Cub fans face conflicts, contradictions

Bill Knight column for 3-14, 15 or 16, 2019

As Chicago voters consider the race for mayor there, Cubs fans are considering whether to vote with their feet headed to seats at Wrigley Field. Or away.

Visiting baseball in Arizona, aromas were intoxicating, a heady mix of orange blossoms and grass after a morning rain, sunscreen and sausages. But something with Cubs ownership stinks.

Recent controversies include hiring or keeping Aroldis Chapman (disciplined in 2016 for domestic violence), Daniel Murphy (who a year earlier criticized gays), and Addison Russell (still suspended for domestic violence), plus previous political ties and new links to Right-wing interests.

Some are leaving Cubdom, feeling their loyalty is taken for granted. Others are grappling with conflicts despite Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts’ “apology tour” as Spring Training opened, where he said, “I don’t think those things are connected.”

Conflicts – guilty pleasures – are common. For decades I’ve owned American- and union-made Jeeps (gas-guzzling SUVs); I indulge in Baskin-Robbins’ “Baseball Nut” ice cream (hardly healthy or low-carb); and I find the Beatitudes and Catholic sacraments profound (though I’m ashamed of some church leaders).

As for Major League Baseball, I was raised a Cardinals fan but in 1969 abandoned the Redbirds when they treated outfield great Curt Flood as a virtual slave, trying to trade him against his will. The lure of the National Pastime gradually drew me to the Cubs, and I’ve been a card-carrying Die-Hard Cubs fan for 44 years.

Of course, MLB isn’t a civic, nonprofit enterprise (which exist: the Green Bay Packers, the Memphis Redbirds, the Toledo Mud Hens and Harrisburg Senators), and fans don’t follow a sport or team because of owners, it’s players. But owners can drive us away.

A Cubs flashpoint was family patriarch Joe Ricketts’ Islamophobic and racist emails leaked by SplinterNews.com, which Cubs chair Tom Ricketts said don’t represent Cubs’ beliefs and that Joe – who supported “birther” lies about Barack Obama and shut down DNAInfo, the New York news site he owned, after workers there unionized – isn’t “the person that those emails try to make him to be.” Still, Tom apologized for the pain the disclosure caused and is trying to mend relations with Muslims.

For its part, MLB isn’t penalizing Joe, unlike its response to the late Reds owner Marge Schott, who uttered comparable racist remarks in the 1990s.

Technically, Joe isn’t an owner, but his wealth helped the family buy the franchise in 2009 for $845 million (it’s now valued at $2.9 billion). And fans may question the Ricketts’ heart.

Joe and wife Marilyn also aren’t on the Cubs board, but the TD Ameritrade founders in 2016 donated more than $8 million to Republican candidates, backed Scott Walker during the 2016 primaries, and then endorsed Trump and donated millions to the GOP and conservative groups. Son Pete, Nebraska’ Republican governor, also endorsed Trump, and son Todd Ricketts (who donated to Mitt Romney) became Trump’s nominee for Deputy Commerce Secretary (until he withdrew rather than divest holdings according to ethics rules), raised millions for pro-Trump groups, and now chairs the GOP’s finance operation and supervises Trump’s re-election fund raising. Even controversial Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has a minority share of the Cubs, and the Ricketts campaigned against Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney, whose 44^th Ward includes the neighborhood where the Ricketts bought or built a hotel, park, rooftops and restaurants. (Tunney won February primary balloting anyway.)

To be fair, daughter Laura is on the board of a LBGTQ-rights group and supported Obama and Clinton, and Tom is pretty neutral politically.)

Meanwhile, though, the Cubs’ new Marquee Sports Network starting next season is a partnership with the Right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, which will cost fans. Remarking about Sinclair, veteran newsman Dan Rather called the corporation’s contents “propaganda,” and HBO comic host John Oliver said he “did not know it was possible to dip below the journalistic standards of Breitbart.”

Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley deflected concerns about its extremist views, saying Marquee “is a totally different strategy and genre. It’s sports, not news,” and Cubs Business President Chris Kenny said, “The programming will be in our hands; the distribution will be in their hands.”

Attendance and devotion will be in fans’ hands.

This month, some 1,700 miles south in Arizona, Baez remained dazzling; Rizzo and Bryant anchored the corners; Darvish, Edwards, Jon Lester and even Chatwood all looked formidable on the mound; and Schwarber, Almora and Zobrist seemed steady at the plate and the base paths.

And the escape to Arizona offered fragrances, from fresh popcorn to artist’s paints.

As far as Chicago and Wrigley’s “Friendly Confines”? We’ll see.