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.”

Headline in yesterday’s Tribune: “Appetite for news on wane, study concludes.”

I read the first paragraph of the story, but then I lost interest.

You may have heard that veteran actor Paul Winfield died last Sunday of a heart attack. He was 62, and was best known for a number of outsanding TV roles. But in the various obits I’ve seen, there’s nary a mention of his greatest accomplishment.

Winfield was the voice of A&E’s “City Confidential.” If you’ve ever watched an episode of the show, you know that it’s his voice that makes the otherwise humdrum “big murder in a small town” show so addictive, not to mention soporific.

A&E knows the score:

All of us at A&E Network were saddened to learn of the death of Paul Winfield. Paul was an extraordinary performer and a consummate professional. His distinct voice and sense of humor contributed so much to our critically acclaimed series “City Confidential.” We express our deepest sympathy to his family. Paul will be missed.

Posters to the show’s discussion board are devastated, and calling for A&E to honor the actor with a “Biography” special. On an old interview with “Fresh Air” that was replayed today, the first question Terry Gross asked was about Winfield’s voice.

Amazingly, he said he wasn’t very pleased with it. “I wish I had a deeper voice like James Earl Jones,” he said. On that basis, it seems to me that Jones is the only suitable replacement for Winfield as narrator of the show, though perhaps the “Autopsy” lady — Marlene Sanders — might be an interesting choice.

Elation is the appropriate reaction to the Cubs’ signing of Greg Maddux.

I’m happy not only that he finally decided to come back to the Cubs, but that I was right about it. I’ve been right about things before, but my prediction is usually for things to go poorly, not well. I am a Cubs fan after all.

I think there’s strong reason to believe that the unconfirmed reports that the evil, evil Yankees are close to signing Greg Maddux won’t be confirmed anytime soon.

Not only has the Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman consistently denied that the Yankees are even negotiating with Boras, Maddux’s agent, but it’s clear the team has other priorities, including first base and second base.

Apparently, seven all-stars in the everyday lineup just isn’t enough. If anything, the Yankees would be interested in a left-handed starter, which Maddux of course is not. Even if the Yankees were pursuing him, it’s hard to take seriously the idea that Maddux, after insisting for the entire off-season that he wanted to be closer to his home in Las Vegas, would sign with a team 800 miles farther away than Chicago is.

Lastly, there’s no way that Red Sox and Cubs fans’ hearts could be crushed so dramatically within the space of a few days. That could never happen!

According to this AP story, Ivan Rodriguez is close to signing with the Tigers, who last year came within one loss of tying the all-time record for most defeats in a single season.

Last year, he led the Florida Marlins to a World Series victory and was named most-valuable player of the National League Championship Series — which, you may remember, was against the Cubs. I guess that was just miserable for him. He must have missed the three consecutive last-place finishes he enjoyed with the Texas Rangers from 2000 to 2002.

Now he is assured of another last-place finish, if he signs with the Tigers. But hey! He’ll get a few more million a year. I don’t get it.

He should be a Cub!

… to Joe Demo, who is at this point a lot better off than I am!