(670 The Score) We should be celebrating some semblance of a return to normalcy, at least in the way our sports calendar is once again synchronized with our larger lives in a familiar and comfortable fashion.
The return of baseball to its proper 162-game slate over six months provides some of the structure we crave after a year of mostly chaos, a settling back into something that we all know we need. For Cubs fans, however, the joy is mitigated by an urgency that can't be ignored. An ending of an era has begun, and their performance out of the gate will go a long way in determining how soon it accelerates.
If the dumping of Yu Darvish's salary didn't paint a clear enough picture of their new and next reality, the stalled negotiations over a contract extension for Anthony Rizzo should make it obvious that the trade deadline this season is a defined marking point for their current competitive phase. If Rizzo might seek to maximize his income elsewhere, it would make sense to get something for him instead of nothing. Javier Baez and Kris Bryant are also out of contract after this season concludes.
The pandemic has helped lay bare the truth of where this all is, as the promise of local family ownership coupled with a pipeline of proprietary television money has become something less than what we had imagined it to be, with the Cubs run less like a shared public trust than a line item on the portfolio of a private equity firm paying more careful attention to return on investment. There's no denying that the Ricketts family spent lavishly to usher in both regime change that resulted in a World Series title and infrastructural improvements that have made gamedays a multisensory entertainment experience, but it's equally true that the latter projects' primary focus has been to separate the wealthiest fans from as much of their discretionary income as possible.
Roster depth and a commitment to remaining at the level of the game's best and richest teams has become less important, clearly, and much of the romance has dissipated amid recent end-of-season letdowns.
Former Cubs executive Theo Epstein talked about a reckoning -- admittedly more portentously than he intended -- but that's what this may be, in one form or another. It's Jed Hoyer's job to sort it out.
And it's up to the team to hold it off, starting Thursday.
The Cubs project to succeed well enough in a weak NL Central, even if the gap remains large when looking up at those realistically chasing a championship. The aforementioned players having even career average seasons at the same time is all the Cubs would need to score enough runs, and if the defense can turn enough batted balls into outs behind so many soft-tossing starting pitchers, the team can stay interesting until the suits have to make the big, tough calls.
It's silly for the players themselves to think this way, of course, and don't mistake this for some desire that manager David Ross or anyone in his dugout internalize any of it as motivation to do the impossible, by which I mean play baseball harder, somehow. They may be the only ones with the freedom to live in just each next opportunity, and I believe them when they say that's all they're trying to do. They can look at the season opener as the start of another unhurried spring and summer, letting go of what they can't control.
And as as difficult as it may be for us to do in this moment, it may be an aspiration. There's unquestioned tension to this 2021 Cubs season, an ominous awareness of the change that looms. We may be best served to appreciate baseball being back with some fans in attendance, and the fact that the first-half performance of the Cubs matters far more than it usually does can be compartmentalized somewhere other than constant top of mind.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Rahimi Show on middays from 9 a.m. until noon on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.