Last night when I posted a few headlines, I figured that would be enough to carry us through Friday. Wrong! This morning, Chris DeLuca writes in the Sun-Times that MLB owners are going to block Mark Cuban:
Global financial crisis or not, baseball's old guard plans to stand firm against letting Cuban into the club. "There's no way Bud and the owners are going to let that happen," a Major League Baseball source said this week. "Zero chance."
I had, as most of you know, initially been against Cuban, thinking his NBA courtside antics and his "all about me" image. After having met him last year in Las Vegas and considering what he did with the Mavericks when he bought them -- stepping aside and letting his basketball people run the show -- I was willing to see what he could do.
I do think DeLuca is a little over the top in his article, which seems to say that Cuban is the only person who can keep the Cubs winning at the current level:
And it's becoming clear Mark Cuban won't ride in to save the day.
Save the day? What's been going on the last two years? Is DeLuca saying that had Cuban been the owner this year, the team wouldn't have folded up in October? Ridiculous. Also, DeLuca has some out-there speculation:
All of this likely will put the group headed by John Canning Jr. -- Selig's personal favorite -- back as the front-runner.
There's nothing I've heard that would indicate this is the case. The Ricketts group out of Omaha still seems the most logical choice, and they have pockets as deep as Mark Cuban's. But the most important thing about the article may be this:
But this week at the GM meetings, [Bud] Selig cautioned executives to be prudent in the face of the world financial crisis.
"There are some very real issues in the global economy," White Sox GM Ken Williams said. "For any of us to believe this isn't going to ultimately affect our business, you have to have your head in the sand."
[Jim] Hendry agreed.
"We've all been fortunate with the Cubs to work for a great company that increased payrolls the last couple of years, even with the club for sale," Hendry said. "And I was fortunate enough that they gave me a contract extension without a new owner in place. We have a lot to be thankful for.
"At the same time, you face the reality of the world that it's very tough economic times."
And so, I agree with this:
Will the Cubs' ownership question put a crimp in general manager Jim Hendry's ambitious offseason plans?
"We'll be given a fair payroll number," Hendry said. "I don't have a final figure yet, but there is no indication that we are going to go backward. We're in the middle of a pretty good situation. The last couple of years, we've got it going in the right direction, and we don't have an old team. We still have a lot of positives, and our [minor-league and scouting] departments are doing real well."
And this final note about the ownership situation:
That same MLB source promised a deal won't be done by Opening Day 2009.
"We'll be standing here at next year's GM meetings," the source said, "and this will still be unresolved."
That very well might be true. We, as always, await developments.