With the L Flag Flying, Trib Takes Shots at Sox

The Tribune's new Employee Stock Ownership Plan means that Tribune reporters Josh Noel and Emma Graves Fitzsimmons stand to benefit directly from the sale of the Cubs. So they stand to benefit directly from the notion, presented as unsupported fact in their story today, that the Cubs have a huge base of suckers ensuring continued Cubbie income:

There's considerably more interest than there was in the White Sox at the same point during their World Series run in 2005, he said.

"It's just a whole different demographic.... You're drawing from a wider base."

The guy they're quoting is a professional scalper. If you're a black guy scalping a single ticket on Waveland Avenue you can expect to end up in handcuffs, but if you're scalping thousands of them behind a company name you're an expert in the eyes of the Tribune (which has been known to indulge in some scalping itself), especially when you're taking a dig at the White Sox and perpetuating the myth — which has never been proven — that the Cubs have a larger fan base.

You see why the Tribune ignored the 1.75 million people at the Sox victory parade: that's actual numerical evidence that refutes their self-serving assumptions.

Meanwhile, Tribune baseball expert Phil Rogers manages to blame White Sox General Manager Ken Williams for the woeful woo-woo Cubbies' woeful woes:

Ken Williams is an equal-opportunity heartbreaker.

His heavy-handed management of the White Sox, post-World Series, is having consequences on both sides of Chicago. His deals contributed to the Sox going backward, instead of back to the postseason, and now one of them is threatening to stop the Cubs too.

Even with the Cubs in yet another tailspin to disaster, the Tribune continues to wage war against the first general manager in nine decades to bring a World Series trophy home to Chicago. Actually, come to think of it, they're probably waging war on Kenny precisely for that reason. Envy.

Or maybe Rogers is just embarrassed because he picked the Cubs to win it in four saying: "Zambrano, Lilly, Marmol and Howry are too much for a team with a pop-gun lineup. The Cubs' power hitting has shown up at the right time."

A pop-gun lineup. What a genius. Why does this pop-gun baseball expert still have a job?

Finally, here's a snide remark from supposed Sox fan Ed Sherman:

You could look at it a couple of ways. Either a number of Cubs fans have switched their alliances to the White Sox since 2003, or the combination of putting a playoff game exclusively on cable and starting it at 9 p.m. resulted in a big drop in the local ratings. Just a guess, but we'll go with the latter.

The fact is, in 2005 and 2006, the White Sox passed the Tribune-owned Cubs in every statistical measure of team popularity, including viewership on Tribune-owned WGN. But you can see how hard that is to accept for Tribune reporters/Cubs investors, even the ones who claim to be Sox fans.

If it's not woo-woo with these guys, it's boo-hoo.


Brett Ballantini contributed to this post.