Thanks to a June swoon, my beloved Chicago Cubs started throwing around the dreaded “r” word. As a lifelong fan, I’ve become used to this sort of thing in most years. But still, it didn’t make it any easier.

Rebuild. That’s sports talk for jettisoning your highly-paid stars, writing the season off as a loss, and regrouping next year with a younger core of prospects.

Sure enough, General Manager Jed Hoyer dealt away most of the starting lineup in a flurry of one-sided trades. The ax fell on no less than seven heads (some joked that even the hot dog vendor was being traded....More>>>