{"id":339,"date":"2008-12-09T19:47:23","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T00:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2008-12-09T19:53:17","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T00:53:17","slug":"the-two-most-powerful-men-in-chicago-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/339\/the-two-most-powerful-men-in-chicago-sports","title":{"rendered":"The Two Most Powerful Men In Chicago Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Among the more interesting tidbits in today&#8217;s indictment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (and there were many) was the governor&#8217;s ploy to use the Wrigley Field sale as a tactic to get select editors of the Chicago Tribune fired.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if you live in Illinois you probably figured it was only a matter of time before the authorities came looking for Lightning Rod, and you probably just kind of shook your head and said something to the effect of &#8220;This is exactly why people make fun of Illinois.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>ESPN&#8217;s Lester Munson <a href=\"http:\/\/sports.espn.go.com\/mlb\/news\/story?id=3757399\">reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If the Cubs wanted IFA financing for the sale of Wrigley Field or grants for remodeling of the ballpark, the Tribune must, Blagojevich said on the phone, &#8220;fire all those [expletive] people, get &#8217;em the [expletive] out of there, and get us some editorial support.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On the surface, this doesn&#8217;t sound THAT bad, considering the guy was trying to sell a senate seat to the highest bidder (Jesse Jr.? Emil Jones?) &#8211; but you have to remember:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Tribune allegedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/10\/reclusion-conflict-all-that-business\">bowed out of commenting<\/a> on the Wrigley deal around the time this alleged shakedown began.<\/li>\n<li>The state already made its play for Wrigley Field &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/229\/superfan\">and lost<\/a> &#8211; so what boon could IFA money really give? Wouldn&#8217;t anyone in a position to buy an entire franchise also be in a position to secure financing to repair the place where that team plays?<\/li>\n<li>The Cubs and related properties (including Wrigley) were already exempt from the Tribune&#8217;s bankruptcy proceedings, as were Zell&#8217;s personal holdings, meaning the team could finance anything it wanted without municipal backing anyway.<\/li>\n<li>Wrigley Field has been paid off for several decades, meaning Zell and the Tribune Co. already had room to negotiate rehab costs off the sale price of the ballpark.<\/li>\n<li>With the deal for the Cubs so far in motion, Zell wouldn&#8217;t be the one paying for the repairs anyway &#8211; so what could advance buyers know about this as well? How about Major League Baseball? Not to get too tin-foil happy here, but there&#8217;s a chance this tangential anecdote in the indictment goes farther than we&#8217;re hearing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So what do we really have? We have a billionaire who doesn&#8217;t need the money talking about a state-financed stadium deal that was allegedly off the table to a guy who ought to know he&#8217;s being watched.<\/p>\n<p>All together now: what the hell is going on here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once again, it&#8217;s never really about the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[18,24,159,76,91],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}