Cub Tracks generally manages

Baseball for me pretty much dies when the Cubs are out of it. I only watch sporadically afterward. I don’t imagine I’m in the majority here, but surely there are some others (and stop calling me Shirley). I hope there’s baseball next year, though, even if I only watch the regular season.

It’s the tradition — Baseball is older than most states. “The earliest known mention of baseball in the United States was in a 1792 Pittsfield, Massachusetts by-law banning the playing of the game within 80 yards of the town meeting house.” The first official game of baseball in the United States took place in June 1846 in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Here’s Cub Tracks News and Notes. As always, * means autoplay on, or annoying ads, or both (directions to remove for Firefox and Chrome). {$} means paywall. {$} means limited views. Italics are often used here as sarcasm font.

• Brett Taylor (Bleacher Nation*): MLB all but announces that it will be taking over Minor League Baseball Operations. ‘Minor league teams are now referred to as “licensed affiliates.”’
• Phil Rogers (Forbes*): Who is in line for consideration if Chicago Cubs seek regime change? “... Ricketts should not have trouble finding interested candidates ...”
• Maddie Lee (NBC Sports Chicago*): Epstein: David Ross will be ‘a great manager here for a long time. “He developed great trust with all the players,” Epstein said of Ross.
• Patrick Mooney (The Athletic {$}): Amid Cubs’ budget crunch, Theo Epstein still has ‘chips to bring to the table’. “This will be a winter of discount shopping for every team once the market is flooded with non-tenders.” Evan Altman chips in.
• TC Zencka (MLB Trade Rumors*): Epstein on the value of one-year deals. “The pillars of this Cubs’ run will dwindle further in the coming years.”
• Noah Barnhart (Last Word on Sports*): Chicago Cubs 2020 recap: The end of an era. “The Cubs have to figure out which players are in their future plans ...”
• Evan Altman (Cubs Insider*): Way too early list of 8 players Cubs could target in Free Agency Includes several old friends. “... it’s time to stop mourning the 2020 season and look forward to what they’ll do this winter ...”
• Gordon Wittenmyer (NBC Sports Chicago*): 6 Cubs offseason tasks that can’t wait, from Jon Lester to Anthony Rizzo. “... a few orders of business are on the agenda for attention ASAP.”
• Gordon Wittenmyer (NBC Sports Chicago*): How Adbert Alzolay plans to pull off a first for Cubs’ farm system. “Going into the year we were hoping that Adbert could develop into a major-league starter, and now we see one,” Epstein said.
• Sahadev Sharma (The Athletic {$}): Do the Cubs’ offensive problems begin at the point of contact? “Addressing contact issues is something Epstein still wants to do.”
• Bryan Smith (Bleacher Nation*): Instructing you about the Cubs Instructional League – first looks, position changes, breakouts, more.

• Cubs birthdays: George Metkovich, Rick Stelmaszek, Mike Morgan, Sandy Martinez.

Food for Thought: