I went to Mesa. I shouldn’t have gone to Mesa. I told myself I was going because my buddy Louie has a condo in Scottsdale and I could stay for free and play some golf and maybe, while I was in the area, stop by Sloan Park to see a couple innings of spring training, no big deal, low stakes, just a look. This was a lie I told myself and it was a lie I told my wife and it was a lie Louie saw through immediately because when I got off the plane I was wearing a Cubs hat and carrying a glove, which is something I haven’t done since approximately 1987. “You’re here for Bregman,” Louie said. I told him I was here for the weather. He looked at the glove. I put the glove in my bag.

For those of you who have not been following the offseason with the devotion of a person who has nothing better to do in February — which is most of you, and I respect that — the Cubs signed Alex Bregman in free agency this winter. Five years, $175 million. The man is a two-time World Series champion, a perennial All-Star, and by most accounts the best third baseman available on the market. He is also, as of last week, standing in a Cubs uniform at Sloan Park taking batting practice, which is something I needed to see with my own eyes because I have been watching this franchise promise me things for forty-some years and I have learned that nothing is real until you see the jersey.

The jersey is real. I can confirm that. I sat in the third row behind the first-base dugout — Louie knows a guy — and watched Bregman take about twenty swings during BP. The sound a baseball makes when Alex Bregman hits it is different from the sound it makes when most people hit it. It’s a sharper sound. A cleaner sound. The kind of sound that makes you sit up straighter without deciding to. The ball came off his bat and went to places in the outfield that I associate with people who are very good at baseball. A woman next to me, who I did not know, turned and said “oh my God” after one particular line drive. I nodded. We did not speak again, but we had an understanding.

Here is what I will say about the state of the 2026 Cubs, and I will say it carefully, because I’ve been burned before and I know what hope does to a man in this city: they look like a real team. Bregman at third. The young arms they’ve been developing. Edward Cabrera, who they got from the Marlins and who throws a hundred miles an hour like it’s nothing. I watched three innings of a spring training game against the Rockies and I had the thought — and I hate that I had this thought, I want to be clear about that — I had the thought that this might be the year they put it together. I have had this thought before. I had this thought in 2019 and in 2021 and in years I have blocked from my memory. It never ends well when I have this thought.

My daughter — the one with the behavioral economics degree, who I mentioned in a previous column and who called me afterward to say I “didn’t need to bring that up in print” — texted me while I was at the game. She said, “Dad, it’s spring training. Everyone looks good in spring training. The Pirates look good in spring training.” She’s not wrong. She’s technically not wrong. But there’s a difference between looking good in the way that a bad team looks good when the sun is out and nothing counts, and looking good in the way that a team with a $175 million third baseman and a pitching staff with actual major league arms looks good. The second kind of looking good is the dangerous kind, because it makes you believe things.

Louie and I went to dinner afterward at a Mexican place near Old Town Scottsdale, and he asked me what I thought. I said I thought the Cubs were going to be fine. He asked me what “fine” meant. I said it meant competitive. He asked me what “competitive” meant. I said it meant they would win enough games to make me miserable in October instead of miserable in July, which is, for a Cubs fan, a meaningful upgrade. He raised his glass. I raised mine. We drank to October misery, which is the only kind of misery worth having.

I flew home the next morning. My wife asked how the golf was. I told her I didn’t play golf. She looked at the sunburn on my nose and the Cubs hat on my head and the look on my face, which I can only assume was the look of a man who has seen something in Mesa, Arizona that he is not yet ready to talk about in rational terms. “So Bregman’s good,” she said. I told her Bregman’s good. She said “don’t get your hopes up.” I told her it was too late for that. It’s been too late for that since approximately 1979. I put the glove back in the closet and started counting the days until Opening Day, which is what I do every March, and what I will probably do every March until they put me in the ground at Mount Carmel with a transistor radio and a scorecard.