Chicago Cubs

With another season ending in disappointment for Chicago Cub fans, is it too early to shout out the refrain, "Wait Until Next Year?"

That's the slogan of the Chicago Cubs, whether they realize it or not. No other team in the history of sports has been mouthing those words for a longer period of time; 102 years to be exact.

The Chicago Cubs are having fun on the road.

They scored a total of eight runs in the first four innings on Saturday night as they beat the Houston Astros 8-3 in the second game of the final series of the 2010 season.

They improve the record of their current season-ending road trip to 5-1 and they will get a chance to sweep their division arch-rivals Sunday afternoon.

Since the September call-up, the Cubs rookie outfielder Brad Snyder has had the privilege of enjoying two double-RBI games in his first eight major league games.  On Thursday afternoon, he reached another level of enjoyment by hitting out first game-winning RBI. 

How good has Cubs closer Carlos Marmol been this season? Historically good. 

With back-to-back wins against the San Diego Padres this week, the Chicago Cubs are now 21-11 under interim manager Mike Quade.

The impetus for this resurgence has been the team's much-improved starting rotation: Carlos Zambrano, Ryan Dempster, and Randy Wells have combined to win 13 times during the span, and Zambrano is 6-0 under Quade.

Even though the 2010 season is an absolute chaos for the Chicago Cubs, they get a lot of attention at the end of the calendar year. 

They are put in a new mission—spoiling their opponents’ hopes to access to the playoffs.

Cubs television analyst Bob Brenly officially withdrew his name from the list of candidates for the Cubs skipper job that opened when Lou Piniella retired last month. While he did not disclose his reasons, one sentence seems to say a lot about why he would not want to manage the team in 2011.

Who says you can't go home?

Kerry Wood, the sometime Cub who remains beloved of the team's fanbase, will be a free agent this winter.

After signing a two-year contract in December 2008 with the Cleveland Indians, Wood struggled to stay healthy and effective. He posted a 4.80 ERA in 81 games with Cleveland before a July trade to the New York Yankees.

The Chicago Cubs will be among four teams most eager to sign free agent-to-be Carl Crawford this offseason, according to ESPN's Buster Olney (via Twitter).

If true, this is a stunning development for a team with a bloated payroll to which owner Tom Ricketts has thus far seemed unwilling to add substantial amounts.

On August 17, 2007, it was difficult to see exactly how stable the Chicago Cubs would be in the long-term.

There were still seven years left on Alfonso Soriano's contract, four left on Aramis Ramirez's, and three on Derrek Lee's and Ted Lilly's, but Soriano, Lee, and Lilly were all heading into their age 32 seasons. Young players like Rich Hill, Sean Marshall, Carlos Marmol, Angel Guzman, and Ryan Theriot had shown some promise but weren't far enough into their careers to even approach status as a known quantity.