Quick. What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever thought? Was it something like, “Man, The Matrix is really deep,” or “Green Day’s music really speaks to me”? When you thought it, did you immediately feel shame and embarrassment for the idea even entering your mind? Or did you blurt out what you thought, perhaps in a room full of people with whom you haven’t since spoken? Surely, you didn’t write the dumbest thing ever in a newspaper circulated in the third-largest city in the United States of America, did you? Congratulations, you’re not Phil Rogers. As much as I mock the crowd of dopes that want to bring back Mark DeRosa and Kerry Wood to solve the Cubs’ woes, those people look like MENSA members next to Phil. How does he plan on turning around the 2009 Cubs?

By trading Carlos Zambrano. No need to click the link. The stupidity unfolds below.

As Lou Piniella was saying on Friday, enough’s enough.

Except for when enough is either too much or not quite enough. Or if you’ve had enough in the past, and you’re just sick of having enough even though you really like it most of the time.

Get Carlos Zambrano out of here, even if the Cubs have to give him away. He’s not the guy you want as the ace of a curse-busting team, and at this point, it’s wishful thinking that he’ll ever mature into that guy.

Give away a 28-year-old elite pitcher who has never in his career ended a full season with an ERA over 4.00 and who just last week showed enough maturity to try to help settle a very volatile situation between his team’s starting right fielder and his team’s manager. Fuck the “curse,” and fuck you, Phil.

Proving that I did not attend Kellogg, Wharton or even the Acme School of Business, I offer this proposition for Jim Hendry: First thing Monday morning, put Zambrano on waivers. If anyone claims him and the $62.75 million left on his contract, which runs through 2012, immediately trade him for whatever is being offered, from a bag of balls to a 32-year-old minor-leaguer.

I see that you DO have degrees from the School of Reactionary Shitbaggery, the University of Horrendous Sportswriting, and the College of Wearing Aging Hipster Glasses.

Because Hendry gave Zambrano a full no-trade clause in a 2007 contract extension, Zambrano can choose: Either go where he’s being dealt, waving goodbye to Wrigley Field, or block the trade and deal with the knowledge that you’re playing for a team that believes it can live without you.

Or, the third option. Continue putting up stellar numbers as a productive member of one of the best starting pitching staffs in Major League Baseball and the best-hitting starting pitcher in all of baseball.

What a show Zambrano put on Sunday at U.S. Cellular Field.

Four earned runs in 5 1/3 innings? It wasn’t that good a show. He was off his game a bit, although it wasn’t a TERRIBLE start. I don’t know why you’d- Oh, wait. This isn’t about him hitting a couple of guys, is it?

Given the Cubs’ sorry display of the previous two days, when Piniella called Milton Bradley “a piece of [bleep]” and then got upset that the confidentiality of the clubhouse had been breached, allegedly by an unknown White Sox employee, the setting called for professionalism.

Please tell me you’re not about to blame Zambrano for Milton Bradley and Lou Piniella acting like schoolyard bullies. Hell, from the accounts I’ve read, Zambrano tried to soothe tensions between the two.

Unfortunately for the North Side drama queens, their ace once again reported for work wearing size 30 shoes and a red rubber ball on his nose. Zambrano pitched badly and lost his cool for about the zillionth time, venting his frustrations on Sox hitters en route to a 6-0 loss.

I know the blueberry uniform tops are stupid-looking, but I don’t really think they make him look like a clown. Also, to give you the idea of how many times Zambrano would need to lose his cool per season to reach a zillion, well it would be once every- Wait just a damn minute. A zillion isn’t a real number. We’ve been had!

Zambrano clearly drilled Dewayne Wise in the butt on the first pitch after he had sniffed out a suicide squeeze attempt but threw wildly past Geovany Soto, allowing rookie Chris Getz to steal home. Home plate umpire Brian Runge should have ejected Zambrano, as it looked to me like the second time he had intentionally drilled a Sox hitter.

When you really want to send a message, you really want to do it by drilling a career .212 hitter like Dewayne Wise. That message, of course, being, “I feel bad that Dewayne Wise sucks so fucking bad at getting on base, so I’m going to try to help him out. I don’t trust him enough to not swing at four intentional balls, so I’ll just drill him in the ass so he can get his uniform dirty and run the bases for a while.”

Maybe Carlos threw at him, but isn’t it also possible that he just threw a bad pitch?

He also ricocheted a pitch off Scott Podsednik’s rear end in the third inning. The motivation here wasn’t nearly as clear, but Sox players believe he was angry about either Podsednik’s four-hit game Saturday or, more likely, his unorthodox dance toward the front of the batter’s box during a pitcher’s delivery.

Or maybe Carlos is a homophobe. Why the hell would Carlos be mad about Podsednik’s four-hit game on Saturday? CARLOS DIDN’T PITCH ON SATURDAY.

Sox manager Ozzie Guillen played Zambrano like a Stradivarius after Podsednik was hit.

You’re so cultured, Phil. I would have just used “fiddle.” Of course, I wouldn’t be writing this idiotic article in the first place, so here we are.

He let Zambrano throw repeatedly to first, holding Podsednik close, and never gave him the steal sign. He hoped a distracted Zambrano would hang a pitch to Alexei Ramirez or Jermaine Dye, and that’s exactly what Zambrano did, with Ramirez drilling a two-run homer on a 1-2 pitch.

Did Guillen actually say this was his strategy? I doubt it. And even if he did, I doubt you’re a competent enough journalist to capture it. Guillen was probably too busy thinking of ways to say how shitty Wrigley Field is, and didn’t even realize that Podsednik was prancing around by first base. Or maybe he knows his team scores a shitload of its runs via the long ball, and that he had a guy at the plate who has been murdering the Cubs with home runs this year. Maybe that’s why Podsednik wasn’t running. Also, didn’t Carlos pick Beckham off second base on Sunday? Maybe he was throwing over there because he’s good at picking people off, not because he was distracted.

Zambrano then unraveled like, well, like he often does.

Yeah, like that time in the 2008 playoffs when he TOTALLY UNRAVELED after his dumb-ass infield decided to play hackey sack with the baseball instead of, you know, catching it and recording outs. You know what else Carlos “often does”? Gets guys out.

The sequence that allowed the Sox to add on to a 3-0 lead in the sixth was classic. Zambrano’s instincts were good enough to anticipate a suicide squeeze with Getz on third and Wise, the No. 9 hitter , batting. He just couldn’t execute. Soto had no chance to catch a fastball that sailed over the right-handed batter’s box. Fuming, Zambrano hit Wise with the next pitch.

Stupid Carlos. How dare he use his brain and extraordinary reflexes to try to foil the White Sox’s suicide squeeze attempt? How about some vitriol for Geovany Soto, who was either too baked or too fat to get out of his crouch and field the ball?

“It was a cutter that cut too much,” he claimed later.

That seems reasonable.

He offered an even stronger defense when asked if Podsednik was also hit with a cut fastball. “Yeah, cutter,” said Zambrano, who allowed five runs in 5 1/3 innings. “The ball cut a lot. I don’t want to put Podsednik on base. I’m not crazy. Nobody wants to have Podsednik on base.”

Also reasonable, especially when you consider that while Carlos has been great in his career as a Cub, pinpoint control has not always been his greatest asset.

Zambrano had warmed up for the predictably high-energy start with a war of words with Sox pitching coach Don Cooper, who had been critical of Zambrano’s on-field meltdown on May 27. He tried to make a joke of Cooper’s 1-6 big-league record and bragged about his no-hitter.

Carlos pointed out that Cooper sucked as a player? Good for him. He did. My only complaint is that Carlos didn’t also point out that Ozzie Guillen was a horseshit player, too.

Then, as usual, he went out and did not deliver.

He wasn’t great, but the game was as good as over when the Sox scored their first run. Furthermore, Carlos has pretty much always delivered. He has been great in his last two postseason starts, and he is a very solid second-half performer.

There are many reasons that a Cubs’ team with more than $140 million invested in payroll is in fourth place in the National League Central, and one of them is a front-runner, not a difference-maker.

Yes, there are many reasons. I’ll list a few:

1. The fact that Joey Gathright ever made the team
2. Aaron Miles
3. Neal Cotts
4. The bullpen for the first few weeks
5. The underperformance of Milton Bradley, Geovany Soto, Alfonso Soriano, Rich Harden, Ryan Dempster, and Mike Fontenot
6. The Aramis Ramirez injury
7. The Angel Guzman injury
8. The downward spiral of Kosuke Fukudome
9. The dearth of talent in the minor leagues
10. Some bad, bad defense

Zambrano’s performance would be more at home on a list called, “Why the Cubs suck, yet are still somehow in the NL Central race.”

The Cubs are 0-5 in Zambrano’s starts in the playoffs, being outscored 31-15.

Are you fucking retarded? So, the Cubs are averaging THREE RUNS A GAME against the best teams in the National League in Zambrano’s playoff starts, and you wonder whey they’re 0-5? Moreover, I don’t know who the hell taught you about “statistics,” but if OTHER pitchers give up runs in Zambrano’s starts, they probably shouldn’t be held against Zambrano, should they? Because Zambrano has only given up 14 earned runs in his 5 playoff starts. That’s 2.8 runs per start. That’s good, assuming he’s not only pitching one inning. His career postseason ERA is 4.34, but that’s a bit bloated because of his sub-par performances in the 2003 postseason. When he was only 22 years old.

We’ll dismiss the 2003 NL Championship Series as old news and blame Piniella for lifting him when he was in a 1-1 game against Brandon Webb in the 2007 playoff opener, but his pitching had as much to do with the ugly Game 2 loss to Los Angeles last year as did the four infield errors.

Not really. Since Zambrano only gave up 3 earned runs, and had 4 unearned runs charged to him, I’d say the errors were 133% more responsible for the ugly Game 2 loss than Zambrano’s pitching. What about Chad Billingsley being awesome or the Cub offense being crap? How much do THEY factor in?

Hendry had a chance to let Zambrano walk as a free agent after 2007, the season in which he beat up catcher Michael Barrett during a game at Wrigley, but injuries to Mark Prior and Kerry Wood gave Zambrano a hammer.

As sad as it is to say, I almost guarantee there would be less uproar about Zambrano walking as a free agent than there was over Mark DeRosa getting traded for three pretty good pitching prospects. How depressed are you now on this Monday afternoon?

Too bad the one he now swings makes funny noises, like the one Moe favored when whacking Larry and Curly.

That is the worst ending to anything I’ve ever read in any form of writing. God dammit, Phil Rogers. The next time you write something worth reading will be the first.