These last two seasons have been difficult for many Cardinal fans, and nobody has suffered more intensely, or more publicly, than my friend and colleague, sports columnist Jeff Gordon.

It’s not just that the Cardinals haven’t done well. It’s that the Cubs have. Gordo has responded by lashing out. He has continually complained that the the Cubs “tanked" their way to the top. That is, they lost deliberately in order to get good draft picks. He started pounding that drum last spring, and by last August, he had lost his bearings entirely.

After extolling the moral virtues of Cardinals' owner Bill DeWitt and president of baseball operations John Mozielak — “They didn’t consider high draft position a greater priority than a high finish in the standings” — Gordo turned, as he always does, to the Cubs.

“The owners and players ought to somehow address the tank and rebuild trend in the next collective bargaining agreement,” he wrote.

Really? What can the league do? Somebody is going to finish last every year. Or maybe Gordo wold prefer a "No Team Left Behind" law. By the year 2025, every team will finish five games above .500.

Gordo has continued pounding his drum this season. Earlier this week, he wrote, “Any moron can lose deliberately and add talent.” He claimed that the Cubs lost deliberately from 2010 through 2014.

I have been a Cub fan for many years. I remember when the Cubs used to finish eighth in an eight-team league. The first year the league expanded to 10 teams, the Cubs finished ninth. The next year they finished tenth. Nobody thought they were doing anything diabolical or underhanded. It was just the way things were.

I also remember the 2010 season. Cub fans had high hopes. The team had finished second in the Central Division the year before. Lou Pinella was our manager. The Cubs had the highest payroll in the National League, which is, if you think about it, an odd way to deliberately lose games. But lose games they did and Pinella resigned in mid-season. Mike Quade took over. The Cubs finished fifth.

The Cubs finished fifth again in 2011, and Quade and the general manager were fired. Why would you fire guys for losing if losing was your goal? And you would think that the guys who were fired would feel betrayed. Why didn’t they sue? Or write tell-all books. At the very least, somebody should have gone on Oprah and spilled the beans. It’s hard to keep a secret in America these days.

The next year the Cubs hired Theo Epstein. He started making trades. The Cubs got Anthony Rizzo for Andrew Cashner. They got Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger. They started getting younger players. It used to be called rebuilding. It was considered part of the natural order of things.

Let’s look at Gordo’s claims from another angle.

Can any moron lose deliberately and add talent?

Drafting in baseball is an imprecise science. That high school pitcher might be striking out a lot of guys, but some of those guys are 15 years old. Besides, the pitcher might have developed physically earlier than his peers. High school success does not necessarily translate into professional baseball. That’s also true with hitters. In amateur baseball, the hitters are using aluminum bats. It is not an easy transition to wood. What happens when a pitcher comes inside and breaks a bat off in a guy’s hands?

Cub fans know all about this. Ty Griffin was supposed to be a superstar. He was our first round pick in 1988 after starring at Georgia Tech and then the U.S. Olympic team. He never made the big leagues and was last seen playing for the Grand Forks Varmints in the Prairie League.

You think it’s easy to draft baseball players? Two words — Mark Appel. He’s the fellow who was drafted ahead of Kris Bryant, last year’s National League MVP. If you haven’t heard of Appel, it’s because you don’t follow minor league baseball.

Or consider Aaron Judge. He’s tearing it up this year with the Yankees, and is the odds on favorite to be Rookie of the Year and MVP. As a high school senior in 2010, he was drafted by Oakland in the 31st round. Think about that — the 31st round. Instead of signing, he went to college, did well and was drafted by the Yankees in 2013 with the 32nd pick of the first round. Thirty one guys, most of whom the average fan has not heard of, were drafted before Judge.

That’s the thing about the baseball draft. It’s all about educated guesses. You can’t cheat.

I take that back. You can cheat. The Cardinals did. One of their former front-office guys is in federal prison for hacking into another team’s database. For the record, I didn’t think the crime warranted prison time, and I admired the guy for taking the weight himself. As you might remember, the hacking was traced to a computer in a condo the executive was sharing with several other front-office guys.

Gordo and others in Cardinal Nation seem to believe that he was a rogue employee, that he read these stolen scouting reports the way a 12-year-old might read Playboy magazine — alone, at night, under the covers with a flashlight. “Oh, wow. This guys’ really fast. Oh, wow. This guy’s really strong."

That seems unlikely to me, but it is not the nature of Cub fans to point fingers. We didn’t even say anything earlier this year when a baseball stuck to Yadi Molina’s chest protector. What was that about? We can guess. I mention these things only to suggest Gordo consider the glass house in which he lives.

Actually, my advice to Gordo and others who feel like they have to denigrate the success of the Cubs is simple. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Realize that this only happens every 100 years or so. Soon enough, the Cubs will go back into the cave. It’s what bears do, and it’s called hibernating, not tanking.