Like We Been Sayin

Since so many of the mainstream Chicago media are deeply invested in the deceitful practices of marketing their investments, and the rest are supplicant to the Empire, you have to get out of The Chi to find reliable intelligence. Check out this on-the-money column by Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Here's a taste:

In somehow portraying themselves as the ultimate underdog and the lovable losers, the Cubs have pulled off maybe the biggest scam in the history of professional sports. It's like Big Oil being successfully sold as baby seal lovers. No one would buy that, yet legions of Cubs fans didn't seem to mind when the $1 billion franchise scalped its own tickets back to them.

Big City Cubs Pull Off Ruse of Underdog

Tribune Powders Cubbies' Bottom

Does it seem to you that the Tribune is going awfully easy on a Cubs "juggernaut" that has lost seven of its last 10 games? We seem to recall that just about every time the White Sox lost a game in the second halves of 2005 and 2006 the Tribune compared them to some spectacular collapse of the past, such as the 1969 Cubs, but so far the 2007 Cubs have been spared such indelicate comparisons. Last night, for example, they were pummeled 15-2 by the Colorado Rockies. Tribune headline: "Rocky stop for Hill." Well, it's a cute headline anyway. Almost as cute as the little cartoon baby bear on the toothpaste-blue pajamas worn by the company team.

In the midst of this darkening of Cubbie fortunes, Cubs beat reporter Paul Sullivan writes a thoughtful column titled, "Tribune Years Could End With a Bang." And we don't think he's referring to any Tribune executives eating a bullet in the tower's most stratospheric offices because here's the subhed: "No pennants but team in far better shape than in 1981."

Team in far better shape than in 1981? Isn't baseball in general in better shape than in 1981? If the Tribune has gotten the Cubs in better shape than in 1981, it has less to do with baseball than with an ingenious marketing strategy that, by casting journalistic ethics to the wind and exploiting all the Tribune's media properties, successfully redepicted, in the public mind, an empty crumbling ballpark as a "jewel" that now fills to the gills with drunks 81 times a year. On that basis, and that basis alone, the Tribune will get a billion dollars for selling the Cubbies. But, as Jesus might ask, "What does it profit a newspaper if it gain the whole world and suffer the loss of its soul?" Even with an extra billion in cash, the widely disrespected, increasingly irrelevant, and financially troubled Tribune will be in much worse shape than it was in 1981.

Bartender? Make It a Double

Just in case you missed the April 28 Tribune story by John Schmeltzer about an Absolut Vodka ad campaign in which the Cubs win a World Series in an alternate universe, you can read a May 3 story by Paul Sullivan about a vodka ad campaign in which the Cubs win a World Series in an alternate universe.

Why two stories when one was too many? In marketing, it's called The Rule of Repetition.

The Tribune archive contains 919 references to the Billy Goat, 721 references to Cubs curse, and 291 references to "lovable losers." That's how you fill a stadium while fielding a last-place team. They're supposed to lose, see. That's what's so lovable about them!

We can probably expect more stories, or perhaps a centerfold, in July when the Absolut billboards, featuring a Billy Goat, actually go up.

Or maybe the second story is just an oversight. Maybe Sullivan and his editors didn't realize Schmeltzer's story had already run. Maybe they don't read the paper. You know the Tribune's in trouble when they don't even read it in the Tower.

There is an interesting difference between the two stories: Schmeltzer's story mentions the brand name, Absolut, eleven times, not including headline (12) and caption (13). That's repetition for you. Sullivan doesn't mention Absolut at all, referring instead to "a popular brand of vodka." We'd like to see as much brand-name chastity in his Cubs coverage:

PITTSBURGH -- A popular Chicago baseball team will delay a decision on Angel Guzman's status until Friday, manager Lou Piniella said Wednesday. Guzman was scheduled to start Sunday at a popular Chicago baseball stadium.

Even better if he can work a little ethical disclosure in there:

PITTSBURGH -- A popular Chicago baseball team owned by the company that owns this newspaper will delay a decision on Angel Guzman's status until Friday, said manager Lou Piniella, an employee of the company that owns this newspaper. Guzman was scheduled to start Sunday at a popular Chicago baseball stadium owned by the company that also owns this newspaper.

Nice. Now it's almost all on the table. (There should probably be something in there about the stock-sharing plan that transforms Tribune reporters into Cubs investors). But Sullivan only seems to get modest around the booze. He has his standards. As long as he's the Cubs' house organ, his dance card is apparently full.

A New Curse for a New Era

Speaking of questionable things presented as real, Mike Downey writes a rambling, incoherent column today about a new Cubs' curse, perpetuating a mythology that helps Tribune separate fools from their money — that is to say, a mythology that helps Tribune extract up to $255 per ticket from rubes willing to sit in uncomfortable seats in an ugly, crumbling stadium eating bad food, drinking bad beer, and watching a last-place team lose. Why am I slamming my head against this wall? Well, there's a curse you see.

Can people really be that gullible? Well, people blew up the Bartman ball and then ate it in their spaghetti.

But this is the dawning of a new era in Cubdom, the Alfonso Soriano era, the Lou Piniella era, the gulp, we-just-spent-$300 million era, the higher-ticket-prices era, so the old goats and mostly-black cats just do not apply. To prepare the fans for another year of even more expensive disappointment, Downey spins them a new curse. Except this one makes even less sense than the last few. Something about George M. Cohan. Just about anything can be a curse these days.

Cubune Watcher Brian Dykes thinks the Tribune can't be serious: "What is funnier to read nowadays, the Cubune or the Onion? It is hard to chose!"

If you'd like to read more about the oft-cursed Cubune, Downey's performance is getting rave reviews on the Flying Sock Forum.

Extry! Extry! Get Yer Cubs Tix— er, Tribune!

Paul Sullivan, who claims he doesn't like working for the Cubs' house-organ, sounds a lot like a box-office clerk in his story yesterday about increased ticket prices at Wrigley Field. He's got every detail you'd ever want to know about buying Cubs tickets: how, where, when, what to bring (two forms of ID!), what to wear (your numbered bracelet), what radio station to listen to (WGN, of course), what number to call, what other number to call, and hey, we take credit cards! Check it out:

As expected, the Cubs announced Tuesday a $2 across-the-board increase in prices for the majority of individual tickets, which go on sale at Wrigley at 8 a.m. Feb. 23, and through phone and Internet outlets at 10 a.m. that day. Ticket prices for the two premium seating areas--the bullpen boxes and the dugout boxes--rose $5. The Cubs have yet to announce when those and the bleacher boxes (up $2) will go on sale....

In what has become an annual tradition, fans hoping to purchase tickets will have to go to Wrigley Field on Feb. 21 or 22 to receive a numbered wristband, and the order of numbers will be announced on WGN-AM after a 6 a.m. drawing Feb. 23. Any fan buying tickets at Wrigley will need two forms of identification, including a government-issued photo ID.

There will be a limit of six tickets per game at the box office and 42 maximum, and all bleacher tickets must be purchased with a credit card. The numbers for ticket orders over the phone are 800-843-2827 and, for out-of-state callers, 866-652-2827. The Cubs' Web site will begin accepting customers in its virtual waiting room at 9:30 a.m., and all customers will need a valid cubs.com account.

Now, that's news you can use, Cubs fans! The Tribune also ran a story about Sox tickets a while back, but it was less than a fifth that length. Life is so much simpler in the South.

On Ed Sherman's Coming Out Day

Tribune columnist Ed Sherman came out today as a Sox fan: "In the interest of full disclosure, and to blunt any accusations that I write for the Cubune, I am a lifelong, diehard Sox fan."

That was brave of Ed. It's like standing up in an AA meeting and shouting, "But I like beer." He's probably getting a lot of stares today at the office. From other Tribune employees in their cub-icles.

But Ed also came out for a political reason, because he was about to say something that he knew would have Sox fans all over his sorry hide. It was something, in fact, that no lifelong, diehard Sox fan would ever say, because it was something based on seeing the world through Cubune-colored glasses. Ed said, "I think there's only one story that could knock the '85 Bears from the top spot: the Cubs winning the World Series. Given their cult-like following, a Cubs title would be a local and national story of unimaginable magnitude."

Actually, no it won't. I mean, nationally it would be a big story for a couple days because the Tribune media have the national stage all set for the story — the century of suckage and curses and billy goats and all that nausea. But on the national screen, that ends in a day or two. Blip, it's over, what else is new? In Chicago, the Cubs' championship would also get a lot of play in media pre-programmed to give it a lot of play, but it will never be a bigger story than the Sox championship in 2005, and here's why:

If Ed really is a lifelong, diehard White Sox fan, then Ed knows, as we all do, that all those bloody noses and black eyes on the playgrounds of Chicago (and between Chicagoans on the playgrounds of America) for the last seven or eight decades were not just about which team was better, they were about a race – the race to end Chicago's World Series championship drought.

And that race is over.

No matter who won the fight on the playground that day, the real victor was the kid whose team won the World Series first. We all knew that, Sox fans and Cubs fans alike. And 2005 is a moment the Cubs can never replicate. Even if the Cubs win the World Series, they don't even tie the White Sox. They're just playing catch-up, and they would still be one championship behind.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there wouldn't be a huge celebration if the Cubs won a World Series. There would be an enormous, loud, drunken, stupid, and probably violent celebration, but that celebration would be a little forced. Some Cubs fans would be celebrating sincerely, but a lot of Cubs fans would be trying a little too hard because that's what they think they're supposed to do, and all would be endeavoring to fill an inexplicable inadequacy, for any celebration would be undercut by the inescapable fact of history that the White Sox did it first.

In the recordbooks of Chicago baseball history, no year will shine like 2005, not for at least another century. And I don't think the Cubs can ever match the beauty or enormity of what happened on October 28, 2005, an event the Tribune amazingly still has not registered, with 1.75 million Sox fans on the streets of Chicago, in the middle of a work day, people of all races, creeds, colors, and kinds, celebrating wildly and peacefully. There was only one arrest: a guy trying to steal one of the city's Sox banners off of a light pole. It was the largest public gathering in Chicago history, and the Tribune continues to play it down.

Even though Ed came out as a "lifelong, diehard White Sox fan," he might not realize that he's wearing the blinders that come with that paycheck. He might spend a little too much of his time with the Cubs fans in that tower, and that might skew his view of reality a little bit, not to mention his view of Chicago. Ed thinks a Cubs championship would be a big story because the Cubs have a "cult-like following," but they really don't have a cult-like following. Cults tend to be arcane and mystifying to the mainstream media, like White Sox fans. And cults tend to wear black.

There certainly are lifelong, diehard Cubs fans who are born into the Cubs tradition (a tragic fate) and who cling to it with the same ferocity that we follow our Sox. We've all met them. But anyone who knows Chicago knows that's not entirely who fills Wrigley Field 81 days a year, driving up ticket prices, and it's not who fills the bars of Wrigleyville, endowing them with the relentless charm of a frat party and the unmistakable perfume of vomited Old Style.

The Cubs' following is populated by a preponderance of corn-fed squares who migrate to Chicago from all over the Midwest, take jobs in the Loop, take apartments in Wrigleyville (or thereabouts), and don Cubs gear as the off-duty uniform of the stereotypical young upwardly mobile professional Chicagoan, as that stereotype has been portrayed in the media, thanks largely to the Tribune, but not entirely (See "My Boys").

They root for the Cubs because that's what they think they're supposed to do. Look, let's say you're at a Wrigleyville party. Why do you do that beer bong? Because you feel it in your bones like destiny or religion? No, you do that beer bong because everyone else at the party is doing the beer bong, and now they're all looking at you and shouting "woo, woo." The very same thing is true of the Cubs. Here's the plan: move to Chicago, get a good job, get an apartment off the Red or Brown line, go to the clubs, be a Cubs fan, go to Wrigley, that's the routine. When the routine's over, so is your devotion.

Those Cubs fans look diehard for the moment, because that's how they think they're supposed to look while having fun, but they temper their Cubbie sorrows with quiet allegiances to the Twins (Steve Rhodes), the Cardinals, the Reds, the Tigers.

That's not a cult following. That's a marketing success. And like all marketing successes, it lasts until the next marketing success. Remember the Sony Walkman? It appeared to have a cult-like following too, but now those people have iPods. Statistics showed quite a few members of the Cubs "cult" jumping on the White Sox bandwagon last season, scaring the Tribune enough to spend about $300 million this winter. With the Tribune in the Cubs' corner, the Sox may need a few more championships to be like the iPod, but that's just fine with us. Honestly, our cult-like following will outlast any marketing success for either team.

This is a brave new world, and Tribune reporters can't see it.

The Cubs will never top a 2005 championship that ended nine decades of drought for Chicago. See this trophy? You can't touch this.