Thank you, Rick Telander, for echoing my sentiments to a much larger audience. If the Chicago Cubs are ever to win another World Series, the Tribune Company simply must sell the team.
The Trib has owned the Cubs for 25 years, and can boast of four playoff teams — two of which choked in the NLCS — and only one point where they had winning records in back to back seasons. Forbes ranked them as the sixth most profitable team in baseball last year. Sixth. And they’ve done nothing but lose for almost a quarter of a century. The lesson is clear: they do not care about winning. They care about profitability.
Granted, I know that it going to take a hell of a lot for the Trib to sell the Cubs, which is probably bolstering their stock price more than any other asset. But enough is enough. Between deliberately fielding mediocre teams and scalping their own tickets (how they won that lawsuit, I’ll never know), they are a disgrace of an owner, and if Bud Selig had any balls, or cared at all about the fans the way he says he does, he’d strip the Trib of their team and find them an owner that’ll make them genuinely competitive again, not the fake-competitive that they’ve been shelling to their masochistic fan base all these years. Mark Cuban, perhaps? Hey, don’t laugh, he’d buy his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates yesterday if they’d let him.
And fans, you have a say in this, you know. You want to nudge the Trib into selling the team? Then make them less profitable, and STOP GOING TO WRIGLEY. Until we give them a reason to take action, they will continue to sit back and count your money. Stay off the rooftops, and stay away from Wrigley. Even better: start buying White Sox tickets (attending the games is optional). They have to know that Cubs fans have had enough. The only way they’ll hear us is if we hit them in the wallet. The revolution begins now.
