On Thursday, the Cubs announced the hiring of Mark Riggins as their new Minor League pitching coordinator. For the past 29 years, Riggins has worked for the Cardinals organization, mostly in their minor league system.

In 1995, however, Riggins was Major League pitching coach in St. Louis under Joe Torre and Mike Jorgensen. That's the Joe Torre who formerly managed the Yankees and the post-season-challenged Alex Rodriguez, who will NOT be joining the Cubs in Mesa this spring or ever.

Among Riggins's credits is the vital role he played in helping to rehabilitate the big league career of pitcher-turned-outfielder Rick Ankiel, who, according to the New York Daily News this summer, received a massive supply of human growth hormone from a Florida clinic in 2004.

Ankiel denied then and he denies now that he knowingly broke any baseball rules...much like somebody else whose watermelon-sized head has been all over my television tonight and will surely continue to be, for weeks and weeks and weeks.

You're killing me today, Mark Riggins.

Somehow, the name "Alex Rodriguez" has never appeared on this page. I believe that would make A Hundred Next Years the only site anywhere on the Internets even tangentially related to the sport of baseball to be able to say that.

I guess I just lost the distinction.

Anyway, here's an A-Rod fact you may not have come across unless you read Bruce Jenkins in the San Francisco Chronicle:

You probably know about his 4-for-47 (post-season) slump and his streak of 14 games without an RBI, but this is the most telling stat: Since Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS - the night Boston began its epic comeback from three games down against the Yankees - Rodriguez has come to the plate with 38 runners on base, over the span of 59 at-bats. He left every single one on base, going 0-for-27, right through the Yanks' Division Series loss to Cleveland this month.

In today's Sun-Times, Chris De Luca quotes a Major League GM as predicting that Rodriguez will sign with somebody next month in Nashville, because it's agent Scott Boras's M.O. "to get these things done at the winter meetings."

I don't know how the Cubs would pay him or where they'd put him, but 4-for-47 post-season slump or not, it's impossible not to at least think about what it would be like to have Alex Rodriguez show up in Mesa next February wearing Cubbie blue.