Add Lou Piniella's name to Cubs' feeble lore

This is just the Cubs being the Cubs again.

The players leave the pennant race sooner than later - the manager plans to leave the job later than sooner - the franchise is left to leave for nowhere on its own frustrating timetable.

Cub manager Lou Piniella announced Tuesday that he will retire at the end of the season, which was like this morning announcing what today's date is.

"It's been a wonderful experience," Piniella said.

It feels like I'm about to express a eulogy for a guy who refuses to go away. If it's over it's over, sir, so turn off the lights and go turn them on back home in Tampa.

Anyway, let's face it, this isn't exactly Bobby Cox declaring last winter that 2010 will be his final season as Braves' manager.

Cox is an institution down there. Piniella is just another Cub manager who would be institutionalized if he smelled Wrigley Field's ivy longer than four years. He is no less a baseball man than when he arrived, just not good enough to overcome the Cub thing.

"It's a unique challenge," he conceded about managing this club.

The Cubs chewed up and spit out Piniella, just as they did so many other managers and players over more than a century of futility.

So, what is most memorable about the Piniella era that mercifully will end Oct. 3?

Well, there were the two National League Central titles, except that you want to forget those after the subsequent playoff embarrassments.

No, what I'll remember most is the first day of Piniella's first spring training as Cub manager in 2007.

For the new manager and all the new Cubs, naiveté reigned on that bright, shiny, hopeful morning.

The national media arrived to chronicle the marriage between a previously successful manager and perpetually failed franchise.

New players like Ted Lilly, Mark DeRosa and Alfonso Soriano all said in all sincerity that they didn't believe the Cubs were cursed.

Then while participating in drills, they wondered what that "Woo! Woo!" noise was piercing the air like a human vuvuzela. They weren't familiar with Ronnie "Woo-Woo" Wickers, one of the Cub mascot/fan/curiosities that are as much a part of this odd franchise as a double error.

Piniella met with reporters after practice and innocently mentioned that Kerry Wood was a little nicked up after a bathtub mishap.

Alarms went off! Sirens blared! Red lights flashed!

Piniella didn't realize what even a minor Wood injury meant to Cubdom any more than he realized what he had gotten himself into.

But here Piniella is now, as lame as a duck can be, just another manager who thought he could beat Cub history by becoming the legend who helped them win a World Series for the first time since 1908. Er, no, he couldn't.

Maybe current events explain why the Cubs haven't even played in a World Series since 1945: The Cubs just seem to want to beat themselves.

The new owners and old general manager should have insisted that Piniella depart pronto.

"Why?" Piniella said when asked why he isn't departing now.

To let bench coach Alan Trammell audition as interim manager, that's why. To let Ryne Sandberg move up from Triple-A to sniff the job as bench coach, that's why. To refresh the mood around the ballpark a bit as soon as possible, that's why.

Instead, Cub players will continue to drag themselves around the field on a 10-week expiration march instead of this being the first day of the rebuilding process.

Yes, folks, these are just the Cubs being the Cubs and now Lou Piniella's officially is another flawed chapter in their feeble lore.