(Photo Courtesy Jim Essian via Flickr)

The Reclamation of a Franchise

How the Ricketts Family breathed life back into the North Side.

In 1875, the Chicago White Stockings, owned by Chicago business magnate William Hulbert, made aggressive moves to bring in the greatest players from the National Association of Professional Baseball Players.

It was a violation of league rules to sign players away from their current contract in the midst of the 1875 season, but Hulbert couldn’t care less. Hulbert’s disdain for the National Association’s wealthier east coast teams was well known.

The largest of the ball clubs from Boston and New York often outbid the contracts for his best players year after year, stolen to the highest bidder. William Hulbert didn’t get mad, he got even.

He seized the opportunity alongside other disgruntled owners and formed a co-op with 7 of the smaller ball clubs — Cincinnati Red Stockings, St. Louis Brown Stockings, Louisville Grays, Mutual of New York, Athletic of Philadelphia, Boston Red Stockings, and Hartford Dark Blues — to create the National League of Baseball.

Ancient Program from when it was thought that only patsies and catchers used baseball gloves ~ circa 1904 (Photo Courtesy Internet Archive Book Images via Flickr)

Two of the players signed by the White Stockings for the inaugural 1876 season were third baseman Cap Anson from the Philadelphia Stars, and pitcher Al Spalding from the Boston Red Stockings.

Cap Anson was baseball’s first superstar, bringing the White Stockings titles in 1876, ’80, ’81, ’82, ’85, and 1886. Anson was so popular that the White Stockings were nicknamed “Anson’s Colts” while he played, and following Anson’s departure in 1898 were renamed “The Orphans” by the Chicago newspapers. It wasn’t until the roster turned over in 1902 that the young energetic players were nicknamed “Cubs” by the Chicago Daily news.

Al Spalding pitched the first White Stockings franchise victory in the new National League in 1876. Spalding was also a sporting goods entrepreneur and shrewd businessman. He later managed the team, became the club secretary, and served a stint as president of the White Stockings until William Hulbert passed away unexpectedly, leaving Spalding as the sole owner.

1886 White Stockings; where hierarchy was determined by mustache thickness (Photo Courtesy Arkansas Baseball Encyclopedia via flickr)

Spalding thought outside the box as both ballplayer and owner. He influenced players to begin to wear leather baseball gloves (of Spalding brand, of course), took an all-star roster on a world baseball tour (1888–1889), and began the practice of spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Spalding turned a semi-professional exhibition game into the year-round big league sports franchise that is emulated to this day. Spalding, as owner, laid the groundwork for what would make the Cubs a dynasty in the early 20th century.

He left an immutable mark on the game, and the business, of baseball. Most of all it was his constant innovation that made the Chicago Cubs the preeminent franchise of the National League.

Spalding had to start off as a player, then manager, secretary, president, and finally owner to cultivate both his desire to win as well as his desire to see success for the ball club as a whole.

To be a success in business or sports, the motivation to innovate and adapt must be ingrained in one’s constitution.

After 88 fruitless years of being owned by the Wrigley family and the Tribune Company, the values of innovation and adaptation were about to be re-injected back into the ball club by a family from Omaha, Nebraska. The Ricketts family knew success, but it took Tom Ricketts and his undying love for his team to make winning a reality for the Cubs again. As owner of the Cubs these intangibles of love and devotion would bring the longest championship drought in history to an end.

Not Pictured: all the awesome 1984 & 1989 playoff post-game parties. (Photo Courtesy L P via Flickr)

The oldest son of TD Ameritrade founders J. Joseph and Marlene Ricketts, Thomas S. Ricketts left Omaha to attend the University of Chicago in 1984.

It was the same fall when the Cubs’ Ryne Sandberg and Ron Cey made a playoff run as NL East champions. Tom moved to Wrigleyville in the summer of 1990.

He and his brother Pete rented an apartment above the “Sports Corner Bar & Grill” at the corner of Sheffield & Addison. The immersion into Chicago Americana cemented young Tom as a lifelong Cubs fan, and began to establish his relationship with those who lived in the heart of the Cubs community in and around the ballpark.

Tom and Pete spent many afternoons in the famed Wrigley bleachers, Tom even met his wife Cecelia while taking in a game. Tom and his new wife moved to Detroit shortly after graduation, but Tom never forgot his roots in Wrigleyville, nor did he forget what the Cubs meant to everyone who lived in that epicenter of Cubs baseball.

On June 17th, 1981, the Wrigley family who had owned the cubs since 1921 was reeling financially. William Wrigley III finally relented, and sold the team to the Chicago Tribune Co. for $20 million. The promise to finally install lights for night baseball at the friendly confines brought enthusiasm from fans. Night Games would be the beginning of a new era for the perpetually last-place club, which brought optimism to a reeling fan base after the catastrophe that was Cubs baseball through much of the 1970’s.

Ten years earlier, CBS had leveraged majority stake in the New York Yankees into a hefty payday when shares were purchased back by George Steinbrenner at a profit. To some it appeared as though the Tribune Company was hoping to leverage a similar deal with the Cubs. The only problem was they had to turn the Cubs into a winning investment. This became a much more difficult task than Tribune Co. executives had anticipated.

The biggest problem was mis-management of player contracts and lack of funds by the Tribune. This forced the Cubs to trade away big talent for bad free agent contracts in return. The big money never materialized as advertising revenue slowly fell off with the introduction of alternative media.

Even with marginal success in reaching the playoffs for the ’84, ’89, ’98, and ’03 seasons, the Cubs felt like they were in a perpetual state of rebuilding. The playoff appearances in 2007 & 2008 ended tolerance from fans who saw their highly paid Cubs lineup get swept out of the playoffs 2 years in a row.

The Tribune could never find the right General Manager that could get the Cubs over the hump with quality players. A revolving door of so-called problem solvers came and went as the Cubs continued to lose games and lose fans. Names like Dallas Green, Jim Frey, Larry Himes, Ed Lynch, Andy McPhail, and Jim Hendry could never seem to put the right combination of players together to break through the ‘Curse of the Billy Goat’ and reach the World Series.

Tribune Co. who loved Alfonso Soriano and traded away Greg Maddux. Seriously. (Photo Courtesy Andrew Westgate via Flickr)

Finally after many years, economic troubles came to a head as the Tribune Company, fraught with bankruptcy claims and failing stocks, went private in an $8.2 billion leveraged buyout by real estate tycoon Sam Zell in 2006.

From his desk at Incapital Investment Bank, Tom Ricketts took notice, and hatched a plan that would finally bring generations of Cubs fans to the promise land. He made a play to acquire the team that he had fallen in love with in college. His plan was to save Wrigley Field and his beloved Cubs as Sam Zell looked to offload assets from the money pit that was the Tribune acquisition.

This man bleeds Cubbie blue (Photo courtesy Garret Craig via Flickr)

Tom Ricketts had watched as the Tribune had acquired high price free agent contracts that never paid dividends over the years (*cough* Soriano *cough*), while putting off much needed Wrigley Field renovations. The Cubs farm system had been all but abandoned for decades and the team had yielded little more than boo bird calls from the bleacher bums as the Cubs missed the playoffs year after year.

Tom knew a good investment when he saw it, and the most storied franchise in the National League was the one thing in sports worth salvaging. If not for him, than for the beleaguered community surrounding his old stomping grounds just outside the center field bleachers. Tom remembered what it felt like to win, the exhilaration of the ’84 and ’89 playoffs and the joyous anticipation that filled the halls of the Sports Corner Bar & Grill those many years ago.

$800 million dollars later, on August 21st, 2009, the Ricketts family had established themselves with a 95% share of ownership of the Chicago Cubs. The other 5% remained with the Tribune.

Tom Ricketts knew he had a large ship he had to turn around, which meant letting free agent contracts expire, acquiring top prospects and building a farm system with the infrastructure to cultivate talent.

Ricketts held on to Hendry and his regime until 2011, when he saw an opportunity to strike. Just as a bad breakup was occurring between the Red Sox and wunderkind Theo Epstein, Ricketts swooped in to bring Epstein in. Theo was installed as the Cubs new President of Baseball Operations and he reunited with former lieutenant Jed Hoyer as his GM. Tom knew talent, regardless of Theo’s high price tag (5 years/$20 million), he had broken curses and brought 2 championships to Boston — the pedigree was there.

Tom Ricketts would stop at nothing to see that same methodical success brought to Wrigley — he not only signed huge checks to see that Epstein was brought into the fold, but he gave Theo unprecedented resources to build a championship ball club with the patience to see it through.

Epstein pioneered success in baseball analytics, paving the way to end the Red Sox 87 year championship drought. Tom Ricketts knew that to slay the Cubs 108 year curse, the innovation that Epstein specialized in would be key to turning out a winning team.

Theo Epstein; a man who has a tendency of bringing Championship hardware wherever he goes (Photo by Arturo Pardavila III via Flickr)

The Tribune had traditionally spent little money in the draft, but Tom took steps to cut big checks and sign quality players out of the box. Even while still in Boston, Theo could see that Ricketts was pushing for a deep farm system. This approach influenced Epstein to walk from his Red Sox contract a year early to join up with a Chicago team that was now invested in rebuilding.

The Cubs spent big money in the draft on players like Albert Almora, Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber. They spent big in the international amateur market and opened up new development facilities in places such as Venezuela. Quality trades were made for Anthony Rizzo, Jake Arrieta, Kyle Hendricks and Addison Russell. Joe Maddon joined in 2015 to manage the young and talented Cubs roster. Smart free agent signings like Jon Lester and Jason Hayward were added, the he final piece of the puzzle for this Cubs organization. Everything had fallen into place for the best roster in baseball at the onset of the 2016 season.

After that, it was only a matter of time.

The culture of Cubs baseball had been forever altered by the boy who had fallen in love with his Cubbies all those years ago. Even the Chicago Tribune, after years of besmirching the Ricketts ownership with allegations of tumultuous dealings with the Wrigley Rooftop owners and scandalous political donations had to raise a glass to the Cubs owners’ swift rebuilding of its long dormant franchise. Much like Al Spalding a century earlier, it took outside the box thinking, innovation, and a quality farm system to bring fruition to what was once thought impossible, a Cubs world championship.

The first of many parades, The Cubs are in good hands (Photo Courtesy Stephen Gardiner via Flickr)

Tom Ricketts isn’t finished. Eyes always to the future, he wants to continue to lay the foundation for the winning culture that, for so long, had been missing from the Friendly Confines. By putting the right people in the right positions, and doing the little things to ensure ball club success — Tom Ricketts has etched his name into the long and storied history of the Chicago Cubs as the man who saved the Cubs franchise, and brought joy back to the north side of Chicago. He still roams the stands during games, introducing himself to fans young and old, and letting them know that as long as he is in charge, the Cubs will always be in good hands.

Big Ben Martin has a big deep love for his Chicago Cubs. They say that everything is bigger in Texas, and based on Big Ben’s love for the Cubs we would have to agree. When not playing the role of Big Ben he might be found as his alter ego Big Cynical Ben on Twitter.