Is all this patience fair to longtime Cubs fans?

Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein would categorize what I'm about to say as noise.

Anything that dares doubt the Cubs' deliberate rebuilding process is a cacophony of cuckoo to them.

The Cubs' day off Monday provided a break to ponder why this team irritates me even more than the franchise's other embarrassments of the past half-century.

Epstein took advantage of the idle time to make another splash by signing Cuban defector Jorge Soler.

Great move, I guess. So apparently was trading for Anthony Rizzo over the winter. For now we'll take the Cubs' word for it.

These are transactions for the future. The future isn't now, but it is everything for the Cubs.

That's fine, except, how many more lifelong Cubs fans will die before the team's future arrives?

I understand the rebuilding process. It's going to take time. It's going to take work. It's going to take more time. It's going to take smarts. It's going to take more time. It's going to take energy. It's going to take more time.

But could anyone have imagined while waiting that this season's Cubs team would be as bad as any in memory, if not in history?

In the past there was Roy Smalley throwing the ball into the first-base stands. There was Andre “He Boots It” Rodgers booting it. There was Leon Durham's glove dripping Gatorade. There was Hector “The Calorie Collector” Villanueva. There was, of course, blaming Steve Bartman for a typical Cubs flop.

Yet this year's flubfest is more irritating than the others that contributed to the Cubs' 104-year championship drought.

Part of it is that this looks like the worst collection of Cubs ever assembled during my lengthy lifetime. Part of it is that bleacher fans don't pay 50 cents to witness incompetence now; some pay way more than $100. Part of it is that ownership is requesting tax dollars to renovate their house of horrors.

Probably it's all of the above and more, more being more fans dying every day without ever seeing the Cubs win a World Series. Patience might work for the younger but not necessarily for the older.

Thirty years ago I sat in the Wrigley Field office of Dallas Green, then the Cubs' general manager in charge of busting curses, jinxes and hexes.

Green emphasized that Cubs fans were impatient for a winner, and I reminded him that those were the most patient fans in the world.

Thirty years later Epstein pleads patience, and I feel compelled to remind him that Cubs fans today are more impatient then ever before.

To middle-aged men like Epstein, this is just another lost baseball season, just as others were for other Cubs operatives. They come and go, while Cubs fans are here for the flaming duration.

On the way to confirming himself as a baseball legend, Epstein is taking his time building the Cubs the right way. On the way to their grave, myriad Cubs fans endure this rebuilding without much more time left.

Epstein is paid a lot of money to take his time turning around the Cubs. Fans pay a lot of money to watch the Cubs flounder this season, probably next season, maybe a few more seasons before Jorge Soler even arrives at Wrigley Field.

How many more Cubs fans will die before the process is completed, which I always predict won't happen in my lifetime?

Too many.

mimrem@dailyherald.com