Why is Jerry Hairston Being Benched? That's what inquiring minds want to know in light of the fact that Hairston is one of the most consistent, not to mention better players on the team.

Consider the On Base Averages (OBA) for the following players:

.447 D. Lee
.357 J. Hairston
.333 J. Burnitz
.324 A. Ramirez
.321 J. Dubois
.312 N. Perez
.297 C. Patterson
.295 M. Barrett
.272 T. Hollandsworth
.228 N. Garciaparra

What this tells you is that Hairston is one of the most valuable offensive players on the team. It also tells you that Hairston should be the leadoff hitter. However, Baker has chosen to bench Hairston. What this shows you is Baker's ignorance of fundamental baseball.

Remember last year when Baker defended the team's shockingly low number of walks taken by saying that you can't walk to victory, instead you achieve victory by hitting your way there? This is more of the same nonsense.

Baker needs to be fired and fired now. However, GM Hendry won't do that since he clearly agrees with Baker on this. A look at the Cubs minor league system reveals an organization loaded from top to bottom with all sorts of OBA deficient batters who seem to regard taking walks as being unmanly or something.

Whats needed is a wholesale housecleaning of the moribund Chicago Cubs organization. However, that's most unlikely to happen since all the Tribune Corp. cares about is huge profit margins and it has made it perfectly clear, in deeds not words, that it could hardly care less if the Cubs ever reached the World Series much less won it.