A lot can change in 20 years. Or nothing at all.
When Tribune Co. purchased the Cubs from Bill Wrigley in the summer of 1981, Mike North made his living out of a hot dog cart (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). He worked ballgames in the summer, always rooting for his home team.
Long before he finagled his way into talk radio and became a WSCR-AM 670 fixture, the opinionated vendor was pumped when one of Chicago’s most powerful companies put its financial might behind a franchise that had become synonymous with losing.
“We had been through so many years of the Wrigleys,” North recalled. “With the Wrigleys gone, we thought they would win.”
That widely held assumption was reinforced when the Cubs got within three innings of a pennant in 1984, the third season of Tribune Co. control. But as the media giant heads into its third decade of major-league involvement, the city’s baseball drought continues unabated.
It has been 85 years since Chicago’s last World Series champion, the 1917 White Sox. Forty-three years have passed since the ’59 Sox appeared in the Series. The Cubs haven’t been to a Series since 1945 and haven’t won one since ’08.
This was the legacy Tribune Co. was going to change. Instead, like the White Sox ownership group Jerry Reinsdorf heads, it has fallen short of the standard by which all baseball franchises are ultimately judged.
The Cubs and Sox are both coming off winning seasons and have postseason aspirations in 2002. But fans have heard that before.
“I’m disappointed we couldn’t have won more,” said John Madigan, Tribune Co. chairman of the board and chief executive officer. “Winning two division championships is fine, but we expected to do better. We have the ingredients to win [the World Series]. I’m disappointed that we haven’t.”
Senior status
The Reinsdorf group and Tribune Co. rank fourth and fifth among major-league owners in seniority. With World Series appearances as the measuring stick, no ownership groups have been as unsuccessful for as long as the two in Chicago.
Before the 1981 season Reinsdorf, partner Eddie Einhorn and their group of investors purchased the White Sox from Bill Veeck, who as always was long on promotional genius and short of cash, unable to compete in baseball’s changing economic climate. They got the team on the rebound, after American League owners had rejected Edward J. DeBartolo, and at the same $20 million price to which DeBartolo had agreed.
Less than six months after Reinsdorf’s purchase of the Sox closed, control of the Cubs passed from the landmark building on the west side of North Michigan Avenue to the tower across the street. Estate taxes and the advent of baseball’s free-agency era contributed to Bill Wrigley’s decision to sell the ballclub he had inherited from his father, Phil. Tribune Co. paid $20.5 million.
Both purchases have proved to be wise investments. According to Forbes Magazine, the Cubs were worth an estimated $247 million last season, making them the 13th most valuable major-league franchise. The Sox ranked 16th with an approximate value of $213 million.
Mark Ganis, president of Chicago-based Sports Corp. Ltd., believes both estimates are conservative. He speculates the Cubs could be sold for more than $500 million, the Sox for more than $300 million.
But neither franchise has generated a similar yield on the field. In the 21 years since Reinsdorf purchased the White Sox, 21 different ownership groups, representing 20 clubs, have taken teams to the World Series.
While this list includes some of baseball’s best-known families–the O’Malleys, the Yawkeys, the Busches–it also includes more than a few dabblers who enjoyed sudden success after dipping their toes into the water.
Pizza baron Tom Monaghan, video store magnate Wayne Huizenga and auto dealer Marge Schott all accepted a Series trophy. The honor most recently went to Chicago native Jerry Colangelo, whose Arizona Diamondbacks didn’t play their first game until 1998.
When Reinsdorf and Tribune Co. joined the major-league fraternity, it consisted of 26 teams. The only other franchises not to win a pennant during this time are Anaheim, Houston, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Texas, and each of those franchises has had at least one ownership change in the last two decades. Nobody has tried longer, without succeeding, than Reinsdorf and Tribune Co.
The two groups have been unable to end the city’s cycle of losing the big one, which began when Eddie Cicotte and other White Sox players perpetrated the “Black Sox” scandal in the 1919 World Series. The Sox and Cubs have combined to lose their last 14 postseason series, a run that makes Boston’s “Curse of the Bambino” look like self-absorbed pity.
Different styles
Other than their proximity to Red Line “L” stops about 70 blocks apart, there is no common thread to the two groups. They really couldn’t be more different.
Madigan says the Cubs have been run “like any of our subsidiaries.” That puts them on the same level as the television stations and newspapers in a media conglomerate that has annual revenues in excess of $5 billion. The team’s baseball executives currently report to Tribune Co. President and Chief Operating Officer Dennis FitzSimons. Madigan, Don Grenesko, Stanton Cook and Jim Dowdle preceded him in the role.
North calls it a faceless ownership.
“The Tribune Co. becomes like Oz, like the wizard of Oz,” WSCR’s leading man says. “The [munchkins] never knew there was really a man behind it.”
Reinsdorf, on the other hand, is clearly responsible for all that is right or wrong with the White Sox. He is a fist-pounding, cigar-smoking overachiever who sometimes has been longer on passion than resources. The six NBA titles his Bulls won behind Michael Jordan have not sated his appetite for success. He wants to wring one trip to the World Series out of the Sox before selling them or turning them over to a successor within his group or perhaps one of his four children.
“Ninety-five percent of the [investors] want to sell, but he doesn’t want to sell,” said former major-league outfielder Jimmy Piersall, who has worked for both the Sox and Cubs since his playing career ended in 1967. “He wants to stay in the limelight.”
Is Reinsdorf getting pressure from his investors to sell? It’s a reasonable question, considering that the group is getting older and has not received any return on its investment.
Reinsdorf declined to be interviewed on the record for this story. That has been his general policy in recent years, and it’s endorsed by his staff, which believes Reinsdorf’s messages have been distorted and in some cases maliciously twisted.
Both Reinsdorf and Tribune Co. have been responsible stewards for Chicago’s two-team tradition, which dates to the founding of the American League in 1900. Reinsdorf preserved that heritage by putting it to its biggest test.
After concluding there was no way to make a go of it in the original Comiskey Park, Reinsdorf and Einhorn negotiated both a lease and a lucrative television package in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1988. By demonstrating that relocation was more than a theoretical option, they squeezed a $137 million ballpark out of the Illinois legislature. It binds the White Sox to the South Side until 2010.
There’s no one reason why the current owners’ baseball success hasn’t equaled their success in other ventures. But the one event perhaps most responsible for continuing the teams’ pattern of consistently coming up short is Tribune Co.’s purchase of the Cubs.
In their 20 seasons under Tribune Co. ownership, the Cubs have had only five winning records. The only other franchises to match this underachievement are Philadelphia and Minnesota, both of which were opportunistic enough to reach the World Series twice after their winning seasons.
Not including a postseason record of 3-10, the Cubs are a combined 117 games below .500 since Tribune Co. took over. The winning percentage over the last 20 years is .4815, which ranks better than only Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Minnesota among their non-expansion peers.
Shifting loyalties
Yet the business acumen of Tribune Co., combined with its advantage in owning Chicago’s largest television and radio stations and newspaper, has played a major role in turning the city into a Cubs town. Along with the steady rise of player salaries, which have increased more than 430 percent in the last 15 years, that trend makes Reinsdorf’s job more difficult with each passing year.
The balance of power between Chicago’s franchises was demonstrated most clearly two seasons ago. On their way to a division title, the White Sox were the winningest team in the AL, yet a Cubs team that lost 97 games drew almost 800,000 more fans to Wrigley Field than the Sox did to the new Comiskey.
It wasn’t always like this.
“I remember when the upper deck [at Wrigley] was closed for weekday games in the ’60s and ’70s,” North said. “A foul ball would go up there and an Andy Frain usher would walk over and pick it up. You’ll never see that again.”
In 55 of the 65 seasons before Tribune Co. purchased the Cubs, the Chicago team with the better record also had better attendance. But the Cubs have outdrawn the White Sox eight years in a row, even though the Sox had better records in five of those seasons. The competition between the franchises has become so lopsided that some deny it exists.
“I don’t believe that the Cubs are our competition,” Einhorn said. “We compete against ourselves.”
Using the unexpected NL East title of 1984 as a catalyst, and undoubtedly helped by the gentrification of Wrigleyville and its trademark brownstones, Tribune Co. has done a masterful job of marketing losing teams. Vice President John McDonough and his staff sell everything from sunshine to Sammy Sosa, and there’s never a shortage of eager customers.
Half of Wrigley Field’s bleacher seats were sold for the upcoming season on the first day they went on sale, even though the price has doubled from $12 to $24 in the last five years. The Cubs’ average season attendance has climbed from 1.37 million in the last five years of Wrigley ownership to 2.63 million per season in 1997-2001.
Eight miles to the south, Reinsdorf watched the bottom drop out of his attendance in the second half of the 1990s. He must wonder if the fans ever will come back.
The new Comiskey Park opened with the Sox fielding strong teams. Fans came out to see them. The Sox, who in 1983 became the first Chicago team to draw 2 million, set a city record that still stands with an attendance of 2,934,154 fans in 1991, the first year of the new park.
That year they combined with the Cubs to draw about 5.25 million fans. The city’s total was down to 4.55 last season, with the White Sox responsible for the decrease.
Reinsdorf has many factors to blame: the ballpark site, fans’ disaffection for the bland design of the new Comiskey, poor traffic flow and lingering resentment over Reinsdorf’s role in the ill-timed strike of ’94, which cost the Sox arguably their best shot at reaching the World Series since 1959. But underneath it all is a feeling within his organization that they can’t catch a break with a local media tilted in favor of the Cubs.
For years, the White Sox’s public relations staff has counted the front-page headlines and column inches devoted to the two teams in Chicago’s newspapers, particularly the Tribune. While the editorial departments of the Tribune and WGN television and radio fiercely defend their autonomy, the corporate relationship with the Cubs is a conflict.
It’s natural for Reinsdorf to feel slighted. It doesn’t help that he has become a whipping boy for many Chicago fans. He seems to be regarded solely as the guy who broke up the six-time champion Bulls, not the one who helped build them. He is booed loudly when he’s introduced at sporting events, even celebrations like the Bulls’ trophy presentations.
North is among those who believe “the Chairman” gets a bad rap.
“I like Jerry Reinsdorf,” he said. “I believe he wants to win more than the Tribune Co. wants to win. I believe he wants to win it all.”
Winning relates directly to revenue in the modern era. The White Sox’s popularity–and ultimately their resources–is affected by two mistakes Reinsdorf and Einhorn made in their early years and another in the design of their new ballpark.
Reinsdorf not only failed to appreciate Harry Caray, he let him escape across town. Caray’s move from the White Sox to the Cubs in 1982 accompanied Reinsdorf and Einhorn’s other critical mistake–they took the Sox off WGN to create their own network on pay cable. The new Comiskey provided a mulligan, but Reinsdorf whiffed.
Pay as you go
In putting together a team, Reinsdorf always has spent what he has taken in from his fans. He says privately that he and his investors basically have broken even on a cash-flow basis over the 21 years of their ownership. It hasn’t been easy, but Reinsdorf seldom has cut corners.
When Schott owned the Cincinnati Reds, she once asked why the team paid so many scouts because “all they do is watch games.” Reinsdorf always knew it was no accident the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers of his youth were blessed with stars like Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges.
His commitment to scouting and player development has been consistent. At the same time he was downsizing the major-league payroll Reinsdorf approved more than $6 million in signing bonuses to stockpile young pitchers from the 1999 draft. When longtime scouting director Duane Shaffer told him Stanford quarterback Joe Borchard could develop into a Mark McGwire-caliber power hitter, he signed off on a bonus of $5.3 million, the biggest in draft history.
Reinsdorf might be the one major-league owner who would rather befriend a Double-A pitching coach than a young star on the rise. Forced to answer to his investors, he seems to battle players over every penny, the most recent example his awarding of a relatively small raise to pitcher Mark Buehrle after a season in which he won 16 games and finished fourth in the league in earned-run average.
Not many veteran players are on good terms with Reinsdorf, who stayed in his Comiskey Park box the day he retired Carlton Fisk’s number. From Jack McDowell to Robin Ventura, Ozzie Guillen to Roberto Hernandez, All-Star players have left Chicago disillusioned, if not angry. Frank Thomas continues to battle Reinsdorf over some language in the nine-year deal he signed after winning a batting title in 1997.
“If I had one wish, it would be for a little more honesty,” Doug Rader, who managed the Sox in 1986 and briefly returned as a coach in ’97, said after his departure. “If you’re not going to be honest, you lose the faith of the players, the general public, everybody.”
Rader was among those who were appalled when Reinsdorf cashed in the 1997 season by unloading veteran pitchers with the White Sox only 3 1/2 games out of first on July 31. But even with the occasional capitulation, Reinsdorf has fielded winning teams in 13 of his 21 seasons.
His commitment to the minor leagues, along with shrewd management by Roland Hemond in the early ’80s and Ron Schueler in the ’90s, has helped produce an overall winning percentage of .514. That ranks fourth in the AL for this period, behind only New York, Boston and Toronto.
Reinsdorf’s signing of Fisk and his purchase of Greg Luzinski gave him and Einhorn some early credibility, as well as an AL West title in 1983. He has splurged on free agents when he thought it would help win and bring fans to the ballpark–most notably the $55-million deal for Albert Belle–but has adjusted quickly when things didn’t click.
This year’s team, considered one of the favorites in the watered-down AL Central, enters the season with a payroll of about $57 million. Sox sources put the break-even point at about 2.3 million fans, a level the club hasn’t reached since 1993. If the team is not in first place at midseason, Reinsdorf could follow the example he set in ’97.
Ballpark disparity
Unlike Wrigley Field, the new Comiskey has little fan appeal of its own. If Reinsdorf had been given everything he wanted, it would have been built in the western suburbs, not across one street from the original Comiskey and across another from public housing projects. He had purchased land in Addison, but then-mayor Harold Washington insisted the team remain at 35th and Shields if it was going to play in a publicly financed stadium.
“If the new ballpark had been built in Addison, they’d be drawing 30,000 a game,” North speculated. “They would draw 3 million a year.”
Ganis, whose consulting firm specializes in the business end of sports, believes the new Comiskey could have become a drawing card on its own if not for an “enormous blunder” in the design.
“Their baseball stadium was designed to be a mall at the ballpark,” he said. “It’s relatively antiseptic, relatively sterile and walled off from the community around the ballpark. Their design was going in the opposite direction of the way the industry was going.”
There is an urban legend about Reinsdorf rejecting plans to build a park like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, which opened one season after the new Comiskey and began the trend of new parks that look and feel like old parks. Both were designed by the Kansas City firm of H.O.K., but it was then-Orioles president Larry Lucchino, not H.O.K. architects, who developed the concept that has been copied widely.
“But why didn’t the White Sox have a similar person with Larry Lucchino’s vision?” Ganis asked.
While Reinsdorf may have preferred to follow Chicago’s growth to the northwest, he has done the right thing on the South Side. The Sox have a reputation for generosity in the community, building fields and giving away gloves worth more than the price of a ticket. Reinsdorf has put his beliefs on minority hiring into practice, making the Sox the first team ever with an African-American manager (Jerry Manuel) and general manager (Ken Williams).
On the North Side the absence of championship trophies is the only chronic lament. Tribune Co. inherited a good thing in Wrigley Field, and recognized it.
With the Wrigleys fielding mostly non-competitive teams after World War II, the late Jack Brickhouse used the ballpark as a drawing card. He encouraged fans to come spend their afternoons at the ballpark at Clark and Addison.
“Whoever came up with the `friendly confines of beautiful Wrigley Field,’ that was just a master stroke,” said Hemond, who came to Chicago in 1970. “Jack Brickhouse kept saying it, and people started believing it.”
In terms of creature comfort, there’s no comparison between the new Comiskey and Wrigley Field. But the fans and reporters who belittle Comiskey because it isn’t a modern shrine like Baltimore’s Camden Yards don’t say boo about the claustrophobic concourses or stone-age bathrooms at Wrigley.
Image is everything.
“When I go to Wrigley, I see cramped concourses, aging seats and some ivy in front of a brick wall, which in itself is dangerous,” Hemond said. “The batting tunnel, the clubhouses–everything is outdated. But people seem to love it.”
The original Comiskey Park, which was built four years before Wrigley, was in such disrepair in the late 1970s that Hemond recalls Veeck enlisting children from nearby schools to paint murals, which he hung to hide cracks in the stadium walls. Tribune Co., after purchasing the Cubs, vowed not to let Wrigley fall into the same condition.
It pours money into maintenance every winter and has seriously entertained thoughts of moving only once, before it received approval to add the lights that went up in 1988. An ongoing dispute between Tribune Co. and some Wrigley-area residents over a proposed expansion of the bleachers could lead to another round of threats.
But would anyone take them seriously at this point?
“I think we have the finest ballpark for watching baseball,” Madigan said.
Will to win?
Despite Wrigley’s appeal, Tribune Co. has found that the won-loss record is not as reliably controlled as the balance sheets of its other subsidiaries. Because fans come whether the Cubs win or not, winning could become secondary.
“They’re not a baseball team, they’re a tourist attraction,” agent Barry Axelrod complained after the Cubs opted not to re-sign first baseman Mark Grace.
In his first season away from Chicago, Grace went to the World Series and started Arizona’s winning rally with a leadoff single in the ninth inning of Game 7. According to Major League Baseball figures, the Diamondbacks lost $44 million while winning it all.
Grace never saw such daring from his old team.
“It’s the almighty dollar [with Tribune Co.], let’s not kid ourselves,” he said. “The Cubs are a very small part of a very big company.”
Pat Gillick has been the architect of playoff teams in Toronto, Baltimore and Seattle. He took his name out of the running for a job as the Cubs’ general manager in 1987 after interviewing with Tribune Co.’s Madigan and Grenesko.
“I didn’t think the Cubs wanted to win,” Gillick told author George Castle, whose book “The Million-to-One Team” examined the franchise’s lack of success. “That’s part of the marketing plan. Some of the mystique of the Cubs is ineptitude. If they win, there might be an expectation level to win again.”
Maddening for fans is Tribune Co.’s refusal to unleash its full resources to get the Cubs into the World Series. After all, this is a media giant that swallowed the Times Mirror chain for $8 billion in 2000. But only once has Tribune Co. engaged in a bidding war for an elite free agent, and its $100-million offer to Mike Hampton was rejected.
“When I look at George Steinbrenner, he’s a fan, and I believe he’ll do anything in the world to win,” North said. “I believe the Tribune Co. wants to win, but they don’t want to win at any cost.”
Cubs president and general manager Andy MacPhail tracks how the payroll and revenue rank among other franchises. According to MLB figures, the Cubs were 12th with a $78-million payroll and 11th with revenues of about $130 million in 2001.
While four teams operated with payrolls above $100 million last season, MacPhail believes he should be able to win with a payroll around $70 million. He also knows it’s a losing argument for the Tribune.
“People are going to sing that tune even if our payroll is $148 million,” MacPhail said. “It will never be enough.”
MacPhail’s bosses deny any sense of corporate complacency.
“We’re in this to win,” FitzSimons said Wednesday, after the trade that brought veteran pitchers Antonio Alfonseca and Matt Clement to the Cubs for Julian Tavarez and three minor-leaguers.
Who’s in charge?
Baseball’s church-and-state issue is the involvement of ownership in baseball matters. The Yankees, for instance, began to thrive in the 1990s only after Steinbrenner took a lesser role in player personnel decisions.
Tribune Co. initially recognized the need for management expertise specific to baseball. Andrew McKenna, the Cubs’ first president under Tribune Co., hired Philadelphia Phillies executive Dallas Green within four months of the purchase.
Green was given full control of the baseball operation. He and assistant Gordon Goldsberry overhauled the organization, putting it on sound footing at the major- and minor-league levels. But Green and manager Jim Frey were unable to follow up on their early success, in part because of injuries that decimated the pitching staff that had won the East title in 1984.
Madigan fired Green after the 1987 season, replacing him as GM with Frey, who had no experience in the position. According to Piersall, who worked in the Cubs’ organization as a coach and instructor, losing Green and Goldsberry was the worst mistake Tribune Co. has made with the Cubs. Grace concurs.
Before naming Frey as GM, Madigan assumed the title of Cubs chairman and restructured the team’s chain of command to include Grenesko, who was Tribune Co.’s executive vice-president. Madigan also told reporters he would take a more active role.
Green believes this involvement set the organization back for a decade.
“I can tell you in no uncertain terms that they have very little feel for the game of baseball,” Green said. “They have a lack of respect for people in baseball. That translates into bad decisions. It started with firing me and hiring Jim Frey.”
Goldsberry’s drafts brought the Cubs such future stars as Shawon Dunston, Greg Maddux, Rafael Palmeiro and Grace. But it would be a decade before talent would flow again. The organization became impatient–a trend that actually began with Green going through six managers (including three interim managers) during his six years in Chicago.
Following Green, Tribune Co. tried three general managers and six managers in a seven-year period. The Cubs bottled lightning in 1989, winning an East title behind hunch-playing manager Don Zimmer, but that was one of only two winning seasons in a stretch of 13 years.
“There were times they made mistakes,” said Grace, a Cub for 13 years. “They let Larry Himes (the GM in 1992-94) completely screw that organization up. That was tough to recover from.”
The low point in this chaotic period came when Himes failed to stop then-Cubs chairman Cook from playing hardball with Maddux and his agent, Scott Boras. He never should have reached free agency, but management essentially dared him, pulling a five-year, $25-million offer off the table at one point. Maddux, a certain Hall of Famer who has been as responsible as anyone for Atlanta’s run of 10 consecutive division titles, left Chicago after the first of four consecutive Cy Young seasons.
Boras has proven to be a tough negotiator who makes it difficult for clubs to retain elite free agents. Scores of his clients have jumped ship, with Alex Rodriguez and Kevin Brown signing record contracts. It might not have mattered who was running the front office, Tribune Co.’s corporate leaders or a baseball executive acting with relative autonomy, but the loss of Maddux raised questions about the Cubs’ operation.
“I don’t want to go back and rehash it year by year, era by era,” Madigan said. “Over time, any company has changes to it, different needs, different times. We always tried to have the best people there that we could, like we do in all our operations. If help is needed, the corporate office provides help. The needs ebb and flow.”
Stable leadership
With MacPhail in charge, Tribune Co. management has receded into the background. That is no accident, according to retired executive Dowdle. He told Castle that when he hired MacPhail in September of 1994, his goal was “to cut the cord between the Tower and Wrigley Field.”
FitzSimons, the Tribune executive currently in charge of baseball, follows Dowdle’s lead. His only direct involvement is budgetary.
“Andy’s the baseball professional,” FitzSimons said. “He has been around, proved he can win. . . . We leave the baseball decisions at Wrigley Field.”
Under MacPhail, who had won two World Series as the Twins’ GM, the Cubs have moved into the modern era in scouting and player development. They have had such good drafts and had such strong early returns from an international commitment most visible in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Korea that Baseball America currently rates their farm system as baseball’s best.
Like the White Sox, they are poised to contend for a playoff spot. This marks the first time since 1994 that both Chicago teams are coming off winning seasons. Barring a breakdown by the Sox’s unproven pitching staff or injuries to the middle of the Cubs’ lineup, the season ahead should make this the first time since 1936-37 that the two Chicago teams have had back-to-back winning seasons simultaneously.
How would the city react if both Reinsdorf’s White Sox and Tribune Co.’s Cubs were in heated playoff races in September? What if they both pulled it off in the same season?
“That would be great for Chicago,” Madigan said. “The best environment is when both teams are successful. We’ve found that out over the last 20 years. . . . It’s good for both of us. I think we can both be successful.”
Take me out . . .
While the balance of power at the gate between Chicago’s baseball teams historically had swung between the teams, depending on which had the better season, the Cubs have tipped the scales in the last two decades. Average season attendance by decade:
%% YEARS CUBS SOX
1950s 870,173 1,124,626
1960s 879,671 1,083,043
1970s 1,356,673 1,111,007
1980s 1,724,581 1,444,805
1990s 2,294,831 1,977,757
2000s 2,756,734 1,856,986
%%
