Cry Me a River

Somebody stop Cubs’ Chairman Tom Ricketts from opening up his mouth again. The rich are never more irritating than when they cry poor. Ricketts was quoted in today’s Tribune about Juan Soto’s $765 million contract with the Mets. “I mean, our family paid $800 million for a perpetuity [ownership] of the Cubs. When you think about it [Soto’s contract], it’s kind of crazy.” What Ricketts forgot to say is that Forbes puts the value of his family’s purchase at $4.2 billion, a better than 500 percent increase. That’s without signing Soto or anyone else for that kind of money. At the same time, Ricketts sounded dumbfounded about how the Dodgers are throwing money around. “Nothing I can do about it,” sighed the rich man, who again forgot to note that all that crazy spending—think Shohei Ohtani, Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto—hasn’t affected franchise value. Forbes puts it at $5.45 billion. The Mets come in at $3 billion. If Ricketts is looking for a fig leaf, maybe it’s that the valuations were done last March, and they’ve all gone done since, but I doubt it. Apparently, Ricketts has never heard the saying that, sometimes, to make money you have to spend money. That, or he just doesn’t believe it.