Lilly recalls good times with Cubs and Dempster

Ted Lilly and Ryan Dempster were fast friends during their years together with the Cubs.

On Saturday, they’ll be opponents as Dempster’s Cubs take on Lilly’s Los Angeles Dodgers at Wrigley Field. Lilly sounded Friday like he couldn’t wait.

“I couldn’t ask for a better situation,” said Lilly, a Cub from the beginning of the 2007 season through July 31 of last year, when the Cubs traded him to the Dodgers. “I can’t sit here and tell you how much respect I have for him for a person first and foremost in what I was able to learn from being around him about the way that he treated people, the way that he loved this opportunity to pitch in the major leagues, the way he would deal with adversity off the field and on the field.”

Then Lilly caught himself.

“I could kind of ... wow... without getting emotional, I don’t know how anyone could have created someone that was as unselfish as Ryan,” he said.

Lilly and Dempster also were mainstays of a pitching staff that helped the Cubs to division titles in 2007 and 2008. The Cubs didn’t win a playoff game in either of those seasons, something Lilly said still sticks with him. However, he said the overall experience in Chicago is one he won’t forget, and for good reasons.

“I have the fondest memories of my life living here in this city, Chicago, amongst the Midwestern people, the Midwestern way of life,” he said. “From a baseball perspective, we had a lot of fun. These are a great group of guys, quite a few special friends.

“But there’s a little hole in that when I originally signed here, I had built up these dreams and aspirations of trying to be a member of the Cubs team that won the World Series. We fell short of that, so there’s a gap in the experience that way. I thought that was one of the responsibilities that (left fielder Alfonso) Soriano and myself had in coming over here, and some of the other guys. With that being said, I believe that we pushed ourselves. We continued to look for ways to get better, and we weren’t able to get it done. That would have been the ultimate, to win a World Series here. That was the dream.”