Meet the Ricketts

You can watch the Ricketts (presumably Tom) hold their first press conference as the new owners of the Chicago Cubs here. Feel free to join the mocking praise virtual tomato throwing monologue discussion in the comments section or the twitter sidebar.

I won't pretend to know what they'll talk about it. Nor will I pretend to love it.

NOTE: I'm sure the discussion will be lively here at LOHO, so be sure to check it out.

Shawon-O-Meter: The College Years

People tend to overuse the phrase "you can't make this stuff up," generally to describe stuff that sounds made-up but isn't. There are a lot of creative minds in this world perfectly capable of making up some really strange shtick. This USA Today story about the latest snag in the sale of the Cubs to the Ricketts family . . . I don't care how creative you think you are, you can't make this stuff up.

A formal objection to the Tribune Company's sale of the Cubs has been filed with Delaware's bankruptcy court. That objection was filed by former Cub shortstop, Shawon Dunston.

The one-paragraph document was handwritten (I'm presuming by Dunston himself). The crux of his objection is that the Cubs owe him money. The money they owe him is for a college scholarship . . . a college scholarship he has yet to use.

Before I go on, you should know that, if I'm being honest (which sometimes I am, but, in all honesty, not habitually) I'll tell you straight out that Shawon Dunston is my all-time favorite Cub. If I get to pick a uniform number for anything, I pick 12. Not because of Dusty. Not because of Fonzy. Not because of Ricky Gutierrez. I pick 12, because when I was growing up, I tried to emulate Shawon Dunston. I loved his hustle. I loved his flair. I loved the way he'd try to check his swing by just letting go of the bat. As much as it is possible to love a baseball player you've never come close to meeting or seeing or communicating with in any way, shape, or form, I love Shawon Dunston.

That said, this is the craziest thing I ever heard. But I support Shawon in this. I don't care if the Trib owes him the gum from a 20-year-old pack of Topps baseball cards, he has a right to make sure he gets what is coming to him. But this . . . a retired shortstop who hit .750 for his high school team in Brooklyn standing in the way of the sale of a storied baseball franchise and the most revered structure in sports for a deal that's a 15% off coupon away from a billion bucks, just so he can be assured of free tuition if he so desires . . . that's some crazy crazy right there.

I've seen Shawon Dunston make some amazing plays in the hole at short. I've seen him rifle fastballs that might have killed anybody but Mark Grace. I've seen him catch knuckleballing windblown pop-ups in old Candlestick Park that no human being before or after him could have tracked down. I've heard that Matt Williams could field ground balls with ping-pong paddles on his hands. Legend has it that Ted Lilly can stop a speeding bullet with a stern look. But if Shawon Dunston stops or even delays the sale of the Cubs over potential college money, it will be the greatest defensive gem in the history of sports, law, and butt pain.

Yes, having the Neverending Cubs Sale delayed would be frustrating. But if Shawon can do it, I will love him even more for it. Because right now, laughter is all we have.

Ten Things Cub Fans Can Still Look Forward to in 2009

It ain't over 'til it's over. You can take that truthism as a blessing or a curse, depending on your state of perpetual hope or interminable anguish. On the positive side, here are 10 things we still have to look forward to in a season most of us wish would just die already:

10. The return of Bobby Scales. It's hard to remember the adrenaline shot the substitute teacher gave the Cubbies in his last fill-in stint in the majors, but I seem to recall feeling happy for a few days. I'd welcome another dose right now.

9. The unconditional release of Aaron Miles. I hope life treats him kind, and I hope he has all he dreams of. I wish him joy and happiness, but above all this, I wish . . . he was gone. And I-yee-I-ee-I will always *deep breath* loathe you-whooooo, and I will always . . . sing it, Whitney.

8. The sale of the team. It's still not over. It won't guarantee success. It won't become final final until after the season is done. But I can't wait to put the biggest distraction of the season (yes, even bigger than Milton Bradley) behind us.

7. One more game against the White Sox. Losing will be fuel on the depressing fire. Winning will do little to lift my spirits. But when the game goes down on Thursday . . . aw heck, never mind. I'm not looking forward to this at all. I hate it when we play the Sox pre-October.

6. The Wild Card. Will the Cubs win the wild card? Probably not. But the wild card race should be fun to watch. The National League is really just not very good this year, which makes that last playoff spot all the easier to grab. I'm not so much of a purist that I don't enjoy a whole scrum of teams battling over a playoff spot they don't deserve.

5. The eruption of Mt. Lou. You. Know. It's. Going. To. Happen. I'll bring the popcorn.

4. Randy Wells. I'm genuinely excited to see how Randy Wells finishes out this year. He may have seen his Rookie of the Year chances sail into the left-field bleachers, but he still has a chance to reach the teens in wins.

3. Aaron Milesless baseball. Even if he doesn't get released, the expanded September roster now gives Lou no excuse whatsoever to ever put Aaron Miles on the playing field. If I see him so much as lift the Hello Kitty backpack, I'm launching an investigation into Lou's sanity.

2. Da Bearsssss. Bearss. Ditka. Cutler. Bearss.

1. That guy. Somebody always has a good September. A lot of times it's Soriano. Soto had some good moments in last year's last month. In case you forgot, many people were ready to write off Zambrano's 2008 until his no-no on September 14. It might not save the Cubs. It might not add to the wild card drama. But there will be somebody who makes September memorable.

It's reason enough for me to keep watching.

I Just Saved $150 Million on My Baseball Team

There's no shortage of articles about how Sam Zell botched (yes, they all use the word botched) the sale of our beloved Cubs. Most of them focus on Zell and his foolish attempt to sell Wrigley separately like a spare part, the convoluted broadcasting contracts that further slowed the deal, and the $150 million price drop to $845 million from the astronomical billion-dollar milestone the baseball/business world had anticipated.

But who cares about Zell? When the sale finally goes through (and I'm sick and tired of people positing that it is final—it still has to clear the bankruptcy court on 8/31 and the MLB owners, possibly at meetings in November) Sam Zell will be a distant memory, no less forgettable than Chris Stynes.

What I care about is the Ricketts family and the $155 million they saved on this deal.

I know that right now I sound a lot like my wife when she returns from Kohl's, although the most she's ever saved on one trip, I believe, is $60 million. But the Ricketts just saved 15% on the Cubs. Just imagine if they had received the 20% or 30% coupon in the mail!

What could the Ricketts do with $155 million? Pay the players for one whole year. Woo hoo! Or they could forgo the savings and double the payroll (minus a couple bucks in luxury tax). Heck, he could send the entire outfield (Soriano, Fukudome, and Milton Bradley) to a deserted island with their 2010 salaries and still have $115 million. Okay, the fact that those three will make $40 million ($18 mill, $13 mill, and $9 mill respectively) is a little depressing.

Look, I know that in this economy, spending $845 million isn't easy on anybody. But Zell owning this team may have just finally paid off, thanks to the same terrible business sense that led him to buy the Chicago Tribune Company in the first place.

Maybe, just maybe, we can afford to pay for (and move on from) some costly contractual mistakes.

The Cubs on WGN: How much is that worth?

It's a bizarre little economic triangle the Cubs are in right now, no? You've got Sam Zell, the owner of the Cubs and the Tribune Company; the latter filed for bankruptcy protection in December while the former was excluded in hopes the billion-dollar sale would not be compromised. Apparently when you file for bankruptcy protection, it helps not to have too many easily liquidated assets sitting around.

Next you've got the Ricketts family, who are trying to buy the Cubs for $900 million—although they'd like to see that price go down.

And then you've got a somewhat silent third party looking on: the bankruptcy court, which has its eye on every move Zell and the Trib make. Don't forget about them, especially as the closing of the Cubs sale gets complicated by one little issue that complicates not only the sale of the team but also the future worth of the Trib as it reorganizes under Chapter 11: the broadcasts.

Up until now, the Trib has owned the Cubs, so who cares how much the broadcasting TV and radio contracts with Trib-owned WGN are worth? The other 29 teams in MLB, that's who. 

For those of you who have never sat next to a Steinbrenner at a party, there's this little agreement the owners of MLB teams have called revenue sharing. The more money the big-market, big-revenue teams make, the more they have to share with the little guys (somewhere Joe the Plumber is blowing a gasket). So here's where the money starts to get a little funny.

Obviously advertising is the biggest revenue stream for almost any media company. In the case of the Cubs, any advertising revenue credited to the team gets shared; any money credited to the Tribune Company proper is untouchable. So if you own the Trib, it would be in your best and greediest interests to put a cap on the amount of revenue that gets credited to the team.

So it should have come as no surprise in 2001 when, lo and behold, it was revealed that the White Sox ($30 million) actually make about $7 million more per year in local ad revenue than the Cubs ($23 mill). The Cubs contract (with themselves, essentially) is structured heavily in favor of the Tribune. The team and the company split actual ad dollars 50/50, but things like sales fees, commissions, and back-end client agreements divert a huge amount of revenue away from the team.

That approach was great when the Cubs wanted to avoid sharing their money with other teams. But when the Ricketts get involved, they'll want to stop sharing money with the Trib. A deal that limits their ad revenue (and their ability to shop broadcasts to other, non-bankrupt entities later) severely decreases the value of those contracts and the team on the whole.

Meanwhile, the bankruptcy court will be very interested to see A) how much earning power the Trib will have after the sale goes through, and B) how much value the company's current assets are really retain. It seems like the Trib wants to hold on to one of their surest money makers, hide its real value from the courts, and inflate the value those interests represent to the Cubs. 

So is anyone really surprised this is a sticking point? The other main interested party is the fans, and I think we'd all like to see the new owners keep as much cash as they can. Yeah?