Life is good, Cubcakes. I used to wake up, slide out of the fart sack and pray to the Polish gods that we might actually win a game. Now? Well, I can’t wait to jump out of … of … okay, it’s still a fart sack (hey, I drink Old Style and eat Red Hots from a Pez dispenser, what’d you expect?) then pay my respects to Joe-Joe Maddon, the Polish god IN OUR DUGOUT, and wonder not if were gonna win today, but by how much. Yep, life is good north of a .700 winning percentage.

But let’s put the present aside for sec, uhm-kay? With the 2016 MLB Amateur Draft starting today, June 9 is all about the future: the stars of tomorrow that will lead each club to the Promised Land.

Or so they hope.

It ain’t that easy, Moses. I mean, who in the wide, wide world of sports can forget Shawn Abner? Just about everyone, that’s who! Abner was the first pick in the ’84 draft, ahead of guys named Bell and McGwire and Mullholland and Charlton and Maddux and Glavine and Moyer. Hearda them? Save for his mother and a handful of pals he grew up playing Whiffle Ball with in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Smokin’ Joe Schlombowski is one of the few people on the planet who remembers if Abner knew which end of the bat to hold. He did, but barely. Point is, first-round picks ain’t a sure thing.

Good thing, too, cuz thanks to John Lackey, we don’t get one.

That’s right, bat racks, the draft wheel will turn nearly three full times before the Cubbies make their first pick — the 104th overall. Hell, I could be dead by then. Like all sports drafts that matter, clubs pick in reverse order of their previous season’s finish, which is why the Phillies get first whack this year, and why Braves and Twins scouts, caffeine-high as they’ll need to be, are already hittin’ the road with an eye on the 2017 class. There will be no rest in the Big Peach or the North Star State for at least a year. Makes me feel all tingly inside.

Theoretically, the Phillies would get the first pick in all forty rounds. But then there’s this thing called “compensation picks” which turns the draft order into somethin’ that resembles the Christmas lights I unpack on Thanksgiving Day. This year, we gave up our first two picks to the Cards when Theo signed the Dental Giant and Jason Heyward. I get that. But someone’s gotta explain to me why MLB rewards teams by givin’ them preferred draft spots for not signing their top picks from last year’s draft. Makes zero sense to me, but then Carlos Marmol couldn’t close a a friggin’ umbrella either, and we paid him $9.8M in 2013. Idi-friggin-otic.

But I digress.

The point is, don’t put too much stock in this week’s draft, pallie. We’ve only got five first-rounders on our 25-man roster. And we sure as hell ain’t home grown (only four Cubs were drafted into the organization). Like it or not, it ain’t Ernie’s Cubs anymore. Free agency’s our thing. We’ve got money and we spend it like Jason Kidd at the Pink Monkey. Enough with the future; it’s draught time, as in icy cold Old Style. Now, where’d the missus hide the remote?

Joe