JUST THE CUBS

and so the beat goes on with the chicago cubs.  hire a guy to manage a bucketful of crap and then SURPRISE! when the team embarrasses the city and MLB once again, dump the manager and blame him for 'a lack of development' with the young players.  add DALE SVEUM to the sacrificial lambs list which includes MIKE QUADE, BRUCE KIMM, TOM TREBLEHORN,  JIM RIGGLEMAN, DON BAYLOR, JIM ESSIAN, JIM LEFEVBRE and on and on and on and on.  they were all given teams with just two or three major leaguers on the roster and told to win.

only four cub managers in my lifetime had any player talent to work with and they were LEO DUROCHER, DON ZIMMER, DUSTY BAKER and LOU PINIELLA and we all know how they fared under the heat of the playoff spotlight. melted like a cheap candle.

but is it time now for JOE GIRARDI? the cubs will pay dearly to get him from the yankees and if ROBINSON CANO follows as a free agent, the cubs will have instant credibility in the eyes of the fans but remember one thing, turtleneck wearers:  you need a TEAM to compete.  girardi would be very smart to take the television job and decompress for a while.  the yankee team is in a downward spiral and the cubs speak for themselves.  

speaking of the cubs, attendance was down for the FIFTH year in a row and what was once one of the hardest tickets in baseball has now become a situation where you walk up to the window at game time to buy your ticket.  cubs now sell only 80% of the available tickets and i would love to se the 'no show' numbers.  CUBBIE BLUE, which is a pro-cubs publication, guesstimates an AVERAGE of 10,000 no shows per game.  any idea how much that affects the bottom line? if each person spends fifteen bucks inside the park, thats about 12 million dollars in lost concessions.  not much when considering player salaries but it would probably pay all of the general office staff.

i warned every cub fan about TOM RICKETTS the day he bought the team.  he knows how to make money with hotels, real estate, building management, stocks, commodities, development and urban planning. do you see the word baseball anywhere in that last sentence?