It's a great place to play. You can't beat that ballpark and you can't beat the fans. It's difficult to imagine Wood not hanging around for another six years after such a promising start, but he's realistic about the unpredictable life of a pitcher. Mark Fidrych, Herb Score and several other pitching phenoms had their careers cut short by injuries. You can blow an arm out, blow a knee out.
Weird things happen.
Wood said he had no insurance policy on his right arm and doesn't plan on getting one. You can't look too far in the future and you can't look in the past. If he stays on the club the rest of the year and into the coming years, he'll be 12 days shy of becoming eligible for free agency at the end of the 2003 season. That means he could be Cubs property for a seventh season. MacPhail and General Manager Ed Lynch may not even be around in 2004, but they always will have to hear accusations that they purposely called up Wood late enough to make him Cubs property for an extra year, just as the White Sox were accused of doing with Alex Fernandez when they farmed him out for a brief period early in his career.