This one could open some old wounds, so I'll be fairly brief. Most of you know I defended Dusty Baker far beyond the point at which it was reasonable to do so. I was wrong. Period. In reality, Baker should have been fired after the 2004 season, when he lost control of the team. The antics that occurred are well documented, and likely were a contributing factor in the loss of the wild-card spot that season, a playoff berth that team should have won easily.

I'm not even going to go through Baker's wacky quotes, ranging from his complaints about broadcasters to the famous "walks clog the bases" remark.

What I do want to focus on here is one incident, an incident that can be summed up in the photo that accompanies this post. It is from, as I am sure you remember, game six of the 2003 NLCS. You know what Prior is pointing at -- the incident where the foul ball was interfered with.

We remember Prior as dominant in 2003, long before his injuries derailed his career. His 18-6, 2.43 season was one of the best in baseball that year, and he was breezing through the Marlins that night at Wrigley Field. The final score doesn't indicate how dominant he was on that October evening -- until the incident in the 8th, he had faced 29 batters and allowed two walks and three hits.

The look on his face and the way he was pointing reminds us, five years later, that despite his dominance, he was a 23-year-old kid who had just finished his first full major league season, and this incident had clearly rattled him.

And the manager sat in the dugout and did nothing. Dusty Baker could have done one of several things: first, he should have gone to the mound to try to settle his pitcher down, at the very least. And then, after Prior walked the hitter (Luis Castillo) who hit the foul ball, putting runners on first and second, he probably should have taken him out of the game; Joe Borowski, who was a solid closer in 2003, was warmed up and ready. Though Borowski had only five outings longer than an inning in 2003, if you win the game you're in the World Series and you have three days off! There's no doubt in my mind that Joe Torre would have called on Mariano Rivera in that situation. Or just about any other manager would have called on his closer to get those five elusive outs.

But Baker did nothing until Prior had faced three more batters, retiring none of them, and the game was tied.

You know what happened next, I don't have to rehash it here. Forget all the other stuff that happened under Baker's watch -- to me, this one was the most unforgivable, because if he had handled the situation the way a true leader would have, I am convinced the Cubs would have won the game and been in the World Series.

This will close the Can of Worms, as the season approaches. Oh, one more thing. Since so many of you seem interested in him, Jake Peavy has never lost to a team managed by Dusty Baker, going 2-0 with three no-decisions.

Don Baylor was the first manager of the Colorado Rockies, and in his six seasons there he led the Rox to a winning record three times, including a playoff spot (the first NL Wild Card) in their third season, at that time a record for the fastest run to the postseason for an expansion team (the Diamondbacks broke it in 1999 in their second year).

So when Jim Riggleman was fired after the Cubs tanked the second two-thirds of the 1999 season (after a 32-23 start, they went 35-72 the rest of the year to lose 95 games and it was pretty clear the players quit on Riggleman the last couple of months), then GM Andy MacPhail figured Baylor, a winner in Colorado, could light a fire under the Cubs.

He was wrong, at least in his first year. Baylor and his old third base coaching buddy from Colorado, Gene Glynn (Glynn, at least, was mostly a nonentity, unlike Dusty Baker's 3B coaching pal Wavin' Wendell Kim), presided over a 2000 season that was even worse than 1999; the Cubs lost 97 games, went 16-42 from August 1 to season's end (losing 20+ games in both August and September and from Aug. 31 to Sept. 20 going 2-17), and by the end of 2000 Daniel Garibay, Jamie Arnold, Jerry Spradlin, Joey Nation, Phil Norton and Andrew Lorraine had all started games for the Cubs. (Wow. It hurts just typing those names.)

So it wasn't all Baylor's fault -- he didn't have the "horses", as a future Cub manager would say. Aside from Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa, the next leading RBI man on the 2000 Cubs was Ricky Gutierrez, with 56. Third base was an ugly platoon of Willie Greene, Shane Andrews, Jeff Huson, Jose Nieves and Chad Meyers.

So 2001 wasn't expected to be better -- only it was. Just as Baylor can't be blamed for 2000, he doesn't really get credit for 2001. Sosa had what is probably the best offensive season in club history, Rondell White had a fine first half before getting hurt, and guys like Ron Coomer and Matt Stairs contributed to the Cubs' surprising run that lasted into September before they faded. The 88-win season, with Jon Lieber winning 20 games, gave the Cubs hope for 2002.

There was always a dark underside. One of the things Baylor loved to do was bunt. The Cubs ranked 11th in the majors in 1999 with 65 sacrifices. In 2000 they jumped to first with 89, and in 2001 it got ridiculous -- the Cubs had 117 sacrifice bunts in 2001, 24 more than the second-place Cardinals.

Baylor must have thought his sacrificing was what was causing the team to win. It didn't really help them score runs -- the 777 runs they scored in 2001 ranked 13th in the majors. He kept doing it in early 2002, even though the Cubs got off to an 8-17 start, and later lost nine in a row, dropping them to 13-27, Baylor kept bunting. The one I really remember was on June 27, 2002, against the Reds at Wrigley Field, with the Cubs mired in fifth place, 9.5 games out and 11 games under .500.

Corey Patterson -- now there's a name you might have thought you'd never hear again here! -- led off the bottom of the first inning (after the Reds had failed to score in the top of the inning) with a double.

Baylor ordered second-place hitter Chris Stynes to bunt.

With a runner on second and nobody out in the first inning of a scoreless tie. (He succeeded, but Patterson failed to score and the Cubs lost 5-4 in 10 innings, after Antonio Alfonseca blew a 3-1 lead with two out in the ninth.)

It was almost as if Baylor was daring MacPhail to fire him. A week later, MacPhail obliged him. MacPhail also fired himself that day; that's when Jim Hendry took over as GM; his six and a half years on the job make Hendry one of the longest-tenured GMs in the majors today. Bruce Kimm took over and "led" the Cubs to a 33-45 mark, finishing off another 95-defeat season. The bunting stopped, though -- the 2002 Cubs had only 78 sacrifices, ranking fifth in the majors.

Baylor failed to get another managing job, continuing a line that had begun with Whitey Lockman. Dusty Baker became the first ex-Cub manager to get more than an interim job since Jim Marshall when the Reds hired him. He was hired in November to return to the Rockies as hitting coach. Watch out for bunts. In three of Baylor's six years as manager, the Rox ranked either first or second in the majors in sacrifices.

Here's another recent player for whom we can say, for the most part: it wasn't his fault.

Jose Macias was 30 years old and two years removed from an almost-league-average (91 OPS+) season with the Tigers in 2001, where he had stolen 21 bases and hit .268/.316/.391, when the Cubs acquired him from Montreal for a minor leaguer named Wilton Chavez. You might have been forgiven if you'd have thought he could have made a decent defensive replacement/pinch runner for a year or so, the 25th guy on the roster.

Unfortunately, Dusty Baker didn't see him that way -- over the course of Jose's two years as a Cub, Dusty put him in the starting lineup 157 times, including 21 times in center field, a position he was ill-suited for. Further, Dusty put him in the leadoff spot in the batting order 24 times, in spite of Jose's .292 OBA in 2004 and .274 OBA in 2005. Jose drove in 35 runs in 371 Cub at-bats; just 20 of those RBI came in Cub victories. The Cubs were 99-111 in games in which Jose appeared and 25-29 in games he started.

As I said, most of this is not Jose's fault. He was, as were many of "Dusty's horses", used in ways that weren't suited to their abilities. I'll close this Can of Worms post on a positive note -- Jose will always have a place in Cubs lore, because on September 28, 2005, in a 3-2 loss to the Pirates, he hit the last home run that ever landed in the old Wrigley Field bleachers, before they were torn down after that season and renovated. It was the only homer he hit in 2005 and the last of his major league career; in 2006 he went to play for the Nippon Ham Fighters in NPB's Pacific League, where he hit .229/.264/.344 with 1 HR in 227 at-bats. His final baseball stop was in the Brewers' system; he played for their Triple-A Nashville affiliate in 2007.

Thankfully, the Cubs now have a manager who doesn't use guys like this in roles they aren't suited for.

In several of the posts in this series, I've written: "It seemed like a good idea at the time".

Not this time. The ill-conceived and poorly-executed College of Coaches was a spectacularly bad idea. After the Cubs had lost 94 games in 1960 -- their seventh 90+ loss year in the previous 13 seasons, and that was harder to do with only 154 games rather than the current 162 -- P. K. Wrigley decided that it must be the manager's fault (even though he had already changed managers six times in that time span). He had, in 1960, engineered what up to that time was one of the most bizarre "trades" in major league history, sending WGN radio broadcaster Lou Boudreau (who, admittedly, had managed the Indians to a World Series title) to the manager's office and shipping manager Charlie Grimm to the radio booth during the season. Neither move worked. Boudreau went 54-83 and Grimm was awful on the radio, so after the season "The Good Kid" went back to broadcasting and Wrigley launched his hare-brained scheme.

The press of that era, generally pretty compliant, questioned Wrigley's judgment. P. K.'s response: "The dictionary tells you a manager is the one who bosses and a coach is the one who works. We want workers."

Notwithstanding the fact that statement doesn't really make any sense, the idea that any business wouldn't have an ultimate "boss" led this idea down the road to failure. You can see why, I think. The concept of having a system-wide group of coaches who would move up and down from the majors to the minors and thus would develop and teach a "Cub Way" that would be uniform at every level wasn't bad -- almost 50 years later, we still don't have that. But in execution, it never worked. The Cubs hired a retired Air Force colonel, Robert Whitlow, to develop a "plan" -- but they never had one. Players would complain that they'd just get settled in one place in the lineup and then get swapped out by the next "head coach" when he came in from Wenatchee, Washington (yes, the Cubs actually had a farm team there in the early 1960's).

In 1961 there were four head coaches, but eight changes at the top. Vedie Himsl went 5-6 and was replaced by Harry Craft, who went 4-8 -- before Himsl came back to post a 5-12 mark. Then El Tappe "head coached" two games (lost both) before Craft headed up the sinking ship for four (3-1). Himsl returned for three games at the top spot (0-3) and then someone -- who knows whether it was Whitlow, Wrigley or just someone they asked walking down Addison St. -- decided they needed a bit of stability, putting Tappe in charge for 78 games (35-43). Lou Klein followed with a 5-6 mark and Tappe finished the season going 5-11.

The end result was four more wins than the previous year. It got worse in 1962, when Tappe, Klein and Charlie Metro "led" the Cubs to the first 100-loss (103) season in their history. Meanwhile, Craft had moved on to manage the expansion Houston Colt .45s, who finished ahead of the Cubs at 64-98. You can see, I'm sure, why anyone with managerial aspirations wouldn't want to be near such a "system". (Imagine Lou Piniella being "replaced" for ten days by Alan Trammell, then Mike Quade, then maybe Ryne Sandberg, who would then be sent back to A ball.)

And that's not even mentioning the fact that the esteemed Buck O'Neil, who had become the major leagues' first black coach with the Cubs in 1962, never got a chance to become head coach. Even when a couple of the coaches were ejected in one 1962 game and O'Neil was the logical choice to take over, which would have made him technically (if only for a day) the majors' first black manager, pitching coach Fred Martin was called in from the bullpen (in those pre-bullpen coach days, pitching coaches often sat in the pen) to manage. At one point in 1962 the Cubs traveled to Los Angeles with nine coaches -- five in uniform and four in the stands. It didn't help -- they got swept, the seventh and eighth defeats of a 10-game losing streak.

The Cubs gave up on the rotating system by 1963, although Bob Kennedy (1963-64) and Lou Klein (1965) kept the title of "head coach". Finally, the experiment ended with the hiring of Leo Durocher, who said at his introductory press conference:

If no announcement has been made about what my title is, I'm making it here and now. I'm the manager. I'm not a head coach. I'm the manager.

Durocher also said, memorably, at that press conference:

This isn't an eighth-place team.

He was right. His 1966 Cubs finished tenth.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Even though Lenny Harris was 38 years old in October 2002, he had had a decent year for the Brewers that year (.305/.355/.411, 103 OPS+ as a part-time player), was a good pinch-hitter (.306 with 22 pinch-hits in 2002), and so when new manager Dusty Baker (back when he was still liked) talked Jim Hendry into signing him as a free agent, most Cubs fans welcomed him as a good bench player.

He started out fine -- on April 30 he was hitting .250/.280/.417, down a little from 2002 but nothing to be alarmed about. But then Dusty's first little obsession -- with bad hitters that became "his horses" -- started to show. He began to start Lenny at third base, despite the fact that he had the mobility of a statue and hadn't played third base on a regular basis since 1991. Between May 1 and the time he was finally released on August 2, he started 23 games at 3B -- including two after Aramis Ramirez was acquired from the Pirates. During that time he "hit" .168/.250/.187, which is to say, he might as well have just sat on the bench and announced "You can have another out, I'm just going to stay here and conserve energy."

Lenny, though, got the last laugh. Nine days after the Cubs let him go, he signed with the Marlins. Jack McKeon outsmarted Dusty Baker in the playoffs, and he knew how to use Lenny -- as a pinch-hitter. For Florida, Harris played in 13 games -- all but one as a PH. That one was a start in right field the day after the Marlins clinched their playoff spot. Apart from that start, he played in the field two other times, remaining in LF after pinch-hitting in two blowouts, one a win, the other a loss.

Had Dusty Baker known how to use Harris -- as Davey Lopes and Jerry Royster had done in Milwaukee in 2002, mostly as a PH, starting him occasionally in the outfield and rarely at 3B, he might have stuck around and contributed in the postseason. Instead, he got a World Series ring... for the Marlins.

Even the name sounds like a guy who would have to make great effort just to be a baseball player. Strain. Difficulty. Hardship.

That's what the Cubs of 1980 and 1981 were. The '80 Cubs lost 98 games -- and then decided to trade their best pitcher, closer Bruce Sutter, because the Wrigley ownership, in its dying throes, couldn't afford him (he had been awarded a then-record $700,000 in arbitration the year before; that doesn't sound like much now, but it was huge dollars in 1980). They did get Leon Durham in return (along with the execrable Ken Reitz), but he wasn't yet the good player who would help the Cubs to the 1984 NL East title. The '81 Cubs also had Jody Davis, just selected in the Rule 5 draft, but he had just come off a serious illness and wasn't at full strength yet.

The Cubs made several offseason deals before the ill-fated 1981 strike season. On December 12, 1980 they sent outfielders Jerry Martin and Jesus Figueroa and a PTBNL to the Giants for Strain and a pitcher named Phil Nastu, who you've probably never heard of (because he never pitched an inning for the Cubs), but who was considered a top prospect at the time. Strain was called by the Tribune's Dave Nightingale a "worthy" second baseman, expected to replace Mike "Not The Boxer" Tyson.

Strain had hit .286 in 189 AB for the Giants in 1980, backing up Rennie Stennett, with no power (6 doubles, no triples or homers), no speed (1 SB in 3 attempts) and no plate discipline (10 walks gave him a .320 OBP, which was higher than his .317 SLG). He wasn't a very good second baseman (below-average range factor). How anyone could have thought he could be a regular starting 2B in the major leagues is beyond me, although he was the starting SS for the 1974 University of Northern Colorado team that upset Arizona to get into the College World Series.

Anyway, Strain broke camp in 1981 as the starting second baseman. He was benched after six games, hitting 4-for-18 with one RBI, that he got in this 5-4 loss to the Expos in Montreal. The RBI single actually gave the Cubs a 4-3 lead, which they proceeded to blow. That was a common story in 1981. Ten days later, he was on the DL, and in early June, after an embarrassing 16-3 loss to the Pirates that made the Cubs' record 10-34, Strain vanished. He never played in the major leagues again. Exactly how he left the team is a mystery because he isn't listed in the 1982 media guide transaction list.

Of course, Strain wasn't the cause of the Cubs' failures, he was a symptom -- to show how absolutely bankrupt the Cubs organization was of anything regarding baseball judgment in the early 1980's before the Wrigleys finally sold. They truly had no idea what talent was -- Bill Buckner was the team's best player, and although they had a couple of decent pitchers (Mike Krukow and Rick Reuschel, before the latter was traded), the team as constituted and managed (by Joe Amalfitano, a fine base coach who had absolutely no business being a major league manager -- his career record was 66-116) had no chance to win anything. If not for the strike they'd probably have broken the team record for losses; the final record was 38-65. Bizarrely, in the split season the Cubs actually had a chance to win the "second half" NL East title -- on September 24 they beat the Mets 10-9 in front of 2,555, and moved their second-half record to 20-21 -- not great, but in the wacky standings they were third behind the Cardinals, three games out of first place with ten games left. I will never forget listening to Lou Boudreau on the radio after that game, excoriating fans for not coming out to the park "because there's a pennant race going on!" If the Cubs had won that second half and qualified for the split-season playoffs it would have been a monumental joke (they'd have been at least 20 games under .500). They proceeded to lose seven of their last ten to finish a safe six games out in the second-half standings.

But back to Joe Strain. If I had just posted the photo at the top right of this post without telling you who it was, would you have been able to identify him? Even with the autograph? That's about as generic a "1970's-1980's ballplayer" look as you can get. It almost looks like they took the guy driving the team bus, gave him a uniform and let him take a souvenir picture in front of the brick wall at Wrigley so he could tell his college buddies he was a ballplayer. The eBay auction where I found that photo wants $15 for it, incidentally, if you simply must have a Joe Strain autograph to complete your collection. Strain also bears the distinction of being one of 34 Cubs to wear the #17 later made more famous by Mark Grace.

Strain, of course, didn't really vanish. The Giants took him back into their organization and he became the manager of their short-season class A team in the Northwest League in Everett, Washington from 1984 to 1990. An article published earlier this year about him says he was the best manager in team history. That article also carries what appears to be a recent photo of him, showing that same amiable smile he had in 1981.

This one ought to give you enough to talk about as we wait for the Winter Meetings to get underway next week.

Neifi Perez was signed by the Cubs on August 19, 2004, two days after he was released by the San Francisco Giants; despite playing for the team that then-Cubs manager Dusty Baker had managed for a decade, Neifi had never played for Dusty before.

This one sums up Neifi well. Trying to tag Joe Crede in 2006,
it looks like he got him, but we'll never know for sure.

photo via i.cdn.turner.com

He played ten games at Iowa (hitting .206), and when recalled in September, he played a number of games at SS after the also just-acquired Nomar Garciaparra had suffered a minor injury. In 23 games, comprising 63 at-bats in 2004, Neifi hit .371/.400/.548 with two homers and five doubles. (It was pointed out yesterday in one of the threads that this is a good small-sample-size comparison for what Micah Hoffpauir hit in his first 73 major league AB: .342/.400/.534). Neifi had never come close to numbers like that with the Rockies, Royals and Giants, but Cubs fans could have been forgiven if they thought they had at least a decent backup infielder.

Neifi was thrust into a starting role in 2005 when Nomar got hurt again, this time a horrible groin injury that made almost every male Cubs fan cringe, on April 20, 2005. He played well enough for two months (on June 5 he was hitting .325/.348/.485) that some blogs (this one and The Cub Reporter) were pushing a write-in campaign for Neifi for the All-Star team. (We were kidding. Sort of.) We weren't the only ones -- check out this MLB.com article by Carrie Muskat in which both Nomar and Derrek Lee were pushing for Neifi to be an All-Star:

"He deserves it," Lee said. "Look at his numbers. I don't think there's a shortstop with better offensive numbers."

"There should be a Cubs shortstop there, and it's the guy who's playing there right now," Garciaparra said of Perez. "He's been unbelievable. He definitely deserves it."

That, of course, was Neifi's cue to stop hitting. From June 6 to the All-Star break he hit .167/.191/.190 (no, that's not a misprint, that's a .190 SLG), and wound up the year hitting .274/.298/.383, just about exactly his career averages. Nevertheless, Dusty kept trotting him out there, mystifyingly batting him leadoff or second on many occasions, and responding to criticism with quotes like this:

"I hear a lot of people say, 'Put Cedeno in.' What am I supposed to do? Push Neifi out now? This guy has saved us."

Saved the Cubs from what, exactly, is the question Dusty never answered; they finished fourth at 79-83. But Dusty's "horse" was right back in there in 2006, starting many games at 2B or SS and producing things like the mystifying bunt he laid down with two out and two on and the Cubs down by two runs in the bottom of the ninth against the Nationals on May 18, 2006. It turned into an easy comebacker and the Cubs lost.

Jim Hendry was the one who finally "saved" the Cubs by shipping Neifi to the Tigers. Neifi should thank him, because he wound up playing in the World Series, while the Cubs lost 96 games. The next year, he was suspended twice for PED use, the second time for 80 games; that ended his major league career.

But as checkered as Neifi's Cub and post-Cub career was, we should always hold a little place in our hearts for him, because on September 27, 1998, while a member of the Rockies, he hit a walkoff homer in Coors Field against the Giants, forcing the wild-card tie and the September 28, 1998 tiebreaker game, which the Cubs won.

With the great majority of Cubs fans puzzled and/or angry that Kerry Wood wasn't offered arbitration yesterday, I figured it was time to open the Can and let LaTroy Hawkins out, just to remind all of you that things could be a lot worse.

And though I know most of us don't have any good memories of a player some called "LaToya", let's also remember that his failures as a Cub, while monumental, in many ways weren't his fault.

Best forgotten as a Cub, here's
LaTroy pictured during his
half-season in San Francisco

photo via www.cbc.ca

What do I mean by this? Hawkins was signed as a free agent after the 2003 season, following one good and one outstanding year as a setup man for Joe Nathan with Minnesota. In fact, Hawkins was likely the best non-closing reliever in the majors in 2003 -- he had a 1.76 ERA in 74 appearances comprising 77.1 innings. He allowed only 5 homers, and struck out 75 and walked only 15.

It all would have worked out fine if Joe Borowski hadn't gotten hurt early in the 2004 season. And when that happened, Dusty installed LaTroy at closer, despite ample evidence that Hawkins wasn't suited to close. In his last full year of closing at Minnesota, he put up 28 saves -- but had nine blown saves and an ERA of 5.96, with 39 walks and only 36 strikeouts in 51.1 innings. The next year, 2002, the Twins installed Eddie Guardado at closer; he saved 45 games, Hawkins was good setting him up and perhaps not coincidentally, the Twins improved by nine wins and won the AL Central.

Perhaps Dusty didn't have a whole lot of other choices in 2004. Kyle Farnsworth was on the 2004 Cubs, but his better days were already behind him. Michael Wuertz was a rookie, and we know that Baker would never have entrusted the closer role to a rookie. Ryan Dempster was still rehabbing from an injury -- though, when he was activated in August, he made 23 relief appearances with a decent 3.92 ERA and two saves. So LaTroy was given the job fulltime in early June. He did OK up till September, when he blew two critical games in the season's final week, and about that, enough said, I think -- no need to relive that. He finished 2004 with nine blown saves -- turn around five of those, and the Cubs win the wild card.

Despite calls from everyone from bloggers to sportswriters to Jim Hendry for Dempster to be installed at closer, Dusty insisted that LaTroy could do the job in 2005. Dempster began the year in the rotation, and Hawkins blew four saves by May 13, at which time Dempster was given the closer role. The third of the four blown saves is the one all of us will remember forever -- it happened on May 6, 2005. In the top of the ninth, with the Cubs leading the Phillies 2-1 -- on a Derrek Lee two-run homer off Billy Wagner in the last of the 8th -- Hawkins gave up two singles, then got Ryan Howard for the first out. Jose Offerman then batted for Marlon Byrd. Earlier in his career Offerman had put up decent OBA's (96 walks in 1999) but by this time he usually hacked at everything.

Hawkins walked him, loading the bases. The next batter, pinch-hitter Placido Polanco, hit a screaming line drive right back to LaTroy. The runners had broken with the crack of the bat. LaTroy had Offerman caught off base. He threw to D-Lee. Game over, right?

Wrong. Hawkins' throw hit Offerman in the helmet. If he had tried to do that 999 more times, he couldn't have done it again. The ball ricocheted into the right field corner, two runs scored and the Cubs lost 3-2.

That was it for Hawkins in the eyes of me and most other Cubs fans. He began to be booed unmercifully, and even louder, in his next appearance on May 9, he gave up a homer to the Mets' Doug Mientkiewics that broke a 4-4 tie and cost the Cubs another game. By the end of May, Hendry had to ship him out of town; somehow he got the Giants to take his contract. In return the Cubs got Jerome Williams, who seemed to have potential but who was last seen in the Dodgers' farm system in 2008, and David Aardsma, who brought Neal Cotts to the North Side, so at least there's still someone on the roster as a result of the Hawkins signing, which happened five years ago tomorrow.

Interestingly, once the Astros got Hawkins last August, he was outstanding -- an 0.43 ERA in 24 games and only 5 walks, in a setup role. The Astros re-signed LaTroy for 2009. But... Lou says he's looking for another right-handed reliever. You don't suppose...

Nah. Too terrible to contemplate.