Fans bleed Cubbie boos

Thursday's collapse adds to growing sentiment that team will lose shaky division even though it was built with grand expectations

Boo. Booooo. How can you watch the Cubs and not boo? It's not a nasty thing, but a natural reaction, a reflex.

The hammer goes to the knee, and the foot kicks out. Ryan Dempster gives up a three-run homer in the ninth inning, when the Cubs are about to win? Boo. Michael Wuertz throws a wild pitch to give up another run? Boo.

The Cubs lost 7-4 to the Dodgers on Thursday, and the fans kept booing again, as they've been doing lately.

''Tough loss,'' Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. ''What can I say?''

You can say this:

Boo.

The terrible start to this season was understandable, with all new players and a new manager. It took time to figure out who could do what. The hot stretch after that made sense, as Piniella had things figured out. Then came the slump, and, well, everybody has a slump. No problem.

But we've hit the fifth week of this slump now, and when it goes that long, well, that's not a slump. Slumps are temporary things that you get out of.

This is slow death.

''We're playing good baseball,'' Dempster said.

No, you are not. The Cubs have lost 19 of their last 33 games, all during the most important stretch of a division race.

They slipped into a tie with Milwaukee, which had the unfair scheduling advantage of a day off. In the NL Central, a team gets a day off, and it's hard for the others to keep up. St. Louis is one game back. And the division is breaking down this way:

Milwaukee is up and down, mostly down. The talk there is about whether the manager should be fired. Meanwhile, he ''moved'' into a tie for first place Thursday.

Moving is a relative term in this division. The Cubs are lying dead. And St. Louis, which doesn't have any pitchers, is treading water toward a division title.

The good news for the Cubs, who are 71-68 with 23 games to go, is that lying dead doesn't necessarily keep you from winning a division. But they should have pulled ahead by now. I thought Piniella would have figured this out, but instead, Tony LaRussa is working all the miracles now in St. Louis.

I've credited Piniella all year. But don't you wonder if he has run out of answers?

''We're hanging in there,'' he said.

Yes, hanging is a good word.

The Cubs seem like such a temporary thing. Players have been coming and going all year. If Dusty Baker were still here, then Cesar Izturis would still be the shortstop. Remember him? He was here this year.

But Piniella has made the moves, figured out so quickly what the team has needed. We've watched a Murton go and come back, a Barrett go. A Hill and a Bowen were the catchers at one point.

They're gone now. Scott Eyre was at the front of the line and now is in the back.

It has gone on and on, with Craig Monroe and Steve Trachsel the latest arrivals.

''We've had quite a few changes here,'' he said. ''You'd like to be a little more stable. We've filtered people in and out.

''But the roster is going to stay the same now, unless we go to the Mexican League.''

He laughed. You know, let's say the Cubs go 82-80, win the division and then get drilled in the first round of the playoffs.

Success? No way. That's not enough.

But Piniella can worry about that later.

Most of the time, Piniella has looked like a genius this year. Sometimes a daffy genius with a gut, but a genius, anyway. In baseball sense, that is. But lately?

In the ninth inning Wednesday, he apparently put in Dempster and told the umpire that he would hit ninth. But Piniella had switched the lineup earlier in the game, and the pitcher wasn't hitting ninth anymore. The center fielder was. So the center fielder had to come out, and next thing you knew, all sorts of players were being moved around.

''Is that my phone?'' Piniella asked, looking around before Thursday's game, while sitting behind the desk in his office. A phone had been ringing and ringing. But no, it was not the phone six inches in front of him.

A confused genius?

The problem with the Cubs now is that the rock is Carlos Zambrano. That's who the team is built around. And Zambrano is flipping out, unable to win a game, unable to see a third-base coach telling him not to run home.

Zambrano didn't understand why he was booed the other day.

How can you not understand?

Cubs fans gave a standing ovation Wednesday night when the team got out of the eighth inning. I mean, emotions are running big both ways.

In the stands, anyway. On the field? Slow death.

We've seen this happen so many times over the years with the Cubs, this late-season collapse.

But this team was supposed to be different, with the big budget and big-time manager.

Maybe it still will be. Piniella says he can smell one more hot streak coming. Do you trust his senses? You've been able to trust him all year.

To me, though, this smells like something else.