"As baseball's legal process takes over in the Carlos Zambrano saga Monday, the overriding question still unanswered since Friday is what the guy was thinking when he packed up and left during the game — what made him tell clubhouse personnel he was retiring?

Those closest to him among staff and teammates say he has not returned calls or texts since the incident. His agent, Barry Praver, is in full damage-control mode, handpicking media perceived as sympathetic to deliver the Zambrano camp's spin, even changing details as new facts are discovered and reported.

Praver, who told ESPN a formal players-union grievance will be filed Monday to fight Zambrano's 30-day suspension without pay, has not returned repeated messages left by the Sun-Times.

He told one outlet that Zambrano returned to the clubhouse within two hours after leaving to return his belongings. And after the Cubs publicly disputed that — many players scoffing as they watched that televised report in the clubhouse Sunday — Praver told another outlet Zambrano didn't return but had someone else take his stuff back.

Whatever.

Zambrano is gone. The rest of the team has barely paused in going 2-for-2 since he left, including a 6-5 comeback victory Sunday over the Atlanta Braves.

And nobody seems to know what made him pull this latest stunt.

Could the extreme actions by a frustrated Zambrano have been triggered by the confrontation he had in the clubhouse with teammate Alfonso Soriano minutes after he was ejected for trying to hit Atlanta's Chipper Jones with a pitch Friday night?

Could it be the result of something building up as the once-dominant pitcher finds it increasingly difficult to perform at a high level — the feeling of ''stealing money because he's not producing'' that his friend Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said he shared with Guillen's family?

One of the last conversations Zambrano had with any of his teammates before leaving Friday was a one-sided argument with Soriano."