In cold Friendly Confines, Cubs find a warm embrace

There’s a lot to like about this year’s version of the Chicago Cubs, last spotted curdling like milk against the looser, more-confident Dodgers (last fall). To counter right-handed pitching, the Cubs have added the leftist Milton Bradley, a stabilizing influence to any organization.

Of course, here at Guthries Tavern in Chicago’s Wrigleyville, they’ve got a pool going on who will throw the first dugout punch -- Carlos Zambrano or Bradley. The smart money is on Uncle Milty. Stay tuned. Footage at 11.

Meanwhile, they are having a certain amount of buyer’s remorse over this 2016 Olympics, which they stole fair and square from L.A. two years ago. The conventional wisdom seems to be that only Mayor Daley and his cronies will benefit from acquiring the summer event from international rivals.

“They’re the bride. We’re the broom,” a reader snarks in the Chicago Tribune. “If Chicago is your kind of town, here’s an alternate. North Korea.”

Such would be the mood when you’ve gone 100 years without baseball’s gold medal. At this juncture, wouldn’t it be wise just to have Daley preside over the Cubs himself? The squat, arrogant little Tut could hardly deliver any worse. I say turn them over to Da Mayor, who already lords over the city, the schools and anything else that dares move in these parts.

Which brings us back to those Cubbies, the Jesters of the Midway, off to their usual fast start, setting themselves up for failures they never really deserve.

To be sure, this team doesn’t need a manager as much as it needs a shrink. On a drizzly Monday better suited for a funeral or a putsch, Cubbie Nation trudges off the elevated train and Irving Park bus for the home opener. Though there are only about four parking spaces around Wrigley, there are at least 100 taverns. Some teams just know how to set priorities.

“I don’t remember an opening day that wasn’t like this,” gasps one fan, as a chill rain falls down his neck.

“I don’t want my bra to get wet, that’s all,” says another, presumably a woman, but who can really tell under five layers of fleece.

Just to make it official, these are the best, sweetest, most-boneheaded fans in all of sports. Every year they show up in the April cold, hoping to give this beleaguered franchise the kiss of life.

On this day, they started reporting at Murphy’s, a saloon 500 feet from home plate, at 6:30 a.m., swilling bloody Marys and Old Styles in hopes of keeping their fluids up for the long slog ahead.

In two weeks, it will be sweltering, but at noon it is 36 degrees, with a 31-degree windchill, and that’s just from the drunk sitting next to me who won’t shut up. Outside, it is even colder.

“Think blue,” I tell the guy, as the 1:20 game time approaches.

“Let’s play two,” I tell another, but he’s barely able to muster a smile.

Here’s the most amazing thing: Dodgers cap atop my head, I get not a foul word from any of these folks, an increasingly rare reaction in America’s sports venues.

“You could never do this in a White Sox bar,” says Steve Niehaus, who sits under a Sox cap in the Cubby Bear, the quintessential Cubs hangout. “They’d kill you.”

Not in the Friendly Confines, even on this raw, wet day. To be sure, this is Bears weather. Yet, a fat guy in a parka sits eating ice cream on a curb in front of the McDonald’s on Clark.

Piniella?

No, Sweet Lou is in the dugout, looking like winter itself. “Strategically, I don’t know if my brain works too well in real cold weather,” he says.

But, oh, is he suited to this town. Ornery, irascible, never backing from a fight, he fits this city like a pair of boxing gloves. Not since Ditka have they had a comrade in arms like this, and look what he accomplished.

Indeed, this could be the Cubbies’ year, and I’m not just saying it to make you smile knowingly. Ernie Banks agrees, and he knows way more baseball and life than you and me combined.

Besides, the Cubs still have some of the best pitching in a weak league, and should Bradley mind his manners and Zambrano keep his trap shut, there’s no reason Piniella shouldn’t have them contending for a pennant, probably with another October date against our Dodgers.

Sweet Lou has only history to worry about, a subject he’d prefer not to dwell on. Still, on this raw day, the skipper just seems to look colder by the minute, like a character from a Russian novel.

“It’s running a club that makes you gray-headed,” Satchel Paige once explained. “Could you age whiskey like you age a manager, you’d have 2,000 proof inside a week.”

Gentlemen, start your shot glasses.

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chris.erskine@latimes.com