patterson has had 29 official at bats, scored 3 runs, hit safely 6 times, walked twice and struck out 13 times.

That leaves him with a .207 batting average, a .275 on-base percentage. Forty-five percent of his at bats have ended with a strikeout.

The Cubs have gone 4-4.

Last night, Corey Patterson went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts batting leadoff for the Cubs. He was booed heavily. Then in the 8th inning he made a fantastic diving catch. He then alertly threw the ball to second for an inning-ending double play. He left the field to a standing ovation.

Patterson is clearly capable of moments of great brilliance on the baseball diamond, whether in the field, at the plate or on the bases. This is what makes his overall terribleness so frustrating to fans. I don’t think Patterson’s performance is a booing offense, but his slot in the batting order is.

Patterson may be stubborn in keeping his undisciplined, swing-from-the-heels approach to the plate, but he’s clearly trying his damnedest. I’m open to a trade if it means getting more than you give, though I’m not in the trade-him-now-no-matter-what camp. But that doesn’t mean I believe he merits a a spot atop the batting order.

The numbers are startling: Of the 148 major-league hitters with at least 250 plate appearances (Patterson has 289), he has the 144th worst on-base percentage – .277. Of those 148 hitters, 133 see more pitches per plate appearance than he does — 3.41. Of Patterson’s 289 plate appearances, 75 — 25 percent! — have resulted in strikeouts. He is, at this moment, truly terrible.

One could make an argument that when a player gets this bad, he ought to be replaced in the lineup. That may or may not be an option, depending on one’s opinion of Jerry Hairston Jr.’s ability to play center field. If that’s the determination, fine. At least minimize the damage Patterson can do by batting him lower in the order.

And yet, and yet, and yet … manager Dusty Baker insists on batting him first. And, to compound the travesty, he has backed up Patterson’s whiffology with Neifi Perez‘s unique brand of easyoutism. Remember that list of 148 major-leaguers with at least 250 plate appearances? Perez’s on-base percentage is 132nd worst — .300. His career on-base percentage is .301. He is one of the worst hitters to ever play major-league baseball for an extended period of time.

Once again, necessity perhaps means Perez must play shortstop, thanks to Garciaparra’s terrible injury. But why must he be put in a position where his reliably bad performance will hurt the team the most?

The Cubs won yesterday’s game 2-0, following up a 2-0 win Sunday, but they cannot continue to shutout teams indefinitely — even with Wood and Prior back in the rotation. Patterson’s catch may have saved the game yesterday, but perhaps it wouldn’t have needed saving if he and Perez hadn’t combined to go 0-for-8. If one of them had been on base, Lee’s third-inning home run would have been a two-run shot.

Patterson, now 25, may yet figure it out. I’d like him to do so with the Cubs. There’s no good reason, however, for him to occupy precious real estate at the top of the order while he does so. Perez is more than one of those “proven veterans” Baker so adores, he’s a proven outmaker. He oughtn’t be anywhere near sniffing distance of the top of the lineup.

Baker simply cannot continue with this madness — not if he wants to give his club its best chance to win, not if he wants to keep his job.

(Also posted to CubsNet.com.)

… wins. If everybody’s drifting off, nobody wins.

— A Warren Park Little League coach, urging her team of 7- or 8-year-olds to stay seated on the bench and cheer on their teammates.

I thought that Comcast’s decision to delay the start of a Cubs broadcast last week so it could show commercials and promote its mediocre late-night sports news program was pretty bad. But last night’s performance was even worse.

Bottom of the ninth inning, Cubs trail by two, and — pfft! — the screen goes … purple. The Cubs went on to lose uneventfully, and so far as I know the screen is still purple.

Comcast Sports Net has got to get its act together. The Cubs should insist on it.

Apparently, Peter Gabriel is finally compensating me financially for foisting Genesis — and Phil Collins — on the music world.

The Cubs-Dodgers game started tonight at 9 p.m. I settled in with a sandwich and flipped the station to Comcast Sports Net, which is scheduled to carry the game tonight. But it isn’t on. Instead, the end of the White Sox game is on.

A message scrolling across the bottom of the screen informs Cubs fans that, if they are kind enough to sit through the end of the Sox game (however long that takes), they’ll eventually switch over to the Cubs game. What — don’t we get to watch the Sox post-game?!

Needless to say, I am very unhappy. Paying a princely sum for cable every month to watch the games was bad enough. Broadcasting the game on four different channels throughout the season was even worse. But this is the absolute worst. Not being able to find the game on TV would be torture enough. Knowing it should be there but that the Sox game is being broadcast instead is absolutely galling.

The Cubs must end this arrangement now. They need to ensure that if the Sox game or any other game runs late that the game can be shown on another channel in the meantime. So I’m stuck, instead, listening to the radio.

(Also posted to CubsNet.com.)

UPDATE: As the Sox game ended, the Cubs were putting men on second and third against Derek Lowe in the second inning. Comcast decided not to immediately switch to the Cubs game but to instead run a promo for its sports news show later tonight, go back to the Sox broadcast for the player of the game announcement and show several commercials.

UPDATE II: Al Yellon, Cubs fan and local TV news producer, writes that Comcasts’ refusal to do a “panic close” and go immediately to the Cubs game last night was “ridiculous” and the folks at Comcast Sports Net are “idiots.” Yes, sir!

Above is a shot of the world famous sausage race at Miller Park in Milwaukee. I don’t remember which sausage (Italian, Bratwurst, Polish or hot dog) won, but I do know the Cubs lost. I caught the game on my way back from a business trip to Wisconsin Dells.

It was a beautiful day, but a very frustrating game. Different park, same result for my Cubbies. Click here or the above photo to see the rest of my pictures.

Update: A quick Google search yields this funny article by a freelance writer who ran as the Polish sausage and this bizarre article by a Christian minister who was inspired by her visit to Miller Park to write:

Jesus called us to get into the game, to be in community with other followers so we would grow in faith, support each other, and reach out in ministry and mission to people who don’t know who He is yet. Anything that takes us away from the mission He gave us is … sausage.

All righty, then.