Come To Think of It: An Open Letter of Apology to Derrek Lee

Dear Derrek Lee,

Many times on this very site I have either called for you to be traded or have expressed frustration with both your inability to hit for power as well as your seemingly nonchalant attitude.

I have said that you were indifferent; that you were sleeping through at-bats that never even came close to the numbers you displayed in 2005, when you hit .335, with 46 homers and 107 RBI.

True, you still aren't likely to ever approach those numbers again, which raises suspicions that you were on PEDs that year.

Look, such obvious one season anomalies still perplex me. I don't take the steroid comment back at all.

But in thinking that you were washed up? OK, I admit, I was wrong.

Apparently you do care, and you are capable of producing numbers that are meaningful.

To that, I owe you an apology.

Oh, I know you make millions so it's hard to feel much sympathy.

But, your reputation is at stake and so I feel a need to at least acknowledge what you have done recently.

Your seven RBI on Thursday versus Milwaukee is the most since Ernie Banks in the 1960's.

That's significant.

You may be the only Cub to be selected for the All-Star team in St, Louis. That is following a year in which no less than eight Cubs made the team in 2008.

But it's a sign of how things have changed. This team is not very good, but you have been good at a time when the rest of the team has gone into an offensive slumber.

I know there are lots of great first basemen, many better than you. But the Cubs have to be represented by someone, so it might as well be you.

And I admit that I never saw this coming. In fact, I had given up on you, my friend.

I knew you were still a capable defensive first baseman, yet until recently I thought that you were washed up offensively.

So I am sorry, Mr. Lee. Now keep it up or I will take this back, come to think of it.

Yours truly,

Bob