That's tonight's summary of the 2008 season. More to follow when I'm not as tired and not as angry.

Unbelievable.

Simply, utterly, absolutely unbelievable.

A post-season performance like the Cubs' is enough to inspire even level-headed fans to call for wholesale personnel changes before Spring Training 2009. But the fact is that Lee, Zambrano, Ramirez, Soriano et al, are making too much money and locked into too-long contracts to afford Cubs GM Jim Hendry much decision-making flexibility (as if he would consider moving any of the aforementioned anyway).

That said, the game on Saturday or Sunday or whenever the Cubs decide to end this historic choke job could well mark the final appearance in a Chicago uniform for some or all of the following players whose contracts are expiring:

• Jim Edmonds (2-for-7 with 1 double, 1 RBI in NLDS)
  
• Ryan Dempster (0-1, 7.71)
  
• Kerry Wood (1 R, 2 H, but 0 ER in 1 IP)
  
• Bob Howry (has not played)
  
• Henry Blanco (has not played)
  
• Chad Gaudin (ineligible)
  
• Reed Johnson (has not played)
  
• Daryle Ward (0-for-2)
  
• Neal Cotts (0 ER in .2 IP)
  

(Contract information from Cot's Baseball Contracts)

The 97-win season is ancient history, friends. We're back where we belong—the Official Laughingstock of Major League Baseball.

The closest I can come to finding some point of interest in this series is trying to predict which missed opportunity or failed play will become the signature moment; the '08 version of the Bartman ball or the Alex Gonzalez error from Game 6 in 2003.

My nominee right now is Mark DeRosa's flub on what should have been a double-play ball in the 2nd inning tonight, when the Dodgers scored five runs, effectively locking up the game and, most likely, the series. That would be a shame, since DeRosa had a career season and, maybe along with Edmonds, has stood out among the Cub hitters in this series because he isn't flailing away, at-bat after at-bat, as though he were swatting at butterflies.

I'm pointing at the DeRosa play and yet, I think the Cubs lost tonight's game when it was still scoreless and Alfonso Soriano was standing at second base with nobody out in the bottom of the first inning. Ryan Theriot was batting, there seemed to be tension and expectation in the Wrigley Field air surrounding the possibility that the Cubs could jump out to the early lead and wipe away the memory of last night's embarrassment...and Theriot wet the bed. Then Lee and Ramirez did likewise, and the game remained scoreless until the Dodgers came to bat in the second, and then the circus really began.

Lee, Ramirez, Soriano, Fukudome (!)—these guys should be humiliated. I'm sure they are.

I hope this ends Saturday.

I sure didn't think this would happen.

Then I saw Ryan Dempster huffing and puffing in between pitches as if it took all of the resolve and concentration he could muster to make a good pitch (even though he was leading 2-0 at the time).

Then the good pitches got fewer and farther between as the number of walks issued to Dodger batters climbed.

And then came the grand slam gopher ball. And then the Cubs really settled into their offensive feebleness. And then I turned the channel in search of previews of tomorrow night's Vice Presidential Debate, which I am planning to watch instead of Game Two, because I don't expect Carlos Zambrano to be the guy who will get us back on track so the Cubs can head out to L.A. with the series tied, and I just can't handle that much more disappointment.

I sure didn't think this would happen.

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You'll find a more thoughtful, detailed analysis of tonight's humiliation at The Cub Reporter. Transmission proved to me what a strong stomach he has by recounting all of the grisly details.

My stomach isn't strong enough to even allow me to read the recounting of all of the grisly details.

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Update: The Cubs, who were given a 52% likelihood of winning this first-round series yesterday, according to The Hardball Times' statistical analysis, are now given a 32.8% likelihood of reaching the NLCS.

I figured you probably weren't already depressed enough this morning and so, decided to pass that on.

To help me decide how anxious to be about the Cubs' NLDS matchup with the Dodgers—the two teams' first post-season meeting ever—I compared the clubs' ranking in a number of hitting, pitching, and defensive categories, and frankly, the Cubbies come out looking pretty good.

Of course, when admiring the Cubs' clearly superior offensive stats, one has to acknowledge that Manny Ramirez only played in 53 games for the Dodgers, and the difference he made was enormous: L.A. scoring went from 4.17 runs/game, pre-Manny, to 4.70 r/g, post-Manny, a bump of almost 13%.

For a truly comprehensive look at the Cubs' NLDS opponents, I direct you to the observations of Jon Weisman, the proprietor of Dodger Thoughts, who offers an in-depth analysis of who did what this year among Joe Torre's crew. Among his points, Jon discounts the notion that Andre Ethier's wicked-hot bat was solely the result of having Ramirez hitting behind him (though the piece I posted at The Cub Reporter shows that Ethier's post-Manny numbers were genuinely eye-popping).

Weisman also points out that Derek Lowe, the Dodgers' NLDS Game One starter, who was stunning in September (0.59 ERA over 5 starts and 30 1/3 IP), was also pretty damn sharp in two early-season starts against the Cubs (1-0, 1.93 over 14 IP).

Weisman writes:

Whether this is a Dodger team that will perform any better than the May-June 2008 Dodgers, or for that matter the 1989-2007 Dodgers ... there's just no way of knowing. Several hopeful Dodger teams in the past 20 years have gone ever so gently into that bad night. The Dodgers somehow have to change that.

It starts with Lowe and Ramirez. Anyone can be a hero, but those two have been going so well for so long that they are poised to make an impact that Dodger fans haven't seen in a generation of postseasons...

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Tony Jackson of the L.A. Daily News appeared on WGN Sports Central with David Kaplan tonight and talked a lot about the problems with the Dodger bullpen. His overall argument was that the team with the second best record in all of baseball (the Cubs) has to be substantially favored against the team with the worst record of all the teams in the playoff field (the Dodgers).

Looking back on what Jackson has had to write about the Dodgers lately, I came across his post yesterday on the "Inside the Dodgers" blog, featuring a funny, bittersweet recollection from Dodgers GM and former Cub front office guy Ned Colletti.