The 1995 season started late, due to the lateness of the settlement after the 1994 labor stoppage. MLB set a 144-game schedule, the shortest in the expansion era.

The Cubs, who had been pretty bad in 1994, were a little better in 1995. After a good start had them in first place in early June at 22-13, they went 16-30 and were five games under .500 at what would be the midpoint of a normal season, 38-43. A 23-16 run put them back over the .500 mark in early September at 61-59, but that didn't seem as if it would be enough...

... until the last week of the season, when they started winning. And winning. And winning. They won seven in a row and needed some help, but went into the season's final weekend with a shot at the first-ever wild card. The fourth win in the streak was this game against the Cardinals that was a near no-hitter by Frank Castillo, broken up with two out in the ninth by a triple by Bernard Gilkey.

And then they went for that eighth straight win.

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Despite the Cubs' loss in the NLCS to the Giants, you probably (if you're old enough) remember the 1989 season fondly. Greg Maddux exploded on the scene with a huge year at age 23; Mark Grace established himself as one of the better first basemen in the league; the Cubs had two other solid starting pitchers in Rick Sutcliffe and Mike Bielecki, and Ryne Sandberg hit 30 home runs for the first time in his career.

Combine that with the "pitching like his hair is on fire" closer Mitch Williams, and the Cubs surprised everyone by playing consistently early, then taking over first place on August 5 with a win at Pittsburgh.

The context of the game in this recap is important. Though the Cubs were still in first place entering this day, it was by a thread; a lead that had been 2½ games just a week earlier had slipped to just half a game over the Cardinals after the Cubs blew a 7-1 lead entering the fifth inning the day before, September 8, and it wasn't even clear they'd play on the 9th, as it had been raining most of the morning.

What followed was one of the most memorable games of that season.

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The nine-packs of tickets the Cubs have been selling for the last few weeks have been joined by a new six-game pack, which will go on sale next Friday.

From the Cubs press release, here are details:

The Chicago Cubs today announced the sale of the Cubs 6-Game Pack, featuring tickets to Opening Day against the Washington Nationals, rivalry matchups with the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox, and rare visits to Wrigley Field by the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers. Sales begin Friday, Feb. 17, at 10 a.m. CST on www.cubs.com/6packs.

The Cubs 6-Game Pack provides a choice of 10 different pre-selected, six-game plans, with each option headlined by some of the schedule’s most popular games. The Cubs 6-Game Pack is available in both the Budweiser Bleachers and reserved seating bowl of Wrigley Field. Prices start at just $112 before taxes and fees for a package in the Upper Deck Reserved Outfield section.

What this means for ticket sales in general is unknown, although it does imply that the nine-game packs might not be selling. The general single-game ticket sale will be on Friday, March 9. More on the six-packs at this link.

Beginning Monday, Brett Taylor (formerly known here as "AceCubbie") will be joining the front-page staff here at BCB.

At least three times a week (Monday, Wednesday & Friday), and possibly more often depending on how much baseball news is around, Brett will be making an "around MLB" linkpost, highlighting the major stories of the day. It'll be posted generally first thing in the morning.

With pitchers and catchers only about a week away from reporting to Cubs camp and other MLB camps, it's time for all of us to start getting excited about baseball 2012. This will be a way for all of you to have a one-stop shop for all of your MLB news.

As you probably already know, Brett runs the Cub-centric site Bleacher Nation and I'm really pleased to be able to partner with him and welcome him to the front-page staff. He'll continue to do the great work he's doing at Bleacher Nation; in the future he might do additional front-page posting here, and of course soon you'll see more here from our minor league editor, Josh Timmers.

Please join me in welcoming Brett; his first post will be on Monday morning.

The Cubs announced their regular season television schedule today. As always, all 162 games will be on TV -- if you're younger than about 35, you won't remember the days when about 20 games a year weren't on TV anywhere. Now, you can get every game pretty much anywhere, unless you're in one of the Bud Selig Blackout Areas.

This year, unlike a few recent years in the past, Opening Day will be on WGN. That's good news. The usual eight games are on WCIU; some of those will wind up on ESPN as national telecasts, so you won't miss them if you're outside the Chicago area.

The breakdown of TV games is as follows:

WGN: 63
CSN: 80
WCIU: 8
Fox: 9
ESPN: 2

There are three TBD games; two possible ESPN dates that will be on WGN if not on ESPN, and one possible late-season Fox date that will be on WGN if not on Fox. For simplicity's sake I have listed the ESPN TBD's as ESPN above, and the Fox TBD as WGN above (since those seem the most likely outcomes of those TBD's). After the jump, the complete schedule.

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The 1998 season was remarkable for many reasons -- not the least of which was the Cubs' first playoff season in nine years, and the first (and so far, only) wild card postseason spot won by the Cubs.

For the last 45 days of the season, no more than one game separated the first- and second-place teams in the NL wild card race -- the Cubs, Mets, and in the final week, the Giants, who the Cubs wound up playing in the memorable tiebreaker game at Wrigley Field.

This game was part of an amazing weekend series with the Brewers, who were in their first year as a NL team. The Cubs won two of three, but both teams scored 10 or more runs in all three games. Orlando Merced, pictured here, played a key role in this game. Why is this photo of him in a Twins uniform?

Primarily because Merced's Cubs career was very brief. The Twins sent him to the Red Sox in a July 31 deadline deal that year (along with Greg Swindell), but Boston released him on September 1. Four days later he was a Cub; he played in just 12 games and had only 10 at-bats. One of them was particularly important.

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I know this news will crush many of you, who were Blake DeWitt fans. (Sarcasm intentional!)

According to MLB Trade Rumors -- the only source of this story, thus far -- the Cubs have designated The Franchise for assignment to make room for Adrian Cardenas, who was claimed on waivers from the Athletics today. Here's a link to the official Cubs news release on these moves.

I admit, I thought DeWitt could become a decent major league player. When the Cubs acquired him from the Dodgers in the Ted Lilly deal, DeWitt was only 24 and had posted decent numbers in the major leagues at age 22. He never progressed beyond that, and though he had occasional success as a bench player, he neither developed power, nor had much speed, nor played good enough defense to be used as a defensive replacement.

Cardenas is a middle infielder who hit .314/.374/.418 in 545 plate appearances for Triple-A Sacramento in 2011, though he did not get called up in September. I presume he'll get a shot at winning a middle infield backup job in spring training.

So long, Franchise. At least we'll never have to see him try to play the outfield for the Cubs again.