The last thing I wanted to write about -- again -- was the Milton Bradley Situation in Chicago.
I'm already sick of the guy, and it's still only June.
The Cubs need another Bradley controversy like they need White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen talking again about the rats that roam Wrigley Field.
But here we go again, Bradley [pictured at the right] feeling sorry for himself because he doesn't feel welcome in the Cubs' clubhouse and displaying a "me-first" attitude in still the early stages of his three-year, $30 million deal with the team.
Manager Lou Piniella [pictured at the left] told Bradley to take off his uniform and go home yesterday after the outfielder became the latest Cub to attack a Gatorade dispenser in the dugout.
Some might wonder if the latest Bradley episode might lead to Piniella and general manager Jim Hendry eventually losing their jobs. Not me.
If Piniella and Hendry aren't tough enough to withstand a cancer like Bradley, the Cubs don't play most of their home games during the day.
Bradley has been trouble everywhere he's been, and anybody who didn't expect problems with him when he got to the Cubs had his [or her] head buried under the tarpaulin at Wrigley Field.
Bradley is hitting a horrible .237 for the Cubs and is one of the biggest reasons the Cubs are no better than a .500 team as July 4 approaches.
The Chicago Tribune says Bradley feels he has no friends in the clubhouse. The Chicago Sun Times says all he cares about is himself.
As he proved a while back when he didn't even know how many outs there were in a game, Bradley is sometimes out of touch with what's going on around him.
After Piniella told Bradley to go home during the Cubs' 5-4 victory over the White Sox yesterday, Chris DeLuca of the Sun Times wrote, "Privately, the players in the Cubs' dugout wanted to give Piniella a standing ovation. Veteran Alfonso Soriano, who doesn't get the credit he deserves for being a true team leader, said he had never seen anything like it during his nine-year career. And then Soriano -- always one of the first Cubs in the clubhouse -- put the onus on Bradley to shape up or ship out.
'''That's my first time to see a manager fighting with a player; get mad with a player,' Soriano said. '''Sometimes you can get mad, but not like that. It's something new for me every day.
'''We are 25 players, and we have to be on the same page. If he is not 100 percent to help the team win, we don't need him. If he's 100 percent and he wants to play, he's more than welcome.'''
Just think, Hendry passed on signing Raul Ibanez to get Bradley in the off-season.
Right now, Ibanez is batting .312, has hit 22 home runs and driven in 57 for the Phillies. Bradley's ,237 batting average doesn't go far enough in proving just how bad he's been for the Cubs. He also has hit only five home runs and has driven in just 16.
And he says nobody likes him in the clubhouse.
I can see why.
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"The Central Division is terrible," Mark Robinson of Iowa City tells me in an e-mail.
You are so right, Mark.
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Damaged Rooster, not his real name, writes to me on Twitter: "DMR launched a quarterly food section. It featured a recipe for a bacon cheeseburger. Yup, that should get them in the black soon."
Yes, Damaged, I'm sure that'll delay the next round of layoffs at 8th & Locust. For about 2 seconds.
