Kerry Wood

Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood reportedly found the body of a dead man while paddle boarding in the city's Belmont Harbor on Monday.

Chicago Cubs fans will always remember 2003.  Most will not have particularly fond memories of that season.  With the 10 year anniversary of that season just around the corner, Cubs fans still think about what might have been without injuries and that wretched curse.

It seems more and more these days one can turn to the sports section of the newspaper on any given morning, or tune in to SportsCenter at any time and be assaulted by stories highlighting professional athletes, baseball players in particular, engaging in behaviors that are not only egregious and loathsome but unfortunate fodder for self righteous pundits and cynics alike—angry critics who claim that sports and their lionized idols are nothing more than a blight on our culture and embody an egocentric, selfish entitlement that threaten

I remember the Detroit Tigers vs. Chicago Cubs interleague baseball game in 1998 like it were yesterday.

It was June 25. And my friends and I had recently graduated high school at Southgate Anderson High School in suburban Detroit.

This was the second full season that Major League Baseball had implemented interleague play.

As a Reds supporter, I love talking to Cubs fans.

See, in Cincinnati, we’re used to losing. We’re familiar with the bruised, aching feeling that follows every season gone bad. We know all too well the dejection of finishing fifth or sixth in the division, with no realistic prospects of hope on the horizon.

Being a baseball general manager is a thankless job. Every move that you make is second-guessed, critiqued and analyzed to death before a new player even steps out onto the field. Then there's the separate issue of what to do with your hometown players, some of whom have evolved into local legends or fan favorites.

Every player has to become a free agent eventually, but the gut-wrenching question facing every general manager is when is the right time to let those players go? In the case of these 15 players, their GM's let them go too soon.

With so many of the big name free agents signed early on this off season, it has been a winter of trade rumors, and while most have proved to be nothing beyond just rumors, the Brewers managed to pull off two of the bigger trades of the off season.

However, the rest of the NL Central has been fairly busy as well, as the Cubs, Reds, Cardinals, and Brewers all look to be in the running for the division. Even the Astros and Pirates made a handful of moves that could make series' against them that much tougher.

With most of the top free agents now signed and teams starting to take shape as we approach spring training, I thought I would share my pre-pre-season perspective on the relative strengths, (and weaknesses), of all 30 major league teams.

For one day, Chicago Cubs GM Jim Hendry was the smartest man in baseball.

Somewhere, Ron Santo is beaming. Kerry Wood, a longtime Chicago Cub who never looked right in anyone else's uniform, will reportedly come home to the North Side of Chicago.

Multiple sources, including Fred Mitchell and David Kaplan of the Chicago Tribune, report that Wood and the Cubs are finalizing a deal.

If true, this news has to warm the hearts of Cubs fans everywhere. Wood became a fan favorite nonpareil in the post-Ryne Sandberg era, and the team has done its public relations a world of good by reeling in Wood just weeks after cutting ties with Sandberg.