Any team can have a bad century, but the former White Stockings, Colts, Orphans and, now, Chicago Cubs are in line for a major league unprecedented 101st season without a championship. The Washington Nationals may well have put the final nail in the Cubs’ coffin for this season on Tuesday night with a 15-6 clobbering of the little bears at the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. The Nats’ onslaught was led by two home runs from Josh Willingham — including a touch-em-all that landed beyond the left field wall on Waveland Avenue — and a grand slam dinger from a struggling Elijah Dukes. After the game, the usually reticent Dukes said that he was “waiting for something that moved” from Cubs reliever Aaron Heilman, a Mets castoff with a suspiciously high ERA. And he got it. Dukes, who has been taking so much batting practice that he had to sit out two games after injuring his thumb in the batting cage, accounted for five RBIs while walking twice. Dukes, whose BA has been see-sawing all season, has a fairly hefty RBI total: it now stands at 51. And it’s true — Dukes has been hitting the ball with more confidence and authority (and to the opposite field), after being recalled from the minors.

Elijah Dukes Accounts for 5 RBIs (AP/Nam Y. Huh)

Washington righthander Garrett Mock pitched 5.2 innings for the win, his third of the season. Mock looked good, if not overpowering, with a snappy fastball, but was lifted by interim manager Jim Riggleman for reliever Tyler Clippard. Clippard and Saul Rivera closed out the game. Riggleman’s habit of pulling starters early was on prominent display at Wrigley — he has a history of pulling the trigger on his starters, a habit he developed when he managed in Chicago, his first managing job. Mock was clearly upset by the decision, showing his irritation on the bench. In fact, there’s no reason why the young righthander couldn’t have gotten the third out in the fifth, particularly with the Nats leading (at that point) 9-1. In all, Mock threw 89 pitches, 59 of them for strikes: hardly an elbow shattering experience.

Down On Half Street: Bill Ladson is reporting that the Nats have signed Livan Hernandez to a major league contract. The team has sent Collin Balester to the minors to make room for Hernandez. On MASN after the conclusion of the Nats-Cubs tilt, Ray Knight described the news as “a potential coup” by Nationals’ General Manager Mike Rizzo. Nationals pitchers can use the steadying influence of a veteran presence like Hernandez, Knight said. He added that the Nats also want to set a standard of winning, with important games coming, and Hernandez knows how to win. Hernandez was a fan favorite when he was with the Nats. The official release from the Nats reads, in part: “He will make his first start on Wednesday at Chicago (NL), while J.D. Martin (2-3, 4.76) will start Thursday’s series finale at Wrigley Field” . . .  Is ”ambitioned” a word? In a column in the Washington Post this week, I thought I read Chico Harlan say that a Nats’ pitcher had “ambitioned” to be a pitcher all his life. So is it? Is “ambitioned” a word? I admit, I have efforted to find out, but I’ll be damned if I can find it in the dictionary . . .

The horror; the horror: I have gotten sliced and diced from Chicago Cubs fans, dozens of whom have written (well, okay, three of whom have written) to say that the Cubs are still young and tough and plenty fast and that they don’t need to be totally rebuilt. They point out that the North Side Drama Queens are set at shortstop (with Ryan Theriot), at second (with Jeff Baker), in left field (with Jake Fox), at catcher (with Geovany Soto) and have some new former Ahoy pitchers on the mound that will be the new guns of the future — in Tom Gorzelanny and John Grabow. Yeah, okay. Gorzelanny looked particularly effective tonight, giving up only three runs in one inning of work . . . so I’ll stick with my two interlocking predictions, contradictory as they might seem: if the Cubs make the playoffs this year (and I don’t think they will) then they’ll win it all — since this will mark the first year after the end of the Merkle Curse (alright, that’s lame, but you never know) but if they don’t win it all, then the Nationals will win the world series before they do. And frankly, I think the second prediction is a pretty safe bet.

The Washington Nationals won their six straight game, coming from five runs down to beat Jon Garland and the Arizona Diamondbacks 7-6 on Friday night at Nationals Park. The Nats were keyed by Josh Willingham’s seventh inning bases-loaded single that put the Nats up 7-5. The Nats won despite another poor outing for their starter. Collin Balester started the game, but gave up five runs on eight hits to the rattlers in a little over four innings. Once again the Nationals were able to overcome the deficit because of the hot bats in the middle of their line-up; Ryan Zimmerman hit his 24th home run, Willingham went 3-4, and Elijah Dukes had three RBIs. The Nats’ bullpen had another strong outing, reversing the team’s early season trend. Returning reliever Saul Rivera — just recalled to the big club from Syracuse — pitched one-and-two-thirds solid innings and Mike “Heart Attack” MacDougal faced eight batters to get the last five outs. MacDougal, whose control seems always suspect, earned his eleventh save.

The Showboats, riding a five game winning streak, provided most of the game’s early fireworks, touching Balester for three home runs – by Mark Reynolds, Josh Whitesell and Stephen Drew. Balester admitted after the game that he was leaving the ball up in the strike zone. “The starting staff knows that it has to give the offense and the bullpen a little bit of a break,” Balester added. “The bullpen has been great and the offense has been great. John Lannan has been consistent all year, but the rest of us need to step up and go deeper in the ballgames. We know that.” Elijah Dukes had another stellar outing: with a second inning sacrifice fly to score the Nats’ first run and the doubling off the wall in the fourth inning. Dukes eventually scored on a Wil Nieves sacrifce fly.

MacDougal, who had appeared in four of the last five Nats’ games was called on early (after one out in the eighth inning) by interim manager Jim Riggleman. “I had an off day yesterday, so it was good,” MacDougal said after the game. “I was trying to get quick outs.” The hard-luck MacDougal seems to have hit his stride: the former Kansas City and Chicago White Sox reliever has thrown nearly 33 innings in 35 games for the Nats, recording eleven saves in 12 opportunities. The former Wake University star’s best year was 2003, when he registered 24 saves for the Kansas City Royals by mid-season and appeared in the all-star game. MacDougal has had to battle through some tough times in his career: he was struck by a bat and lost feeling in his right arm in 2001, lost his relief job with the Royals after battling the flu in 2004, and battled injuries while with the Pale Hose in 2006. He was released by the White Sox and signed a minor league deal with the Nationals last May.

"Heart Attack" MacDougal now has 11 saves