by Kent Sterling
Clark’s first 48 hours of existence has been difficult. There has been almost no positive press for the new Chicago Cubs mascot, and now he has been shown nude from the waist down on Comcast Sports Net Mid-Atlantic.
Check out the video roughly 13-seconds in. The image remains on screen for over :10, and the anchor calls attention to the weirdness. The image was copied and pasted from Deadspin.
Sadly, the Cubs continue to see nothing wrong with launching a mascot as the onfield product circles the toilet.
That meetings are being held at Wrigley Field where engaging young fans through efforts unrelated to winning is a pathetic truth that Clark’s existence has outed. The only more damning reason to believe that the Cubs are run by clowns is their starting lineup.
“ Sadly, the Cubs continue to see nothing wrong with launching a mascot as the infield product circles the toilet. ”
I’d have to think Baseball Ops had nothing to do with this decision. In fact, the majority of mascot R & D was outsourced to a firm in MN that specializes in this work (and has developed mascots for other MLB teams). Looking back, the Cubs PR department probably should have bypassed the “artist rendering” and went straight with bringing “Clark” out in costume at a presser.
The introduction of a mascot will have zero impact on the “infield” product. I’m not sure it will have much impact on the outfield product either.
The new front office has taken the farm system from perennially being ranked in the 25-30 range into a consensus top 5 system. They have also avoided signing any long-term FA contracts that will hamper them in a few years when some of these prospects start to hit the majors (half of them will fail, the other half don’t need to be blocked by Soriano v2.0).
You seem to take issue with anything / everything the Cubs do, so I’m wondering what you would do if you were in Tom Ricketts seat?
The infield business was a regrettable autocorrect error that I didn’t catch. That aside, it’s not the reality, but the appearance of priorities out of whack that is troubling. Who gives a damn about a mascot as long as the team has a chance to win? The Cubs are a bad baseball team with zero interest in improving in the short term. They continue to sell tickets for exorbitant prices.
What would I do if I were Ricketts? First, I would address my haircut. This isn’t 1964, and I’m not auditioning for “Mad Men”, so it’s time to update.
Second, I would visit Ireland for a good long time. With Ricketts level resources, I might never leave.
Third, I would fire Crane Kenney, who continues to exert unearned influence on the franchise.
Fourth, three years ago I would have hired Pat Gillick as team president, if he could have been lured out of retirement. Gillick is a great baseball executive with a hall of fame track record of building winning teams.
Fifth, I would be honest about the prospects for winning, and never would have allowed myself to engage in the lunacy of threatening to leave Wrigley Field if the renovation wasn’t approved. There is no way the Cubs will voluntarily walk away from its only legitimate asset.
Sixth, I would lower ticket prices with the explanation that the prices will return to current levels as we believe the team has a chance to compete.
Seventh, I would stop selling an improved farm system as a reason to buy 2014 tickets. By the way, any idiot could rebuild a farm system by strip mining the major league roster.
Other than winning over most of the Chicago media, there have been exactly no successes of the Ricketts ownership. The Cubs are terrible, without prospects of any improvement until 2016.
The canard of needing half a generation to rebuild a farm system and to start to see improvement at the major league level is an insult to the intellect of Cubs fans everywhere, and they aren’t an easy group to insult.
“Who gives a damn about a mascot as long as the team has a chance to win? The Cubs are a bad baseball team with zero interest in improving in the short term.”
Exactly – this mascot business should be a non-story. Good overall idea with slightly flawed execution. Will have zero impact on the record next year and may make a few kids smile.
And I don’t really know why they should try to improve to a 78 win team versus a 72 win team. The new CBA places a lucrative incentive on finishing near the bottom of the standings when in rebuild mode.
“Third, I would fire Crane Kenney, who continues to exert unearned influence on the franchise.”
Agree on this. Crane’s prospects of inflicting damage is limited on the Business Ops side, but he’s never impressed me.
Gillick was a very popular name amongst Cubs fans during the “search” and I personally would have loved to see him or Bobby Cox hired as some sort of Executive Consultant. I’m still on board with what Theo and Jed are doing.
“ never would have allowed myself to engage in the lunacy of threatening to leave Wrigley Field if the renovation wasn’t approved ”
I’ve followed the Wrigley restoration saga pretty closely and I think ownership has been pretty patient and civil during the process. They aren’t asking for any taxpayer $$ (unheard of in Chicago) and are making contributions to Wrigleyville and Chicago charities, etc to make up for reduction of sidewalk space. Sure, they are asking for a federal tax exemption, but that is something they (or any American) are entitled to since Wrigley Field was designated with Landmark status. I don’t recall ownership explicitly threatening to leave Wrigley…I think Ricketts said they may be forced to explore other options if the City wouldn’t budge on certain items at one luncheon.
The rooftop battle is a mess….and another reason Crane should be fired. It will continue to be a mess until the rooftop owners decide they’d rather work towards an agreement that makes their business viable after the current deal runs out instead of only worrying about the next few years.
“I would lower ticket prices”
I suppose that would be nice, but what’s the incentive? The demand is still there (not at the same levels as the past, but something a lot of teams dream of). There are plenty of cheap tickets on the secondary markets for those looking for a deal. Ownership is running a business, not a charity. Is there precedent of other large market teams lowering prices during down years?
“I would stop selling an improved farm system as a reason to buy 2014 tickets”
Gotta sell something. Theo / Jed have been pretty honest in their interviews….saying the team is in rebuild mode and that fans will get a chance to see that evolve. Not a great sales pitch, but anyone who doesn’t feel that’s worth buying a ticket for can watch from home (or not at all).
“ exactly no successes of the Ricketts ownership ”
Not sure I can buy that. Away from Chicago they’ve financed and opened a very well received Dominican baseball complex and secured support for a new spring training facility in Mesa. They’ve made some subtle improvements at Wrigley – new playing surface, somewhat improved concession options, etc. To me the biggest thing they’ve done is open up the checkbook for the draft and international signings. Under the Trib the Cubs would never have spent $12M on the 2011 draft before caps were implemented in 2012. They also never would have dished out $30M for Jorge Solar. I’m aware a very small percentage of any team’s minor league system will make it to the majors, but 3-4 home grown impact players is what any championship caliber team needs. Even the high dollar Yankee teams won with a core of homegrown talent (Jeter, Posada, B Williams, Mo, Pettitte, etc).
“half a generation to rebuild a farm system and to start to see improvement at the major league level is an insult”
I’d love to see more immediate results, but look at what they inherited. Not only a roster full of aging bums, but a farm system full of years of underslot draft picks that never had a shot to reach the majors. Hendry traded the only guys with value away to the Rays to get Garza. Sure, they could sign big name FAs to improve the major league team slightly, but they’d lose their first round draft pick (assuming the guy was offered arb) to do so thus never escaping the vicious cycle. I can’t really think of a guy that actually hit the FA market in the last few years that I would have loved for the Cubs to sign. They would be paying a guy $15-25M/yr to watch him decline…been there, done that.
Wow…I wrote way too much. Need to go refill my glass with Cubbie kool-aid.
One thing we definitely agree about is that Hendry was a joke, and crippled the team with bad deals.
The difficulty for the Cubs is that they need to catch the Cardinals who are rolling – not just at the major league level but throughout their farm system. They won the 2011 World Series, and followed that up with five picks in the top 60 of the following June Draft. The were able to allow Carlos Beltran to walk because they have Matt Adams and Oscar Tavares. Not sure how the Cubs can possibly catch them.
You are right that the Cubs spending money in the Dominican is a smart thing to do, but I’ll wait to anoint that a success until it bears fruit at the major league level.
The Cards are one of the (if not the) model organization in baseball right now. The Cubs aren’t going to get to that level by only counting on guys from the farm to make an impact in the majors or only relying on the right free agents being available at the right time, then being able to sign them.
The Cubs aren’t going to catch the Cards this year, but by continuing to grow the farm system and hopefully graduating a few guys in the next year or so to the major league squad and then making a big FA signing or trade to fill holes, they can close the gap.
The Cubs are going to have to get very lucky to ever catch the Cardinals. The front office in St. Louis is very effective on all levels, and John Mozeliak might be the best GM in baseball.
The front office of the Cubs smells like a group trying to kick the ball far enough down the road to justify their next set of contracts. The have the media sold on the next two years being as bad as the previous two, and that gets Theo to year five of his five-year deal before being held accountable for any level of success.
In today’s Sun-Timesm Gordon Wittenmyer writes about the Cubs chances to land Tanaka. Those chances are zero because they don’t want him, although the bidding allows the Cubs some latitude in explaining their lack of action through this offseason, and that was likely the strategy from the beginning.