All of the promise of offseason trades and unbelievable expenditures culminated on Monday afternoon as the Chicago Cubs traveled to Atlanta to face the Braves.
It only took an inning to ruin the Cubs' season.
Jumping out to an early 3-0 lead in top of the first inning, the Cubs looked like they were ready to stake their claim and end the streak of something like 500 straight years without a World Series title.
Then the Braves came to bat. Soon it was 3-3, and rookie Jason Hayward came to the plate to take his first major league swings. He hit a 433-foot, three-run home run.
To the Cubs' credit, they waited six more innings before completely folding. Another six-run inning sealed the Cubs' fate as history's worst baseball team, functionally eliminating them from World Series contention.
In fact, it was only Braves pitcher Derek Lowe that didn't either get a hit or score a run in the season opener, showing that, once again, pitchers are the most selfless people on the team. Sure, Lowe could have probably parked one off the stalled Cubs, but he took one for the team.
If he really wanted to be a deuce, he could have played on an AL team and let a designated hitter make the Cubs look like total fools.
All in all, the Cubs allowed 12 hits in the 16-5 routing. Throw in a couple of errors and an overall lackluster effort, and Cubs fans can finally relax and start counting the days for the NFL draft so that they can put all this baseball nonsense behind them.
Somehow, this is all Bartman's fault.
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