He's Living in His Own Private Wrigleyville

There may be a need for a separate full-time media-watch site just to track the dubious work of Fred Mitchell. He's certainly been keeping us busy lately. Maybe it's by design, if you think there's any design behind that Trib-eating grin. Maybe he wrote today's column just to bury the truly appalling example of his work that we featured yesterday.

Again today, Mitchell donates his column for pro-bono Tribune public relations work. We're still trying to figure out how he applies his subheds, which are paired with sentences like the following:

WORD ON THE STREET: Blagojevich says Tribune Co. has done well in owning the Cubs since 1981.

Gotta wonder what street Fred hangs out on. Under the heading, "OVERHEARD," Fred writes,

Blagojevich tried to imagine what the public response would be to a Cubs World Series title. "The reaction would be bigger than what happened to the Boston Red Sox [in 2004]," he said of that team's first title since 1918.

But not as big as what happened to Chicago in 2005, when the Sox won this city's first championship since 1917. That event seemed to slip from the minds of both Mitchell and Blago. Cubune Watcher Dan Grillo writes, "Am I surprised? The Tribune acts like it never happened. Mitchell didn't even bother to point out 2005 or ask Nim-Rod about it.

"In George Orwell's 1984 the main character's occupation is to rewrite old newspaper stories and change history according to the dictates of the government. I think Cub fans like Mitchell and Nim-Rod are doing their own small version of 1984."

Mitchell was certainly practicing his history revisions in his previous column, when he forgot that Chicago's first black baseball players and manager were with the White Sox.

Meanwhile, today's Tribune also features a story in which Greg Maddox says he loves playing at Tribune-owned Wrigley. What else is he going to say? Only Ozzie tells the truth about the Shrine. Speaking of Ozzie, a Tribune headline meekly tiptoes around Lou Piniella today, proclaiming, "Piniella Slightly Ticked at ESPN."

Slightly ticked? Would Ozzie ever get such a careful headline? The Tribune is so scared of Piniella that they removed the footage that ticks Piniella off — just slightly — from their own online sports front pages. Paul Sullivan also neglects to mention that the offending footage had been featured prominently on the Tribune's sites. Don't wanna offend Sweet Lou. Gotta save that up for Ozzie.

Thanks to Keith Makenas, Dan Grillo, and Brett Ballantini for assistance with this post.