ESTABLISH THAT WINNING CULTURE.

Chicago Sun-Times sports scribe Rick Morrissey sees none on the north side of Chicago.

The Cubs are playing the Cardinals at Wrigley this weekend, a timely reminder that they should want to be the Cards when they grow up but in reality don’t. The Cardinals are where they usually are in the standings, near the top of the National League Central, and the Cubs are going through their second rebuild in 10 years, which explains all the losing.

The last time the Cardinals finished under .500 was 2007 and before that 1999. Since the Ricketts family bought the franchise in 2009, the Cubs have finished under .500 six times. This season will be the seventh.

Just to be clear, Chicago is the third-largest city in the United States, and St. Louis is the 72nd, smaller than Durham, North Carolina; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Corpus Christi, Texas.

Lincoln with more people than St. Louis comes as a surprise.  But in Lincoln, or St. Louis, or Green Bay, fans know what success looks like.  Somehow, the Cardinals prosper despite continuing suckitude in Chicago, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh.  Are the Packers paying attention?

The Cardinals know that their fans expect greatness. There’s no explanation for what the Cubs are doing other than they’ve chosen making money over winning titles. And if you follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, you realize that the Cubs don’t think their fans expect greatness. If they did, they’d be pumping money into the product on the field.

The Cardinals know what their fans expect.

The Cubs think they know what their fans will swallow.

One more comparison, the only comparison that really matters, to illustrate the difference between the two franchises: The Cubs have won one World Series since 1908 (perhaps you’ve heard), and the Cardinals have won 11 in the same span. Now that’s a team culture.

The Cardinals management understand that "good enough" means capering on the field in late October.

Four years ago, I asked then-interim Cards manager Mike Shildt if he could ever envision the organization going through the painful losing of a rebuild in the hope of winning a World Series down the road, the way the Cubs had before they built up to their 2016 title.

“No,’’ he said. “That’s not what the Cardinals organization represents.’’

At the time, the Cards were two games over .500 and struggling. It was mid-July. They went on to finish 88-74 — much better but not nearly good enough by their standards. The next three years, they lost an NL Championship Series after winning the division, lost a wild-card series and lost a wild-card game. Pretty good, right? It got Shildt canned.

The most damning thing you can say about the Cubs is that they should be the Cardinals — damning because the Cards are their purported archrivals and damning because there’s no reason a major-market club should be taking the rebuild route again.

Here we are, entering the run to the All-Star break, and the Cardinals are again pressing the Brewers, another small-market team.