Keep your eye on the ball!

 I didn’t make my first trip to Wrigley Field until I was 6. It was Mother’s Day 1982, and I was about six weeks shy of my 7th birthday, and I remember the sights, sounds, smells of that day like it was yesterday. Most important, Jody Davis hit a 3-run homer off of Ken Forsch, the Cubs won, and I was hooked. I’ve been to more than 200 games at Wrigley Field since then, and I hope to one day take children of my own there.  Somehow, though, these memories are threatened by Sam Zell’s attempts to sell the Wrigley Field name.

Nonsense. The ballpark’s name has changed three times anyway, and while I won’t like a new name on the marquee, it’s not my decision. I won’t call the ballpark by its new name — not unless the company naming the stadium offers to pay me to do so, but it won’t change the beauty of the ballpark, or the not always beautiful play on the field.

Besides, I think Zell’s bluffing. Who will pay $20 million a year to become the pariah among the purists by supplanting the “Wrigley Field” name with some corporate name? It won’t happen. If anything, some corporation will pony up some money to be able to put prominent signage throughout the park. But renaming Wrigley Field would be the biggest waste of money for any company. The negative PR that would come from attaching your name to the park outweighs any benefit.

The hand-wringing over this, and the Sun-Times’ insistence of running some kind of campaign against Sam Zell is nothing short of embarrassing, and Hire Jim Essian! articulates this well.

Besides, the naming right controversy is just what Zell wants. Everyone’s up in arms over the renaming of Wrigley Field? Maybe no one will notice the sale of the ballpark to the state! Simply put, this sale makes no sense from the state’s standpoint, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense from the Cubs’ future owner’s standpoint. As more details leak out, we learn this deal will be substantially worse for the city and state than the ISFA’s Comiskey Park deal.

The state is broke. The county and city are raising fees and taxes to continue to provide simple services. The CTA needed a bailout the state can’t quite afford. Yet we taxpayers need to buy Wrigley Field to preserve “tradition?”

I doubt the ballpark will be renamed. I wish I could say the same about the state buying the ballpark.