Instant Karma

For the longest time, I thought Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox had the title of Biggest Jerk Owner in Chicago all to himself, but I stand corrected.  No, it doesn’t go to the McCaskeys now; they’ve always been incompetent.  Jerry, take an Uber on up to Clark and Addison to present the Ricketts family with an award they’ve worked so hard to wrest from you.

I don’t know exactly when things went south on the North Side, sometime after the 2016 World Series’ parade, probably.  Ever since then, the family and front office have been working overtime to burn through the goodwill that championship earned them.  Start with the Ricketts.  All those kids are related to old man Joe, a bigot of a human being, if there ever was one.  We’re not like him, all the younger Ricketts swear, which may or may not be true.  Either way, though, they sure do act like rich people, the kind who want your money to become part of theirs.

Exhibit A, Wrigleyville.  Talk about playing hardball, look at the war waged against the erstwhile independent rooftop owners across the street from the ballpark on Sheffield Avenue; I mean, they could have waited those folks out and bought them out one by one.  Nope.  War it was, and victory they won, if not the hearts and souls of fans and small-business people.

As for Wrigleyville itself, the area makes the parking-lot desolation around Guaranteed Rate Whatever look benign in comparison.  At least at GRW, you know going in you’re going to get shaken down when it comes to concessions because the mall was designed to be self-contained.  Wrigleyville has the appearance of a neighborhood but the same function as GRW.  The Ricketts may not own everything around the park, but they all but set the prices and buy up land for development that has the effect— intended or unintended, you be the judge—of raising property taxes on other businesses so they have little choice but to gouge fans who stop in for their food and drink.

And Heaven forbid the Ricketts don’t get their way.  They didn’t get to close down Clark Street on game days the way they wanted and had a snit that has yet to abate.  The area alderman didn’t do their bidding, so they ran candidates against him, but he won.  Not everyone bought into the notion that what’s good for the Ricketts of Wrigley is good for the 44^th Ward of Chicago.

And not everyone buys into the notion that team chairman Tom Ricketts has been peddling since last offseason, that the team budget is at its ceiling.  The Cubs rake in money like the Yankees but spend it as though they’re the White Sox.  That’ll turn off the fan base sooner than later.  Oh, we can’t afford to go after a free agent like Gerrit Cole.  Oh, the luxury tax will kill us.  Oh, we have to consider trading relatively young stars like Kris Bryant and Willson Contreras.

That last part is the karma starting to happen.  Theo Epstein and company played games with Kris Bryant’s service time.  Bryant filed a grievance that will either make him a free agent sooner or look for a new home once his time with the Cubs is done.  On top of that miscue, the Cubs’ minor-league system hasn’t been producing MLB-ready young talent, which is unlike Epstein.

Maybe he fell under the spell of the Ricketts.  That’s how bad karma works.