Chicago Cubs Baseball

Ssshhhh. Don’t tell the folks up north, but the Chicago Cubs baseball season is less than two weeks away.

In any other year, this little detail would be about as eventful as a split squad game. It’d be nothing more than a routine check of gloves, parkas and stocking caps - all necessities for an April game in Chicago.

At another time, it would be make for good bar room chat. At the least the mere thought of Opening Day, would be reason to remove the remnants of winter chill and replace them with restrained anticipation.

And always the thought of a new Chicago Cubs season brings hope. That one little word that holds so much promise.

Hope

In the end, the season’s results may be the same. Hope eventually giving way to reality. A sprinkling of wins here, and bungles and bobbles and things that go bump in the night everywhere.

But this is the 21st Century, and as much as I hate to say it, Cubs baseball has been dragged by its ankles into the thick of it. Who knew the sale of the Tribune and its holdings to Sam Zell would change so much. Maybe everything.

For better or for worse, Cubs baseball as we know it, and still love it, will never be the same. When the sale occurred last year, Cub baseball and all of Cubdom got a pass.

It was business as usual with more than the typical amount of high drama and a smattering of giddy excitement thrown in. The Cubs captured the Central Division crown and with it the thought that Wrigley Field might actually have its lights on deep into October.

Hope.

But that was when and this is now. From my point of view, “now” doesn’t look so charming.

Chicago Cubs baseball doesn’t seem to be about baseball anymore. It’s about the business of baseball. From the selling of the Wrigley Field name to relaxing its landmark status business has not only come to Cubs baseball, but has left it under its boot heel.

And we can expect more of the same from owner Sam Zell and his mouthpiece Crane Kenney.

At a time when we should be invoking the names of Tinker to Evers to Chance, instead the focus is taxes and dollars and cents. And those behind are stiffs, damns and butts.

Holy cow.