Tribune Boosts Tribune... At Fans' Expense

And you thought it was a tragedy that the Cubbies were swept out of the playoffs? Not at all, says the corporate octopus, as a suction-cupped tentacle slips quietly into each of your pockets to rummage for change. The Tribune-owned Cubs' amazing survival in a division in which every other team collapsed led to high ratings for Tribune-owned WGN (a clever acronym that means World's Greediest Newspaper). Now that's what the Tribune calls "lovable losing!"

The Tribune loves Cubbie losing because as long as the Cubbies lose, the Tribune can't lose. Here's the first line of the radio ratings story that ran this morning:

The Cubs' charge to the playoffs may have ended in more heartbreak for fans, but it lifted WGN-AM 720 to another first-place finish in the Arbitron radio ratings released Monday.

Now here's the same story in 2006:

Despite the Chicago Cubs' last-place finish, their radio station WGN-AM 720 held onto first place overall in third-quarter ratings.

The Tribune wins when the Cubbies finish in last place. The Tribune wins when the Cubbies finish in first place ... and then lose. The only real losers are the Cubs and their "heartbroken" fans.

So come on, now, everybody sing:

And we'll lose-lose-lose for the Tribune, if they don't profit it's a shame, for it's one, two, three strikes you're out in the newspaper game!

Morrissey Fouls Reinsdorf

In the middle of a loooong column about the history of the Chicago Blackhawks, Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey takes this shot at White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf:

As much as Hawks fans loved their team and their sport, they decided their sanity had priority. Many of them stopped going to the United Center. And it killed them. If you know a former Hawks fan, you know that. You know a person who aches for hockey but has sworn off the Hawks. Not the way White Sox fans had sworn off Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf before the 2005 World Series. It was worse than that.

You would think Morrissey could have found an example a little closer to home, what with Cubs fans all over Chicago sports-talk radio only a week ago swearing off the Cubs forever. Of course, those same fans swore off the Cubs in 2006, 2005, 2004, and 2003, but last year they actually picketed the stadium (the Tribune didn't cover the protest), and the example is far more pertinent. Even when some Sox fans were pissed at Reinsdorf, they never swore off the White Sox. On the South Side we know the difference between the team, its stadium, its owners, and the media. On the North Side, those things are all the same thing, and when you swear off one, you've sworn off all.


(Thanks to Lone Ranger for policing Morrissey).

Tribune Begins Propagandizing 2008

Here's the headline for puffery concealed as a story on the 2008 Cubbies' schedule:

Cubs begin '08 on familiar turf

A truer headline might have pointed out that the turf will be soggy, pot-holed, and may or may not still be Tribune-owned. But it's clear the sale hasn't gone through yet. Same story, White Sox:

Early jaunt west may trip up Sox

The White Sox-schedule story basically highlights all the ways the 2008 White Sox will get their asses kicked. Over at the Tribune Tower, they're getting a head start on next season by pre-writing their stories. Tribune beat-Sox reporter Mark Gonzales highlights some obvious series—Cleveland, Boston, etc.—that will be tough. But he even rounds up the Minnesotas and Oaklands. Look at San Francisco:

Despite San Francisco's terrible 2007 record, the Giants have two of the majors' better young pitchers in Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum.

There you go, two losses. And then:

The Sox haven't fared well on the West Coast since 2001, and they make four trips there in 2008.

Hmm. We seem to remember a sweep on the West Coast in October 2005. The Sox had a winning record on the West Coast in 2005 and played .500 ball on the West Coast in 2006.

Worse, Gonzo has the Sox trembling in their boots at the thought of having to face, you guessed it, the Cubbies. As if the Cubs are actually good this year, rather than just the sole survivors of some powerful suction in the basement of the National League Central Division. Watchout Southsiders, here come the Cubs in their blue pajamas, clinging to their cartoon teddy bears.

Paul Sullivan's Cubbies-schedule story is unsurprisingly lighter. It's also better written. But dig the ending:

• Greg Maddux enters the final year of a two-year contract with San Diego, and though he might pitch beyond 2008, the Padres' May 12-15 appearance could be his Wrigley Field swan song. Look for tickets to that series to be snapped up quickly by fans hoping to see Maddux's final start at Clark and Addison.

Sullivan's knee-jerk response to the yearly memo—pump up those ticket sales, boys!—belies the fact that the Tribune won't own the Cubbies in May 2008. Or will it?

• The first rematch against Arizona will take place May 9-11 at Wrigley. The Diamondbacks swept the Cubs out of this year's division series. Whether Cubs fans can build some animosity towards the D'backs is questionable because the Cubs basically beat themselves.

The Cubs basically beat themselves. We're not sure which connotation of "beat themselves" Sully intends. Both self-flagellation and masturbation are two things the Cubbies have done extensively for 100 years.

• If the Cubs are to reach the postseason in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1907-08, they'll have to play well on the road in the final month. They'll play 19 of their 25 games on the road in September, including the last seven in New York and Milwaukee.

Ouch. Why doesn't this news make it into the headline? Nineteen of their last 25 games on the road. The Cubs were swept by the Florida Marlins in the September of this, their glorious Division-championship season, so how are they going to win a game in the last month against two semi-real teams? Isn't this bigger, ugglier news than the Sox's early trip West?


(Thanks to Brett Ballantini for this post)

Did Phil Rogers Fabricate Chris Young Story?

I know. It's a terrible question to ask about a newspaper, but they've fabricated a story before, never corrected it when it proved false, and in that case, like this one, they seemed to be trying to turn Chicagoans against White Sox General Manager Ken Williams. So we have to ask:

Did Tribune reporter Phil Rogers make this up?

[Brian] Anderson, then coming off a strong season in Triple A, was whom the Diamondbacks initially wanted when the Sox general manager called to talk about pitcher Javier Vazquez, who had asked for a trade. Williams told Arizona he was keeping Anderson, a first-round draft pick, and that led the parties to discuss Young, a 16th-round pick in Double A.

This paragraph comes from an Oct. 5 story ("Young Socks it to 'em") in which Phil Rogers tries to pin the blame for the Cubs' poor showing on Sox GM Ken Williams, because Chris Young, who pounded the Cubs, was once a White Sox prospect. The Tribune's malice toward Williams is clear: Having already tried, unsuccessfully, to turn Sox fans against Williams by reporting falsely that he intended to trade Mark Buehrle, this new story tries to turn Cub fans and Sox fans alike against Williams on the basis of another trade. But there is evidence that this story, too, is false.

On Oct. 6, ESPN 1000's Bruce Levine interviewed Mike Rizzo, the assistant GM of the Washington Nationals, who served as the scouting director for the D-backs when they built the current team. Levine asked Rizzo directly about the report that Anderson was the first player Arizona asked about, only to be diverted to Chris Young. He said Young had been on their board for some time and he was the key to the deal. Absolutely no mention that Anderson was a component of the deal whatsoever.

Notice Rogers doesn't cite any sources for his "information." Sox fans on the White Sox Interactive forum opened a thread on the topic and, since Rogers is known to lurk there (it's not unlike watching your own funeral, as one person after another steps to the pulpit to express a lack of confidence in your reporting), they asked Rogers outright to chime in. Who were his sources, they asked. Did he have any sources, they asked. He didn't respond.

Did Phil Rogers make it up?


Brett Ballantini contributed much to this post.

Oh, What a Tangled Web They've Woven

Well, Amanda Kaschube is out of the doghouse. Just hours after she outed the Tribune newsroom as a hotbed of Cub fandom — undoing some elaborate propaganda woven by Sports Editor Dan McGrath and sportswriter Ed Sherman — her boss made the same slip. At the end of his front-page story:

The '07 Cubs -- expected to be the last under Tribune Co. ownership -- will be remembered as a decent team that gave their fans more fun moments than flaky ones.... Wait till next year? Like we have a choice.

Interesting pronoun switch from "their fans" to "we." In their sorrow, the Cub fans in the Tribune Tower forgot to pull the wool over our eyes. But no problem, Dan, we always knew exactly where you were coming from.

It's Not a Curse — It's Karma

May that be the last game ever played by a sports team that's owned by a newspaper.

Caught in Yet Another Web of Lies

Tribune Sports Editor Dan McGrath wrote this week that his department contains "a healthy number of Sox fans." Sportswriter Ed Sherman, who claims to be a Sox fan but sure doesn't act, sound, or quack like one, told White Sox Interactive that there are more Sox fans than Cub fans covering sports for the Tribune. So why did sportswriter Amanda Kaschube write this entry in the Tribune's "From the Cubicle" play-by-play when Chris Young hit his leadoff homer in tonight's game?

First inning
And here we go. Chris Young takes the first pitch deep and it's 1-0 Diamondbacks. Well then. And the Tribune office is depressed.

Doh! And you know the first thing she's going to hear tomorrow: "Amanda, can I see you in my office please?"

Cubune Claims World Domination

It's hard to believe this appeared on the front page of a major American metropolitan newspaper, but indeed, it can be found on the front page of today's Chicago Tribune:

"It certainly assumes a loud, proud home crowd in the enchanted kingdom of Wrigley Field will have an influence on the Cubs' reversing their curse, now that the whole world is lampooning its favorite franchise once again."

Okay, bad enough calling the urinal an enchanted kingdom when it's up for sale, but honestly, is the whole world rapt by the Tribune's Cubbies? I'm sure they're just glued to TBS in Baghdad, and pissed it's not on WGN. Are the Tribune's Cubbies the whole world's favorite franchise? The Yankees and Red Sox both have a much larger national following than the Cubs, and the White Sox still seem to be the most popular team in Chicago, especially with the Cubs' TV ratings now showing a collapse almost as dramatic as the collapse of their ability.

Meanwhile, on the Sports page, Tribune fiction writer Dave van Dyck gives the Diamondbacks the following pieces of advice in this morning's paper. The Diamondbacks. Not the Cubs, the Diamondbacks:

1. Don't be intimidated
2. Stay aggressive
3. Keep the Cubs' sluggers refrigerated
4. Show plate patience
5. Don't panic

Don't be intimidated, because a Little League ballfield full of sloppy sobbing drunks in blue pajamas is so scary. Stay aggressive, because the D-Backs were probably planning to just chill out during this game, kick back, see what happens. Keep the sluggers refrigerated, because in the course of hanging out, why not toss a little batting practice? Did he mean "sluggards?" because these "sluggers" have fewer hits than Vanilla Ice. Show plate patience, because the last thing we need is for Chris Young to belt the first pitch of Game Three out of the park. And finally: Don't panic. . . . I just don't even know what to say to that one.

Thanks to the Lone Ranger for this post.

Tribune: True to Form, if Nothing Else

We had to wait two years, but the Tribune delivered, true to form. On the first day of the playoffs in Chicago in 2005 the Tribune ran a front page story about crime, pot-smoking, and curiously stereotypical African Americans in the neighborhood of U.S. Cellular Field. On the first day of the playoffs in 2007, can we count on the them to write about the rapists, racists, and rummies of Wrigleyville?

Brett Ballantini reports:

So, to herald the beginning of NL playoffs' brief stay in Chicago, Paul Sullivan earns his juicy paycheck with the fluffiest fluffy fluff fluff feature on, surprise, Cubbies who live in Wrigleyville, wherein it is written that Ryan Dempster plays "Frogger" with traffic by RUNNING FROM WRIGLEY TO THE LAKE BEFORE GAMES. No matter how delicious the notion that Dempster puts himself in harm's way sounds to the blue-pajamas faithful, that cannot be smiled upon by Cubby management given that there's a large, unencumbered patch of grass to jog on to his heart's content sitting in the middle of his workplace, Wrigley Field. What a doorknob.

Oh, and Sully says that Dempster used to ride his bike "to work," but it got stolen. Is Dempster angry? Distrustful of the raucous neighborhood? Lucky he didn't get killed after a blown save by one of the "faithful?" Dumb as a box of rocks for being a major leaguer who isn't bright enough to secure his bike somewhere other than the base of a streetlamp?

Nah, Dempster just walks to the park now, reports Sully with misty-eyed, Joe-Jackson- emerging-from-a-cornfield admiration.

Scott Eyre, a Cubbie who isn't caught up in the utter romance of the urinal trough on the North Side, is relegated to two quotes at the end before the story mysteriously truncates (more Cubbies who didn't espouse the party line, perhaps?), one portraying him as a Twinkie-gobbling porko compared to the deft and nimble Dempster.

What... did you expect a smear piece on pot smokers in the neighborhood or something?

Tribune's Ratings Premise Falls Apart

In a story today, Tribune reporter Ed Sherman insists the Cubs' local television ratings for the playoffs are down 38 percent from 2003 (38 percent!) because the games are on TBS, and late at night, and not because of a shift in fans to the White Sox. The Tribune was so sure of its self-serving interpretation of the numbers that it put it in the headline: What did they expect? Cable, Late Start Hurt TV ratings. And then Sherman spends most of the story arguing for that angle, rather than reporting. It smelled fishy from the start.

And then the national ratings came out and guess what? Nationally, playoff ratings are up, even though the games are on TBS for the entire nation and late at night for much of it.

What does that mean? More people are watching baseball everywhere, but in Chicago 38 percent fewer are watching the Cubs. (And these are the ratings for Game One, before the Cubs gave a clear indication how badly they were planning to suck). You figure it out. Because you can't count on the Tribune to tell you the truth.

Sherman clearly had access to the national numbers when he wrote his story, because he quoted some of them. He just didn't quote the ones that show national viewership increasing even as Cubs viewership fell. In other words, he left out the stats that prove his self-serving premise is false. TBS and timing hasn't stopped fans anywhere from watching baseball, and yet the Cubs still lost 38 percent of their following since 2003. What happened between 2003 and 2007?

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.

Tribune Special Delivery for Cubs

If your Tribune isn't on your front stoop this morning, it's probably because you're part of the vast majority of Chicagoans who are smart enough not to subscribe. But the suckers who do subscribe also woke up to find themselves Tribuneless, because the Tribune delayed its deadlines and postponed delivery in order to get late news into the paper about its precious Cubbies.

I don't remember them doing that for the White Sox in 2005, do you? We were playing in Anaheim — and that was the championship series — and we seem to remember lots of late nights and even one game that ended the morning after it started, but the Tribune was perfectly content to deliver newspapers devoid of late breaking White Sox news. And those were victories it was not reporting. Oh, but no, there's no bias.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

We didn't think we'd ever write about Jay Mariotti again because once you've seen a paramecium under a microscope, why look again? It wiggles, it eats, it dies. The guy will write anything to get a reaction out of people, then write the opposite the next day, and responding to him just feeds the organism. It's a formula, and it's boring. Also, he's the best example we've ever seen of the fact that being an asshole can give you heart disease. So feeding into the thing he does is just a contribution to a protracted suicide, and that's just a messy and disagreeable business. But Mariotti, who has all the moral authority of a leech, wrote a blog entry preaching that White Sox fans should grow up and back the Cubs, so we thought we'd chime in.

All we have to say is something Jay might read over in Roeper's column:

We sing the songs our fathers sang when they were growing up
Rebel songs of Erin's Isle in the South Side Irish Pubs
And when it comes to baseball, we have two favorite clubs
The G0-Go White Sox and — whoever plays the Cubs.

It's bigger and older than Jay Mariotti can even imagine. Even if that team and its private newspaper hadn't been spewing effuent in our direction for the last quarter century, telling us to grow up and back the Cubs is like telling us to grow up and back toe fungus. Unsightly, uncomfortable, and covering our city with an icky yellow crust. Not gonna happen. Unlike Mariotti, we have clarity.

We Interrupt This Year to Reminisce

You know, one thing the Cubs are good for is reminding us of the White Sox. And all this playoff hoohah has us thinking often of the greatest baseball year Chicago has seen in many generations: 2005. So let us recall the first day of the American League Division Series, 2005:
White Sox 14-Red Sox 2.

The day dawned with an unmistakable buzz about town as thousands of fans and celebrities arrived for the opening of the ALDS at U.S. Cellular Field. The Tribune greeted the visitors with a front-page story warning about crime, poverty, drug use, and curiously stereotypical African Americans in the vicinity of U.S. Cellular Field. Gasp! As far as we can tell, the arriving fans ignored the Tribune, as most Chicagoans have learned to do. The day ended with Bridgeport looking and sounding a lot like Baghdad, however, as the White Sox hit an ALDS-record five home runs, two of them by A.J. Pierzynski. The Sox scored five runs in the first, one in the third, and two in the fourth to chase former Cub Matt Clement off the mound and, apparently, out of baseball. Jose Contreras scattered eight Red Sox hits over seven and two-thirds innings, and Neal Cotts and Cliff Politte were nearly perfect in relief.

The Sox were on their way to a sweep...

Stop the Presses! Cubune Picks Cubs to Win!

You'll be shocked to discover that the Cubs shareholders who work in the Tribune Tower think the Cubs are going to prevail in the Division Series against Arizona. Paul Sullivan, who covered this sloppy team for 162 games and once referred to them as "accidental contenders," predicts they'll sweep the Diamondbacks, and hey, maybe they will. Most Trib writers think they'll win it in four games, and one genius thinks they'll win it in six.

Tribune fiction writer Dave van Dyck thinks the Cubs will win because "The excess of power will be too much for the D'back pitchers and in postseason series three-run homers traditionally win games."

Who has an excess of power? Arizona season HRs: 171; Cubbies: 151, and the Cubs play in a Little League park. Maybe DVD's been taking LSD to work, and we don't mean Lake Shore Drive.

Of the Cubune's public faces, only golf expert and token staff Sox fan Ed Sherman picks the snakes. Whoever he likes, Sherman has shown that his world view remains firmly planted in Cubland. And how could it not be? He drinks out of the same water cooler. He shares the same profit sharing plan. And the Tribune has been pushing a little too hard lately to convince people it has Sox fans on staff:

The Tribune sports desk
Spirited voting among 18 members of the Tribune's sports copy desk—except for the one wise guy who picked Cubs in 6—led to a nearly even split. Undoubtedly the healthy number of Sox fans and Cubs fans looking to alter cosmic karma led to the eight picks for the Diamondbacks.

Only because of a "healthy" number of Sox fans on its Sports Desk did the Diamondbacks get any votes. That shows confidence in the expertise of the Sports Desk, doesn't it? And what's a "healthy" number of Sox fans? When the Tribune hires a Sox fan, it's like getting a flu shot?


Brett Ballantini contributed to this post.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

This photo was taken from the Cubs rally in Daley Plaza on Monday, and why are these guys wearing business suits? Is this a Cubs rally or the Enron trial? There was only one guy on stage in a baseball uniform, and you can see him here to the right, picking his nose. I think that's Billy Williams. These other guys look like the Bored of Directors. There are four suits in this picture, for a total of about $8,000 at Saks, but you can't see the biggest suit of all — Dennis Fitzsimmons, the CEO — because he's hiding directly behind the guy at the lecturn, probably so no Cub fan can get a good shot at him. Dennis has the snazziest suit of the bunch, but if you ask me, any guy who can't loosen his tie at a baseball rally is no freer than a slave. But back to fashion: They couldn't even find a Cubs cap to cover those balding white pates? Didn't they have to pass the Tribune Store to get out of the Tribune Tower? Couldn't they be bothered to stop and load up on blue pajamas? Or do they just sell that crap to the suckers who made them rich? The suckers in the audience.


Seriously, there was only one suit on stage at the White Sox rally in '05 and that was the suit worn by His Honor da Mare. As it should be. That's why even this year, We are Chicago baseball. The Cubs are nothing but an elaborate white-collar crime. The Cubs are slumping into the playoffs (to use the Tribune's own words) like sub-prime loans slumping into the lending market.

And we'll root root root for the Assets, if they don't win it's a shame...