Crazy like a fox.

One day after Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett fought, Piniella got ejected after Angel Pagan got caught stealing third base in the eighth inning. The manager kicked dirt and tossed his cap several times.

Question is: Did he kick third-base umpire Mark Wegner, too?

Crew chief Bruce Froemming said yes. Piniella said no.

“He made physical contact with the third-base umpire,” Froemming told a pool reporter. “He made physical contact with his foot, and he kicked dirt on (Wegner) several times, and the rest was show-and-tell.”

Piniella countered: “Froemming is the one that put his hands on me.”

Froemming said he was simply trying to calm Piniella, who “just wouldn’t stop.” And Froemming planned to call Major League Baseball’s headquarters “immediately.”

That issue aside, Piniella did say this about the call against Pagan: “He looked safe from the dugout, but after I saw the play, the umpire had it right.”

After the game on June 2nd, the Cubs record was 22 and 31. They were a team 9 games below .500 with a long season ahead of them that was getting longer with each loss. The question was whether or not Sweet Lou had lost some of his magic. Could Lou’s act have already grown old and tired in Chicago? Were the years of managing Tampa Bay just too much to overcome?

It certainly didn’t look good for the Cubs. All that money spent in the off-season; resigning Wade Miller and Mark Prior, signing Alfonso Soriano for 8 years, signing Mark DeRosa, Jason Marquis, Cliff Floyd and Ted Lilly. Losing Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Wade Miller for significant amounts of time. It certainly seemed as if no amount of money or change in the manager’s office would be able to get the Cubs back on course.

Four weeks though has a way of changing perspectives: One of the strangest months in recent Cubs history, which included fights among teammates, fights with other teams, ejections, suspensions and almost as many wins as they had the first two months of the season combined.

So, one of the most interesting stories of the ’07 baseball season may be the fortunes of Chicago’s team from the North Side. In a year when the Brewers are leading the NL Central it seems only fitting that the Cubbies should be nipping at their heels in the race for the division title and people in Chicago are starting to take notice:

This is all about the vintage work and relentless tinkering of Piniella, who surveyed the scene, took mental notes, weeded out undesirables, rewarded hustle and consistency and ignored clubhouse whispers that he was losing his club. He easily could have chucked it all and returned to the broadcast booth, but as he said when he was hired, this is his final job in a potential Hall of Fame managerial career. He left Seattle early and returned home to Tampa Bay. He left Tampa Bay early because the player payroll was lower than promised. But he wasn’t going to quit Cubdom, even if the scrutiny and pressures of a 98-year plague drove him daffy. “I didn’t come here just to make a little more money and go home when the time comes,” he said.

It’s a long way to September but, boy won’t it be fun if the Cubs are this season’s surprise team.