Cubbies find their money man
The Chicago Cubs were the baseball team for whom the infamous phrase “wait until next year” was unofficially coined. Since 1908, the team has not won the World Series. They have been at the center of an intense love-hate relationship for Chicago sports fans for nearly that long. No amount of internal player development or free agent money has been able to right the ship. Sure, they could take secured loans for quick cash for the team. Yet would they spend it wisely ? Or would they pay to reanimate “Three Finger” Brown and coax Ron Santo back onto the field?
Cubs’ curse
The alleged causes for the Cubs’ curse are many, but they tend to gravitate toward the “Curse of the Billy Goat.” Supposedly this happened in 1945 when Billy Sianis (the owner of Billy Goat Tavern) was asked to leave Wrigley Field during a series game because the pet goat he brought with him was entirely too smelly. Sianis was outraged; he proclaimed, “Them Cubs, they aren’t gonna win no more!” And when it comes to the World Series, they haven’t.
The Ricketts family wants to change that
Carrie Muskat reports for MLB.com that a new ownership group’s bid has been accepted. Chicago’s Tribune Company newspaper empire will sell the Chicago Cubs to the Tom Ricketts and family. Sale was finalized over the Fourth of July weekend according to sources close to the deal. Now the deal must be approved by other baseball owners and the courts, as the Tribune Co. was in the middle of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.
Breaking the billy goat curse
How much does it take to break a billy goat curse? Some say almost $900 million. The Ricketts would own the team, stadium and one quarter of Comcast SportsNet Chicago, the team’s regional cable network.
So who are these Ricketts?
Tom Ricketts is the CEO of Incapital LLC. It’s an investment bank out of Chicago that sells corporate bonds to investors in the retail field. Ricketts also is one of the directors of TD Ameritrade. Forbes magazine has revealed that the Ricketts family wealth once put them on their Forbes 400 list. They fell off in 2008, but estimates still place their net worth at over $1 billion.
Will they win with Ricketts?
No, and they won’t win healthy either, but thanks for playing. The Cubs put together an impressive variety of talent on the baseball field, but the power of the billy goat curse is too powerful to break through mere baseball playing. Perhaps heartfelt gestures can be made to repair the damage. Perhaps the “Bleacher Bums” of the Wrigley Field grandstand will also re-enact “The Passion of the Christ” with Lou Piniella at the end of the season. I understand that Koskue Fukudome can play a mean Judas…
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