Dear Swami, Now we hear that new Chicago Tribune owner Sam Zell may sell the Cubs to someone we don’t know yet, but he’s going to sell Wrigley Field to the state which will sell the naming rights. Is this right? Is this good? Guide us, oh Swami. Signed: Dumfounded in Deerfield
Dear Dumbfounded,
We will see just how profoundly loved the Chicago Cubs are by everyone else in the state of Illinois who 1) Does not live in the city of Chicago, and 2) Does not swoon over every event related to the Cubs and, in fact 3) really doesn’t like the Cubs at all and believes their fans are schmucks,
The underlying premise to the Swami’s prediction is that the people who have owned the Cubs over the millennium have managed to sell the most important marketing illusion of all. And that is? Well, it’s that you (all of you out there in Cub land) actually own the Cubs in some unidentifiable mystical, spiritual way.
You have accepted this theory so solidly that you may well believe what you think about the Cubs really counts. That what you think about the Cubs has something to do with the way they are operated….or, in this case, sold.
Of course, you are dupes.
The Cubs are property. Somebody else's property. They’re chattel. They are like Sam Zell’s motorcycle collection except they are worth a little more.
But they don’t belong to you in any way. Get over it.
Now here’s the real pinch.
The current state of things suggests Zell will try to sell Wrigley Field to the state (that’s all the millions of people in Illinois who don’t back the Cubs).
If he convinces someone in the state to buy the old ballyard, they in turn will sell the rights to its name to help defer what will be a massive price tag. Only big corporate conglomerates have that sort of money to buy image. Then Wrigley Field will be the Tidy Bowl Field, or maybe Preparation H Stadium.
You won’t get a vote in the naming because, remember?, it’s not yours. It belongs to someone else.
From his seat high on Mount Olympus, Swami wonders if Chicagoans realize how indifferent the rest of the state might be to that fatuous, narcicism that marks all things Cubby
Aside from the reality that a good portion of Chicago despises the Cubs and favors the White Sox, there are significant Illinois districts that hate both teams and in fact love the, SHRIEK!!!, Cardinals.
So when the state gets around to paying $100 million or so for Wrigley with public money, Swami bets there will be loud voices that say, “over our dead bodies!!”
Let the games begin..
