Column: Cubs miss perfect opportunity to get back on winning track

This wasn’t how the storybook was supposed to begin — or was it?

Wasn’t Ryne Sandberg, the former Chicago Cub and Hall of Fame member, supposed to be the guy after the 102-year drought to bring a championship?

After all, he led the Cubs to the closest or second-closest they’ve come to a championship during the 1984 season.

This is not one of the countless times Cubs management has just been on the receiving end of bad luck, although Moises Alou did admit years after the fact that he couldn’t have caught the Bartman ball.

This time, the Cubs have no one to blame but themselves and their front office. Yeah, Mike Quade, the Cubs newly hired manager, could get it done in Chicago.

But is this the hire that gives the Bleacher Bums their best shot at going to Wrigley Field in late October instead of watching the World Series at a bar in Wrigleyville?

Simple answer: No. Add this to the list of bad decisions the Cubs have made over the last few years and under the leadership of General Manager Jim Hendry.

What does Sandberg, who was told in 2006 to manage the Cubs’ farm system so he could learn the draft and eventually manage the northsiders, say about the stability of the front office?

At the press conference introducing Quade as the next Cubs manager, owner Tom Ricketts said he thinks there’s no reason this team — a team that lost 87 games this year — can’t compete from day one.

“If we could build on the momentum we had the last six weeks, we could be a contender next year,” Ricketts said.

Could be? Try we need to be. Where is the intolerance for continual losing?

This is a team whose fan base is increasingly calling for Hendry’s head, and they are doing so from the Wrigleyville barstools or their couch because they’re not at the Friendly Confines.

Picture the life that would be pumped into long-time Cubs fans and the energy that Sandberg, who described the phone call he received as “disappointing,” would bring.

This was a destination job for him and could have been a home run hire for the Cubs, maybe even the beginning of an era that could wipe away the “lovable losers” surname.

What’s to happen in a couple years when Joe Girardi could be axed from the Bronx? There’s too many questions preventing this from being a good hire.

“I’m smart enough to know that six months make a season, not six weeks,” Quade said referring to his team’s relative surge after Lou Piniella left the team.

Cubs nation is already tired of losing — they have been for more than a hundred years, and this hire only adds fuel to the fire. One thing is for sure, and that is if Quade wins and wins quick, he could silence some of the talk already surrounding his promotion.

Maybe when all is said and done this is a favor to Sandberg — that he doesn’t have to put up with the overpaid and overhyped Carlos Zambrano. By the way, are there any Gatorade machines still standing in the Cubs’ clubhouse? Valid question, really.

“All I can go on is what I was offered,” Sandberg said. “I wasn’t offered anything. I can’t make up my own job. I can’t offer myself a job. ...I would have managed the Cubs.”

That’s not the kind of guy you want? The kind that works for four years in a farm system, from top to bottom, so he can manage your team — a losing team?

Something about that doesn’t make sense, but then again, not much really has for seven years on the northside of Chi-town.

E-mail:  ftherber@indiana.edu