She didn’t actually tell me; she just never discouraged my Cubs habit.

It is, however, days like this that make me wonder whether (1) signing Maddux wasn’t a terrible mistake and (2) whether the Cubs will even win more games than they lose this season.

UPDATE: After walking Sport for the second time today in the fierce, chilly Chicago winds, I’ve decided to write the entire day off to the bad weather. Maddux and the rest, therefore, get a wind check for this game, so to speak. I realize, by the way, that this isn’t very logical since the Pirates both hit and pitched just fine under the exact same weather condition, but please don’t bother me with the fact once I’ve made up my mind. Thank you.

You might as well write it in the book right now, judging from this Mike Kiley story in today’s Sun-Times:

Mark Prior declared he isn’t ready to get on the mound, even though the team had said he might throw off the mound Sunday or today.

Prior has stopped even thinking about a possible return date — that’s how uncertain his return is. But he pointed out that he usually takes six weeks of throwing time to prepare for the start of spring training, and he is not even at that stage.

Based on that schedule, it now seems possible Prior might not be recovered from his bouts with right Achilles tendinitis and an inflamed right elbow until late May or June.

“My arm is not in shape yet, not enough to get on the mound,” Prior said Sunday. “I want to get on the mound, but I know long toss is better to get my arm in shape right now. It’s more of a gut thing. I just know it’s not strong enough. It’s not as easy to throw long toss as it usually is.”

Prior again played catch Sunday on flat ground and used a towel to simulate his delivery off the mound. How many more workouts like this before he can get on the mound and actually throw pitches?

“Hopefully, no more than two or three more times,” he replied. “It’s just getting stretched out. I throw from the first week of January to the start of spring training [to get ready to pitch]. That’s how long it usually takes. Hopefully, it doesn’t take that long this time.”

Just getting stretched out? Come on, Mark. We’re not that stupid. The elbow problem is obviously the holdup now, and the rumors swirling are that Prior will need Tommy John surgery.

“When players notice discomfort and changes in their pitching ability,” Jennifer Dawkins of drkoop.com writes, “it is not immediately apparent that something is seriously wrong. Ruptures are detected through a magnetic resonance imaging test, or MRI, sometimes after days or weeks of mild pain.”

Sounds a lot like Prior’s own reports about his elbow stiffness at the end of March:

They said it was like shin splints as far as an injury. They didn’t have any more specific answers except that it was inflammation around the bone. We didn’t know if it was pain getting referred over there and it was pain where I was having discomfort and stiffness and achiness.

Prior will keep long tossing until the elbow magically feels better, which seems unlikely, or an MRI confirms what everyone fears — a torn ligament.

So all bets are off now. This team will still compete, but there’s not much reason to hope for a World Series appearance, much less a championship. And with a minimum of a year from surgery-to-pitching and more like two years before Prior is really “back,” the outlook is decidely dimmer.

The Cubs can still be very competitive in the meantime. After all, they’ve still got Wood and Zambrano, along with some very promising minor-league pitching prospects. Sosa will still be here for a couple of years, Lee has been signed for three years and in the early going Ramirez appears to be showing that he has the stuff to become a long-term solution at third base.

Meanwhile, the end of Moises Alou’s and Alex Gonzalez’s contracts will free up millions to spend in the free-agent market to get much better players.

And if anyone can pitch productively into his early 40s, it’s Greg Maddux.

But the Prior equation is simply this: with him, the Cubs are a powerhouse; without him, they are just “a contender.”

Check it out.

Why should I deal with all the nausea, anxiety and misery that comes with being a Cubs fan? Life is short enough, you know.

I think it’s time I joined up with a winner. That’s why I’ve decided to start rooting for the evil, evil lovely, lovely New York Yankees. Hopefully this will be the year they finally overcome all the odds to win it all.

Did you know they’ve only won one World Series this millennium? And to think that I wasn’t on the bandwagon back then. Well, I’m riding it hard now baby. If A-Rod can defer millions in salary to go join the dark side mystique-and-aura filled Yankees tradition, why can’t I give up the misery of Cubs fandom to do the same thing?

That’s why as of today, April 1, I am officially switching my allegiance from the Chicago Cubs (and the Boston Red Sox) to the New York Yankees.

Help me, Jeebus!:

Mark Prior probably won’t pitch until May because of inflammation in his right Achilles tendon and a stiff elbow.

“I’d say May 1 or the first week of May is optimistic,” Chicago Cubs general manager Jim Hendry said Tuesday. “He’s a guy that I don’t think needs more than three or four weeks to get ready.”

The Cubs were hoping for a good outing Tuesday from Sergio Mitre, who will replace Prior in the starting rotation.

But Chicago gave up 19 hits in a 16-4 loss to the Seattle Mariners. Mitre allowed eight hits and five runs in four innings.

A stiff elbow? What?! And Mitre is far from a solid replacement, even for just a month. Nineteen hits? I just hope he was working on a new pitch or something.

I spoke in my last post about Prior’s long-term importance to the franchise, but he’s obviously crucial in the short-term as well. If May 1 is an optimistic return date, let’s write him off until May 15. That’s 40 games into the season, about eight missed starts.

Prior had a .750 winning percentage last season, and that’s not counting how the Cubs did in his games when he didn’t get a decision. So the Cubs, just based on the probabilities, would win six of those eight Prior starts.

No guy who gives up 19 hits in a spring training game is going to win six of eight starts. The Cubs will be very fortunate to win half of those games, and are likely to be sub-.500 in those starts. That’s three to four losses right there, assuming Prior comes back May 15 and is as good as new.

Given how close the Central race is likely to be, these games could very well make the difference between the Cubs and the Astros. Now, Dusty, does it still seem like it was a great idea to overuse Mark Prior last year?

But I just can’t help it.

According to FootSmart (yeah, I know, great medical resource), the Achilles’ tendon in extreme cases could require surgery.

Achilles’ tendon pain is caused by such things as running and excessive walking. Excessive walking?! Jeebus, this could be a chronic problem plaguing Mark Prior’s entire career. I sure hope not, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Prior is the future of this team. Period. How important is Prior to the franchise? The Cubs can contend without Prior making 35 starts or perhaps starting at less than full strength when he does return. They can win. They can win it all. This team has that much talent, and pitching is that important in the post-season.

But the Cubs want — and Cubs fans deserve — more than just a year of success, even if it brings a World Series (knock on Wood — and Prior!). They deserve to have a contender for a decade. They deserve, for Jeebus’ sake, the first back-to-back winning seasons since 1971-72! And Prior is more important than any other single player in helping to make that happen.

I hope, but I don’t expect, the Cubs to make it to the Series this year. I hope, but I don’t expect, that they’ll even make the playoffs. But I’ll be crushed if this injury to Prior continues to nag or turns out to be something much graver. And I just hope that the Cubs finish above .500.

You see, I’ve learned my lesson well. Comes from a lifetime of Cubs fandom. Set the bar low, and you’re bound to be pleased by the results.

I’ll take this opportunity to throw a few Bob Dylan-related program activities into one post.

It’s alright, ma (I’m just disappointed): I bought the “Masked and Anonymous” DVD and had the chance to watch the movie again the regular way, watch about a half dozen deleted scenes, and then watch the entire movie again with director Larry Charles’ commentary.

I’d already seen the movie twice in the theaters, so I can’t say that I really gleaned anything new from the third viewing. It was less impressive than it was on the big screen, and the overall suckiness of the project came through. I did enjoy being able to freeze frame the various scenes with lists of Dylan-related in-jokes, though even these were surprisingly pedestrian.

Having read the original script, I thought there might be a director’s cut of some kind because I was under the impression that the entire script had been shot. Instead, there are a handful of inconsequential and low-quality deleted scenes included. As for Charles’ commentary, it is entertaining, insightful and at times self-delusional.

He spends a good portion of it lamely attempting to defend the picture against the critical savaging it received. “They just didn’t get it,” he says.

I think there’s a lot to appreciate about the movie, especially for a Dylan fan, but I wouldn’t dare defend the proposition that it’s actually a good movie. The plot is a thin excuse to hold up a series of unconnected vignettes. The problem is that the vignettes aren’t very compelling on their own. The acting is pretty good across the board with the exception of Dylan, who for the most part is asked only to look moody and doesn’t even do that very convincingly.

But the lines the actors are required to perform make their job difficult. “M&A” is the equivalent of one of Bob’s mid-’80s albums: brilliant in spots, but a disappointment overall. The biggest disappointment I have about the DVD, however, is that it did not include any bonus performance footage. The most compelling portions of the film, naturally, are when Dylan performs with his band.

The band crowds close around Dylan so that they could all be squeezed into the same shot. No cutting, no panning, no nothing. The camera just watches the band play. It’s really awesome stuff. According to Charles, Dylan and his band wer filmed performing 22 songs over the course of two days. Great!

Where are those 22 songs? Except for a small clip of “Standing in the Doorway” in one of the deleted scenes, there’s no extra music anywhere on the DVD. The soundtrack includes complete versions of the songs that appeared in the movie — “Down in the Flood,” “Diamond Joe,” “Dixie” and “Cold Irons Bound” — and those performances are oustanding. An extra disc with just straight up unedited footage of those 22 songs would have made this DVD an absolute must-have. It’s really a missed opportunity.

Sometimes I wanna take to the road and plunder: My dad and I recently saw Dylan five times in three cities in less than two weeks, starting on March 1 in St. Louis and finishing up March 12 in Milwaukee.

All in all, the shows were good but not great. It appears a health problem is limiting Dylan to the piano, and he’s not a very good piano player. But it keeps him engaged with the music. There were some great performances and some not so great ones. With Dylan it’s always hit and miss. The best show was probably Sunday, March 7, at the Vic Theatre in Chicago.

Each venue was relatively small — none was larger than 3,000 capacity, I think — and it made for an unforgettable set of pretty intimate concerts. Now if he’ll only play Old Town!

Disproving those who insist that copy editors can’t write, Tribune sports copy editor Richard Rothschild rightly mourns ESPN radio’s loss of Tony Kornheiser.

Instead of turning up the volume on a sports topic or personality, ESPN Radio’s Kornheiser and Patrick provided illumination and perspective. Sure, they sometimes grew a little hot under the collar, but the two hosts both approached sports with a spirit of play that the subject requires.

Alas, no more. Last year WMVP replaced the final hour of Kornheiser’s show and the first hour of Patrick’s program with two hours of blowhard Jim Rome, whose syndicator paid the station so he could get on the air in Chicago.

Earlier this year Kornheiser disappeared entirely from Chicago radio when WMVP opted for local programming between 9 and 11 a.m. (As if Chicago needed yet another local sports radio show.)

And by the end of March, Kornheiser will be gone from national radio altogether.

I’ll miss Kornheiser’s radio show. He was funny and made it a priority to talk to sportswriters around the country to get a better scoop on what was happening in the sports world, instead of relying on contentless interviews with big-name athletes.

The formula for so much sports talk radio is to whine endlessly about whatever and then kiss up mercilessly when any athlete or sports mogul is interviewed on air. Boring!

But it’s not as if Kornheiser’s disappearing. He’ll still be on the ESPN’s slightly entertaining talk show, “Pardon the Interruption” as well as the irritating “Dream Job.”