Why would New York Yankees want to bring Chicago Cubbie-ness to Bronx?

I used to root for the New York Yankees as a kid (my feelings about the big  ballclub in the Bronx are more neutral these days), and I can appreciate the aura that the team gives off.

That winning attitude (which some people interpret as a sense of entitlement) is about as far removed from the sentiment that one experiences if they root for the Chicago Cubs.

SO EVEN THOUGH I can appreciate the fact that people who work in professional baseball are “baseball people” first (with ties to a particular team coming second), I must admit to being amused whenever there is someone who has ties to the two franchises.

The biggest baseball winners and the loveable losers (except that losing really is never lovable). It’s just too much of a mish-mash.

So I can appreciate the sense of confusion that some people experienced when they learned that the Yankees (who think they are experiencing a long athletic draught because they haven’t won a World Series title since 2009) added a new executive to their front office.

In the form of Jim Hendry – who until a few months ago was the general manager in charge of the Cubs.

IN CUB TERMS, Hendry is successful because he put together teams that won three division titles (although that falls short of the record of Chicago White Sox general manager Kenny Williams – an American League championship/World Series title goes a long way in this city).

 But in real terms, he hasn’t won anything (no National League championship, let alone a World Series appearance).

So why would the Yankees (who didn’t win the league pennant for 2011 even though they had the best regular-season record in the American League) want Hendry?

The key is understanding that he was given a title of “special assignment scout.” Which is a convoluted way of saying that he is a consultant. Which means he doesn’t have real, full-time duties.

HENDRY, WHO IS 56 and devoted 17 years of his working life to the Chicago Cubs organization, managed to get himself a slot within professional baseball that will tide him over for 2012 while he figures out what he wants to do with the rest of his working life.

I only hope that Hendry’s Cubbie-ness doesn’t rub off on his new ballclub. Because the sense I have always picked up on is that Cubbie-ness overcomes Yankee might!

Former Cubs managers Gene Michael and Lou Piniella didn’t have success in Chicago – even though they were hired here on the premise that they would bring their Yankees ways (both played and managed there) to our city’s baseball scene.

It didn’t work.

NOR DID IT seem to help when one-time slugging outfielder Bobby Murcer (who once was thought to be the successor to Mickey Mantle in the Yankees lineup) returned to the Yankees in the late 1970s and finally got to play in a World Series in 1981.

The Yankees lost that year, and some smart-alecks noted that the reacquisition of Murcer from the Chicago Cubs put them over the top, so to speak, in the number of ex-Cubs who played for them – thereby ensuring their defeat.

I don’t know that having a former Cubs general manager on staff hurts the Yankees in any way. In real terms, it may not mean much of anything – particularly if they don’t pay his opinions much mind.

Because when it comes right down to it, there’s probably only one baseball person with ties to both the Bronx and Lakeview who had success in both places.

THAT WOULD BE Joe McCarthy (not the crackpot one-time senator from Wisconsin).

He managed the Cubs to a National League championship in 1929, then led the Yankees to American League championships and/or World Series titles in 1932 (a four-game sweep of the Cubs), 1936-39 (’38 was also a four-game Cubbie sweep) and 1941-43.

It’s just that with Jim Hendry, I can’t help but think he’s another Gene Michael, and not the second coming of Joe McCarthy.

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What is Theo thinking? Or, does Red Sox karma get quashed by Cubbie-ness just as badly as Yankees mystique?

I’m not a Chicago Cubs fan, but I still remember the managerial hires by that ballclub that saw Gene Michael and Lou Piniella come on board.

Particularly in the case of Piniella, but also with Michael as well, there was the sense that the Cubs were reaching out to a real-live New York Yankee. Bringing in one of the Bronx Bombers (both men had been ballplayers, managers and executives for the team) to the North Side was assured to bring a winner to Chicago.

AS THOUGH A Yankee could overcome that very un-cute matter of losing so often that Chicago Cubbie-ness isn’t anywhere near as sweet as it sounds.

The lesson I learned is that Cubs losing is powerful enough to overcome Yankee winning (take the 1981 World Series, where Bobby Murcer returned to the Yankees to see them lose – because his interim with other teams included a two-year stint with the Cubs).

If there is something to be learned from this, it is that there are no saviors. No one is going to suddenly come in and make a respectable baseball franchise out of the Chicago Cubs.

Anybody who seriously believes that is just as absurd as those people on the South Side who seriously think that dumping Ozzie Guillen as manager was the lone move needed to make the White Sox winners again.

WHY AM I rambling through all of this?

It’s just that mental aggravation is what I felt when I first saw a Chicago Tribune report (which admittedly ripped off the information from Boston’s WEEI radio) that Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein is going to leave the team so he can take a job at the head of the Cubs.

Those gossip column tidbits about fans seeing someone who looked like Epstein this weekend hanging around the Lincoln Park neighborhood? Maybe they weren’t totally intoxicated!

According to the reports, Epstein would get more than $15 million to run the Cubs for the next five seasons. If he wins, he will become a Cubs demigod who will have employment for life.

IF HE DOESN’T, he’ll be dumped on as badly as the Cubs’ last demigod, Sammy Sosa – who in so many ways is what that franchise is all about (although that’s a subject for another day’s commentary).

Now none of this is official. Even the Tribune is reporting that actual compensation still needs to be finalized, and may not be done so until the end of the week.

So Wednesday afternoon’s radio rumor from The Hub could easily become Wrigleyville’s pathetic joke by Thursday morning. We’ll have to wait and see how it turns out.

It’s just that I don’t see this ballclub being turned around in a winter’s notice. It will take a long, drawn-out building process (and things could still go wrong). Just like there’s no crying in baseball, there also are no guarantees.

WHICH IS WHY I really don’t get why Epstein would want to come to the Cubs. I do understand why he’d want to leave Boston – a place with whiny fans who are (deservedly so) emotionally traumatized by the way their team played so badly in September that they wound up out of the playoffs altogether.

Leaving those people in the lurch is what they deserve.

But falling for the ivy at Wrigley Field? I can’t help but wonder how long until he kicks himself and starts having the same thoughts that outfielder Lou Novikoff once had – that the ivy was poisonous.

The speculation always is that whoever happens to be in charge of the Cubs when they do eventually win something (no National League championship since 1945, no World Series title since 1908) is going to be regarded as a baseball genius. It will permanently set their legacy.

AS THOUGH EPSTEIN really needs that. The 2004 World Series title for the Red Sox, followed up by another one in 2007, already did that for him.

All he’s doing if he comes to Chicago is risking getting entangled in the muck otherwise known as Chicago Cubbie-ness. Come to Chicago and get caught up in the losing ways of the Cubs, and we’ll quickly see that perhaps Epstein wasn’t all that bright – and maybe those two Red Sox championships in the past decade were some sort of fluke (the Yankees were really a better ballclub in ’04).

Which makes me want to scream at Theo that he should have a long, hard talk with Piniella – who despite his playing days on championship Yankees teams and his managerial stints with a champion Cincinnati Reds team and several near-misses with Seattle Mariners ballclubs, is going to forevermore carry around the stink of the Cubs.

A blotch on an otherwise intriguing career in baseball. One that maybe Piniella could talk Epstein out of enduring for himself.

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