New Cubs owner Tom Ricketts did an appearance on NPR on Saturday morning (here's the related article).  This is great news for Cub fans who are hungry to learn about what his plans are, but it's terrible news for people who were hoping for an exciting interview.  (NPR, I love ya, but you're a little too serious for my tastes.) 

Ricketts apparently has his finger on the vein of Cub Fan Nation (I know, some of you hate that phrase but tough shit, I've been using it for six years) because a lot of what he said is stuff Championship Enthusiasts like me want to hear.

First, he's not 100% right by my take.  I doubt any Cub fan will love everything he says.  In terms of what he's doing that's wrong, he apparently has no intention of firing anybody in the front office.  I get that he doesn't want to immediately shake everything up, but a team can't be run by the same General Manager for seven years now and not have at least one trip to the Series without there being somebody not doing his or her job.  It'd just be nice to see at least one new decision maker swoop in and shake things up a bit.

But what's he doing that's right?  First he sees Wrigley Field not as a shrine, but as a stadium.  According to Ricketts: "First of all, we want this to be the best franchise in baseball, and
you can’t be a world-class franchise and have third-class facilities. . . . There is land that is just adjacent to the
stadium, along Clark Street, that the team owns and we intend to
develop that into a part of the stadium, that will give fans more
options on game day, but as importantly free up space inside of the
stadium to build in some of the clubhouse functionality that other
teams enjoy."

Apparently, this may cause ticket prices to rise.  Ricketts says that fans "should keep in mind is that with family ownership now, we intend
to reinvest all the profits that we can get on the team and put that
back into preserving Wrigley Field and to putting a better team on the
field. So it's not like it's going away to some kind of corporation and
never will be seen again." 

If any of this sounds familiar to you, it's because you've read it here before.

Way back in January, I wrote this:

Please do not feel beholden to the people who run the minor league
system.  They have developed some pitchers, but the bottom line is that
if you fail to develop successful positional players, then you're
going to spend way more money buying what you need on the market.

Regarding Wrigley Field, I wrote:

Sometime in the near future you're going to have to renovate the
ballpark.  Cub fans loathe this idea because it means a year or two in
US Cellular.  I don't think that's a big deal, but I think it'd be
cooler if you could move into Soldier Field.  Regardless, when the
ballpark gets rebuilt I can only ask that you expand the bleachers and
make the upper deck bigger and better.  Also don't forget to improve
the home team's clubhouse ... and leave the visitor's clubhouse as a
hole.  Every advantage, Mr. Ricketts.  Any edge.

Oh, and I'm betting money that the Cubs win the World Series for the
first time while out of Wrigley.  It'd be too funny for it to not
happen.

One other thing while I'm thinking about it - if you choose to
capitalize off the fame of the ballpark by selling naming rights you
will face staunch opposition from the vast majority of the fans.  They
apparently don't realize that Wrigley Field was the first ballpark to be named after a brand.

Crazy talk, huh?  I'm also certain that if I dug through the archives of GROTA, I'd find in various places the expressed opinion that the Cubs should jack up their ticket prices and charge whatever they damn well please, as long as they put the money back into the team.

Does this mean Ricketts has been reading GROTA?  More importantly, does this make Tom Ricketts the right owner for the Cubs? 

No to both.  Time will tell on the lip service he's been paying.  Don Baylor, Dusty Baker, Andy MacPhail, Milton Bradley, Todd Hundley, Ed Lynch, Larry Himes, they have all said the right thing at some point to get to where they got.  But I feel optimistic about Tom Ricketts.  I see good things in our future.  And while I doubt that GROTA is a landing place for Mr. Ricketts on his daily web crawl, we were contacted by his publicity agency way back in January about the shape of things to come.  But the important thing is not the shape, rather it's the reality.  And the reality looks good.

While we should probably remain concerned about the fiscal abilities of a new owner that took nearly six months to scrape together the necessary cash to seal the deal, it remains freshing to finally have a face to associate with the ownership of the Cubs. Maybe Tom Ricketts will indeed be a super-fan bent on building a winning franchise, or perhaps he'll be an amateur meddler of the Pete Angelos mold and will run the team into the ground. Probably he will be somewhere in the middle -- a little heavy-handed on some things, but overall better than what we've had from the Tribune these last 28 years.

Pending court and MLB ownership approval, the Chicago Cubs will soon belong to the Ricketts family, who spent 845 million for the privilege.  It's been a long  time in coming.

Back when the team's sale was first announced, many of us had hoped it would be a guy like Mark Cuban who would step up and buy the team.  Cuban is the sort who would put product before profit, and while he probably wouldn't go into the red to win he would almost certainly spend more than most.

Still, Tom Ricketts is a Cubs fan.  There's no doubt that he wants his new team to break the drought, although he's going to have a very, very long process ahead of him.  In the next few years he's going to have to deal with some big, untradeable contracts, a crumbling ballpark, and a fanbase that continues to grow more alienated.  Or he could just wait two years and sell the team again and probably make a cool 200 million dollar profit -- the downturned economy may have delayed the family's purchase of the team, but it also aided them in buying the Cubs at a relatively big discount.

Regardless of his plans, we're all still probably a little concerned about what Tom Ricketts will do next.  It seems doubtful that a guy who was barely able to scrounge up the money to buy the team will be able to grow -- or even maintain -- the third largest team payroll in baseball.

Hopefully his next move will be to answer those issues, to calm us in the face of concerns, and his public silence should soon be broken. 

The longest team sale of memory appears to be at an end.  ESPN is reporting that Cubs.com is reporting that the Tribune is reporting that they have reached an agreement with the Ricketts Family.

Of course, it's still not over -- the MLB owners have to approve of the sale. 

So here's the question -- do the Ricketts have any chance of not gaining the approval of MLB?  If not, and if they have been given an inside iggy that things will go smoothly, is it possible for them to give Jim Hendry pre-emptive permission to grow the team's salary before the trade deadline?

It sounds like a lot of "ifs" to me, and history has taught me that the answer will likely be "no."  Besides, we cannot quickly forget that the feet-dragging of this sale occurred primarily because Tom Ricketts had trouble ponying up the cash to finalize the near-$900 million dollar deal. 

As a long-time Cubs fan, I can't help but wonder what happens next.  It's like going to prom with a blind date.  Will she turn out to be a foreign-exchange student studying to be a model back in Mother Russia?  Or will she be revealed to be your best friend's thugly cousin who once started linebacker for the high school football team?

I'd like to think that Tom Ricketts is a baseball genius who will surround himself with verified, certified baseball men who aren't afraid to try new things and will not flinch at hitting the eject button on long-term Cub strategies that obviously do not work.  I'd like to believe that Mr. Ricketts will not only not cut salary on the team but will in fact open his checkbook up even more to help ensure that the Cubs can field a competitive ballclub now and forever. 

I'd like to think all that.  I can't help but be skeptical, though.

I have often said that in baseball there are a handful of teams that are always competitive.  The Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Dodgers, Cardinals, and Giants have immense fan bases, large budgets, and smart people running their organizations.  They don't always make the playoffs, but they are expected to -- and if they fail then their fans are bitterly disappointed.  The Cubs belong in that category based on fan base alone. 

Maybe the Ricketts will build on that fan base and the Cubs will finally ascend into the ranks of Regular Winners.  We can't assume Tom Ricketts will buy the Cubs a World Championship, but we should expect -- nay, demand -- that he puts them in a good position every single year.  And the best way for him to do that is clean house, hire the right guys, and give them the budget to do their hard work.

Will he?  Can he?  I'm almost too nervous to find out.

The Sporting News is reporting that, in a compelling sign of confidence, our favorite team's next owner is having trouble ponying up the necessary cash to finalize his purchase of the Cubs.  Tom Ricketts has chosen to compensate for this fact by wisely offering a portion of the team to rich, celebrity Cub fans. 

For only a cool $25 million you can buy your own slice of the Chicago pie!  I can only imagine a Cubs organization in which this is the necessary result of an owner with too little money to actually buy the team.  Forget about the possibility that the Cubs will have to cut salary to a more affordable level.  I'm worried more about an organization crafted by the feedback of such wealthy co-owners as Bill Murray, Jim Belushi, Billy Corgan, and John Cuzack.

Imagine a Cubs team in which the organist plays melancholy tunes between innings, in which the scoreboard is painted a Burtonesque black, and where one of the crazy owners dangles from the foul pole in order to relive the greatest moment of his movie-making career hoping to catch the homerun ball that wins the Cubs the World Series. 

Actually scratch all of that.  None of that is actually scary.  What's scary is the team being purchased by a poor owner.  What's scary is the sudden realization that "Ricketts" is in no way, shape, or form an anagram for "Steinbrenner."  What's scary is that the best possible owner remains caught up in his own world in which he dodges allegations of insider trading while exchanging wordy insults with the player of his basketball team's playoff rival.  That's the scary thing and that is exactly where we are headed.

There has not been anything of late about the sale of the Cub's being completed. Here is what I know. About 3 weeks ago there was a story in Chicago Crains Business that Ricketts looking for 10 investors to put in another 25 million each. Today the reports are that Ricketts has had meetings with "hollywood" types that have Chicago roots looking for money. I don't take any of this as good news that the sale will being going thru any time soon. My take on the situation is that this may hold back the Cub's as much as the bullpen. With the ownership in such a state of flux, Hendry's hands may-be tied as the deals he can make. Does anyone have any more information? 

This article was originally posted on The Cubdom, but was traded to GROTA for a PTBNL and Chad Fox "fireman" insurance.

Last week, Jerry Moyes, the owner of the Phoenix Coyotes, placed his team into bankruptcy, touching off a showdown between the NHL and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

As explained well in this WSJ Article by Matthew Futterman, the Bankruptcy Court is obligated to accept the highest bid for the team, regardless of the NHL's wishes. Unfortunately for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, the highest bidder is a Canadian gentleman named James Balsillie. Balsillie is the founder of Research in Motion, the company that makes Blackberrys.

Balsillie's plan for the Coyote's, like his plan for the Pittsburgh Penguins that he tried to buy several years back (which the NHL blocked), is to move the club to the Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario. In the past, Balsillie has gone so far as to sell 12,000 season tickets to prove that the team has a market and could compete with the Maple Leafs.

For various reasons, including the fact that the Coyotes currently play in a new taxpayer funded arena in Glendale, AZ, Bettman does not want the Coyotes leaving Phoenix. So, in an effort to stem the inevitable, Bettman is recruiting other potential owners to bid on the club, but none seem likely to top Balsillie's $212.5 million offer. (Jerry Reinsdorf included.)

Now, what does this have to do with Baseball? Can you think of any teams that might be subject to a bankruptcy judge's whims? Can you think of any other teams that are being sold? Can you think of any other teams where the seller, before going into bankruptcy, told the bidders that the best bid would be the one that maximized post-tax profit (rather than the largest bid wins)... but now that the parent company is in bankruptcy those considerations could be for naught? I'm really scraping my brain here... oh wait, there is that one ball club. What was it's name again? Oh, right! The Chicago National League Ball Club (dba Chicago Cubs).

No, I don't expect the Phoenix proceedings to have much of an impact on the sale of the Cubs. It would be quite late in the game to derail the Ricketts' purchase of our team (although if this had happened a year earlier, my guess is Mark Cuban would be the new owner), but the world should be watching with bated breath because the legal precedent that allows Leagues to determine who can be an owner and where those teams can play is shaky at best. If the Bankruptcy judge sides with Balsillie, that's just one more stone thrown at the window of League self-determination.

Where do I come down on this? Well, the WSJ gives us a nice peak into the debt structure of the Coyotes. The NHL is in the pole position and should receive the full $37 million it is owed, no matter who buys the club. Next is Michael Dell's private equity firm which would receive it's $80 million in most circumstances. And finally, the creditor who would be most sensitive to any price fluctuations is Jerry Moyes. He has $104 million of unsecured debt, so the club would need to sell for $221 million (plus legal fees) for him to receive payment on all of his personal loan to the club.

Normally, I would side with Moyes. It's his money that would be lost if the club sold for less, so he ought to be able to choose whom to sell it to, and he already has - in lining up a deal with Balsillie... but this isn't a normal situation.

Remember that part about the Coyotes playing in a taxpayer funded arena? The original lease, which Moyes allegedly filed bankruptcy specifically so he could void it, calls for a $700 million fee if the Coyotes leave the arena, and so I am arguing that the party most harmed here is not Jerry Moyes, Jim Balsillie, or the NHL, but the taxpayers of Phoenix and Arizona. If I were Bankruptcy King, I'd call all of those gentlemen into my thrown-room and tell them that the highest bidder who intends to honor the original lease gets the club, otherwise I'll be cutting Jeremy Roenick in half.