The Cubs Experience

By the standards of Cub bandwagondom I’m a relative neophyte. I didn’t fully embrace the bear until I moved to the windy city in the fall of 2002.

I was raised being put to bed to the sounds of Jack Buck calling Cardinal games on the radio – and, being 3-7 years old, mistook Jack’s habit of referring to Ozzie Smith simply as Ozzie lead me to believe one of my favorite Muppet, Fozzie Bear, was playing shortstop. You can imagine my horror when my dad took me to my first Cardinal game and the greatest defensive shortstop of our lifetime and a first-ballot Hall of Famer was playing short instead of a Muppet wearing a neckerchief.

After that disappointment, my father’s friend with the Royals arranged to plant me formally on the late 1980s Royals bandwagon. And these weren’t your current Royals. George Brett, Brett Sabrehagen, Bo Jackson and host of talented players kept these guys competitive through the early 1990s. But then the Royals turned south… and the strike of 1994 led me to abandon baseball for the better part of the next 10 years.

When I moved to Wrigleyville in the fall of 2002 I couldn’t help but get swept up in the Cubs. The team was relatively young, and had a pitching staff that was touted as the next version of the 1990 Braves staffs… but ended up more like the over-hyped 1990s Mets staff.

Yes it’s the bars. Yes it’s the bleachers. Yes it’s the characters. But it’s also a connection to the past. The organ, the manual scoreboard, the grass* and a stadium in the middle of the city. It’s a connection to our past, our youth and a time when things didn’t seem as complicated (in hindsight).

*For those of you born in the 1980s this is a bigger deal than you think. I was raised on the cookie cutter stadiums of Busch, Three Rivers, Riverfront and nameless other major league parks that were exactly the same as each other. And if you think the new Field Turf is bad, go to your nearest mini-golf course and imagine playing baseball on that stuff. That’s baseball in the 1980s.

I could spend 10,000 words explaining the 10 years of frustration I’ve felt as a Cubs fan. Baker running pitchers into the ground. A team so mentally weak that they attempt to blame a five run collapse on a fan reaching for a foul ball that even a young Mo Alou might not have caught. A free agent spending spree that led the Cubs to outbid themselves and saddle the team with horrible back loaded contracts* that may even outlive the Obama administration.

* Guess who is getting a raise in 2011. If you said Fukudome, Smardzjia and Grabow you win. Double points if you said that Grabow’s contract almost doubles in value.

So it’s nice when an article comes along that sums it up for me. About a month ago the Tribune Cubs beat writer Paul Sullivan turned in a typical piece – slightly irreverent with a dose of cynicism bubbling just beneath the surface. But this wasn’t an article on Derrick Lee’s slowing bat or Zambrano’s latest tantrum, it was about a series of off-the-field decisions that all happened to come down in one epic week in June. The article is about art and music. But art and music as defined by the Cubs organization.

On the art side, the Cubs installed a 12 foot statue of a Mac ‘n Cheese noodle at the behest, err check writing, of Kraft. But it’s best to let Cubs’ Marketing EVP Wally Hayward* explain.

"Hayward is hoping the Noodle can become Wrigleyville's version of 'the Bean,' the Millennium Park sculpture that has become an iconic part of Chicago. "We were generating nothing, and found a creative way to introduce it, and it's a great way for Kraft to create buzz," Hayward said."

* May or may not be related to Tony Hayward. But given this asinine explanation I’m inclined to lean towards a blood relation.
OK, if you want to expand revenue and put advertisements outside the stadium fine. But don’t turn around and refer to your revenue stream as “art.” I am not what you call an art connoisseur; if you were to come up with a way to measure art appreciation in the same way they measure reading levels, you could say that I appreciate art at a 4th grade level. Sure, I can look at Michelangelo’s David and understand its absolute excellence, but I still think appreciation for Picasso is largely based on taking LSD and listening to the Allman Brothers. And when I look at the friggin’ noodle I see advertising… not art. The Bean is art. That Eye on Van Buren and State is creepy art. The noodle is a revenue stream... and a poorly conceived one as that.

This is the rub of being a Cubs fan. The Chicago Cubs have found innovative ways to squeeze more revenue out of the team. They have an agreement with the rooftops… they’ve expanded in stadium advertising… they started their own scalper agency… they do cruises and Spring Training trips. They are truly innovative to the point that I wonder if they are going to start charging season ticket holders for not showing up. But for all that innovation they still fail to see the value of on-base percentage versus batting average

So what on-the-field changes does a thoroughly mediocre Cubs team try to make? A commitment to players under the age of 35? Working counts for walks? Throwing strikes? How about letting players come out to recorded music instead of the organ? You guessed it; the problem with the Cubs all these years is the friggin’ organ. You have to admit, it does make sense… if you can’t tell the difference between correlation and causation. The only two things that have been there for 101 years are the organ and the scoreboard. And you don’t save money by tearing down a scoreboard, but you do save money by making your organist go part-time.

"The ads aren't the only changes. The Cubs have also stopped playing organ music to introduce their players when they come to the plate. Now they have taped music, like most other ballparks. Koyie Hill, for instance was introduced with his choice of Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" on Tuesday."

"The Cubs marketing department picked Alfonso Soriano's tune. "That motivates people when they go to home plate," Soriano said. "I'll wait to pick the perfect song, and I'll be excited when I go to the plate."
That’s the other thing. When your $136m underachieving left fielder needs music to get motivated you need to vastly overhaul your major league scouting function. But if you’re a member of the Cubs organization this probably just means you need to update your iPod playlist.

But I’m beyond giving up on asking for miracles like competence from a $136m player, drafting quality prospects or stop spending money on 35 year old players. At this point I’ll just settle for the Cubs to spring for a new sound system. Because if you think watching Soriano strikeout swinging to the musical stylings of C&C Music factory is bad, trying that same experience when the Cubs are using a 1948 sound system.