It’s Sunday night, about 10. And since I have a few hours before I have to go out and start fighting crime, I’m on the Internet, where I’m reading about tomorrow, when Kerry Wood and Mark Prior are both scheduled to pitch in a real live, honest-to-gosh game of baseball.

Deadlines being what they are, I’m writing a few days before this column will appear. But to make a point — and because I’m sort of lazy — I’m screwing around with the laws of time to make this prediction: If, as expected, Prior and Wood both pitch on Monday, chances are good that Wood will pull a hammy lifting his arm to have his morning bagel and Prior, very likely, is now dead.

For any non-baseball fans out there — and thanks to Bud Selig’s delightful approach to ignoring Barry Bonds and the Ron Santo thing that I am still not able to bring myself to talk about, there’s several thousand more of you every day — here’s what happened to Prior and Wood: Several hundred years ago, when the Cubs were contending for the National League Championship, they were the crown jewels in the Cubs’ first fear-able starting rotation since 1628. What happened in the years after that, no one knows, unless you regularly tote around a copy of “Gray’s Anatomy” — the medical dictionary book, not the really, really annoying soap opera where all those anorexic people regularly issue me Valuable Life Lessons over extremely wimpy music (sorry, I am a guy). Last year, for instance, Prior strained or possibly tore his shoulder, injured his oblique muscles while sneezing, and fell victim to something wherein his hands sweated a lot. I’m not making those up. I make up a lot of stuff, but not those.

Do you remember “The Empire Strikes Back,” that scene at the end where Han Solo is getting frozen by Darth Vader and Chewbacca is wearing parts of C-3P0 in a sling on his back? This is the image I have of Prior and Wood; their torsos resting on a lab table and chatting about movies somewhere in Tribune Tower, during which scientists fiddle with their other parts in completely separate rooms, lightning crashing ominously outside every time someone makes a really cool discovery (“I’ve made his liver sing!” *crackkkck* That sort of thing) ... This is a great image to have because 1) It gives me something to do while I’m waiting for my official Ted Lilly replica jersey to arrive in the mail; 2) It allows me to think of Lou Piniella as R2-D2, which makes no physical sense whatsoever yet pleases me greatly; and 3) It gives me a lengthy and obnoxious way to illustrate that I have no faith in any of the people mentioned in this paragraph, except Chewbacca. I got nothing against Chewbacca.

Again, for the non-initiated, here’s a short version of what happens to pitchers: For the most part, pitchers are robots who are dispatched to do their jobs and then are shuttled back into hiding for days at a time, people whose very job description compels them to engage in an activity that will eventually result in the demise of their careers, like people who star in Fox sitcoms and the members of the band Hinder. It’s basically only a matter of time before they stop working. But it’s not that time yet. Prior, for instance, is 26, and has news stories written about him when he successfully completes a game of catch.

Anyway, a news story about Prior and Wood online reports hilariously that “Both pitchers are coming off injury-shortened season,” which is sort of like saying, “Critics were a little split on that last Fergie video.” Prior, last year, won one more game than I did, and lost six more. Kerry Wood is bravely fighting for a bullpen spot. Meanwhile, the team has spent 94 jillion dollars on the extremely capable Piniella and others in pursuit of a championship, and the renewal of hope. You may have noticed that it’s snowing hardly at all, traffic has never been better and thanks to federal funding grants everyone will soon have a fountain of chocolate milk installed in their backyards.

Sadly, the Cubs won’t win this year, or any year, for the few years of future we have left until global warming kills us all. Not because of curses or fate. Because they have two broken pitchers atop their roster. Also, they’re the Cubs.

Jeff Vrabel is a freelance writer who was terrified of the Han Solo-freezing scene as a youth. He can be reached at his obligatory blog at www.jeffvrabel.com.