Lost in all the coverage of the fact that the Cubs have no closer is the fact that up until 2 decades ago or so, there was no such thing as a "closer." Nor was there any of this nonsense of relievers specializing in 7th or 8th Inning or Long Relief. Basically, back in the good old days, a reliever came in when the starter was losing his effectiveness and then the reliever would be relieved when he in turn was losing his effectiveness. Back then, the whole idea of having relievers pegged in for certain innings and not to pitch much more than 1 inning a game would have struck any baseball man as insanity. The current way of doing things has lead to a situation where most relief pitchers can't handle the 9th inning whereas in the olden days, just about any reliever could do so.

If Cubs GM Jim Hendry really wants the Cubs to win, what he needs to do is to bring back the old way of handling the bullpen in the minor league system. This way, relief pitchers will be trained right. When they come up to the major league level, they will be able to handle pitching in whatever inning right without any of the current nonsense about "pressure" getting to them.

At the same time, Hendry could also bring back training minor league pitchers to pitch in a 4 man rotation so that another proven method for winning baseball in ye olden days can be brought back.