Seriously? Now Cubs like Gillick?

Suddenly, Pat Gillick is all the rumor and all the rage.

Just one question: Where ya been, Tom Ricketts?

Seriously, two years since taking over the team, three years since winning the bid, more than four years since the Cubs were put up for auction, and five years since it was common knowledge that the Cubs would be sold, Ricketts is getting around to considering a real baseball man to help run the show.

I couldn’t possibly tell you how many times in those five years — whether in person, in print or on radio — I have begged the new owner to consider Pat Gillick, and his name was followed closely by the likes of Paul Beeston, Stan Kasten, John Schuerholz and several others.

At various times, all have been available, and throughout all this time Ricketts has said it’s unnecessary.

Yet again, I offered him a list as late as a month ago, when instead Ricketts gave us the infamous, “I’ve never bought into the (idea) that I should have a baseball guy to watch my baseball guy and his baseball guys. Then what do you get, a baseball guy to watch the baseball guy who’s watching your baseball guys?”

Sends a chill through you, doesn’t it?

Now, Gillick will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this weekend, and perhaps that’s how the Cubs owners found out how to find him.

If Ricketts finally does approach Gillick, it will hardly be Gillick’s first flirtation with the Cubs.

Cubs boss Stan Cook got permission to speak with Gillick in the fall of 1991 after everyone on the North Side had been fired.

Cook offered Gillick everything, including president and CEO, but Gillick was too smart to bite, sensing the mess that was the meddling ownership at the time, and stayed in Toronto where he’d win the next two World Series as GM of the Blue Jays.

The Cubs hired Larry Himes as GM and three years later everyone was fired again before Jim Dowdle took over the Cubs and brought in Andy MacPhail as president and CEO.

That is the correct model, even if success was not easy to find for MacPhail and Co. It’s a team owner who stays engaged but in the back seat, allowing a team president to drive the bus and hire a GM, who puts in place a baseball operation.

MacPhail was 41 when he got here and full of energy, more than willing to take on all tasks and run an organization from top to bottom. He put in place many of the good things that currently exist with the franchise, and upgraded from ancient to modern some of the most basic necessities.

Gillick will be 74 in a few weeks, and with each year the Cubs have waited to talk to him, they’ve not only wasted time and Cubs fans’ money, but they’ve also wasted an opportunity to get Gillick in here when he might have been willing to do more.

At this point, for all we know Ricketts may want Gillick around as an experienced sounding board for GM Jim Hendry, while keeping everything else the same.

We do know Gillick’s not going to generally manage anymore — he retired from that life after his 2008 World Series title in Philly — but that was never the point anyway.

What the Cubs need is a baseball man as team president, and if not Gillick maybe they can talk Kasten into spending a few years here while the Cubs get their shop in order.

Schuerholz (Atlanta) and Beeston (Toronto) are currently team presidents, but perhaps their teams would let them go if they also got from the Cubs the title of CEO, a boatload of money and a chance to rebuild a franchise that baseball considers historically significant.

In any case, it’s borderline hysterical that Gillick is suddenly a hot topic.

For some of us, Gillick — or someone like him — is hardly a new notion.

For Tom Ricketts, it should have been his very first.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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