Let's Play Hardball: What's your Super PAC say about public money to renovate your ballpark?

The old hidden ball trick. Tom Ricketts, chairman of the Cubs, quickly tried to distance himself from a Thursday New York Times story that linked Joe Ricketts, the patriarch of the family that owns the Cubs, with a political-action committee aiming to smear President Obama. It created an unwelcome backdrop for the city's most anticipated baseball weekend in otherwise long and lousy seasons.

And it also became politically inconvienent for the Ricketts family, who are trying to secure public funding to help renovate Wrigley Field. Awkard. And probably a loser in this town. If you are gonna ask for public money, how can you rail against big government?

Obama's White Sox won Friday. Cub Daddy Ricketts will have to wait till next year, they should start getting used to that. It is also starting to offend the real Cub fans that want leadership focused on bringing a World Series winner to Chicago.

As David Haugh reported in the Tribune:

"No Cubs fan wants to hear about a "Ricketts Plan,'' unless it involves improving the bullpen and the bunting.



If a Ricketts man seeks to unload millions to oust somebody critics think has done a lousy job long enough, my guess is season ticket holders would prefer he target Alfonso Soriano instead of President Barack Obama.
The last thing anybody at Wrigley Field cares to consider on a sunny day at the City Series is whether buying a Bison Dog or souvenir bat indirectly funds a "super PAC'' planning racially divisive attack ads during a presidential campaign.

Yet Thursday's New York Times report linking Joe Ricketts, the patriarch of the family that owns the Cubs, with a political-action committee aiming to smear Obama created an unwelcome backdrop for the city's most anticipated baseball weekend in otherwise long and lousy seasons.


Immediately, damage control included the elder Ricketts stressing he has no direct involvement with the Cubs and rejecting any notion he sought to revive the 2008 controversy over Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Ricketts' daughter, Laura, a local champion of gay rights on the Cubs board, issued a statement supporting Obama and her right to disagree with her father. Ricketts' son, Tom, the face of the Cubs as their chairman, quickly distanced himself from any potential PR wreckage too.


"I repudiate any return to racially divisive issues in this year's presidential campaign or in any setting — like my father has,'' Tom Ricketts said in a statement.


The Cubs should be so instinctively defensive on the field.


Those looking for fun at the old ballpark might find a more politically charged arena than usual. And you thought the NATO summit was the only place in town debating geopolitics.


Wrigley usually represents a no-stress, non-partisan zone, a place where you praise Castro and everybody knows you're talking about the shortstop, not the dictator. A place smack dab in the middle of a Cubbie-blue state but where Obama still will get criticized for being a Sox fan, if his name comes up at all.''