Cubs' Tribune era good or bad?

When the Tribune Co. bought the Cubs for $21.1 million in 1981, it was taking over a sleepy family business in an industry shut down by a historic players strike.

News accounts of the day noted that Tribune employees wore Cubs baseball caps as they worked, an image that would haunt the paper to this day as it has had to fend off accusations of editorial bias.

Although the final analysis of Tribune Co. ownership may be that it was a good "steward" of the franchise, it never won the big prize, and as such will be seen as a failure as it prepares to sell the team.

The Trib is prepared to sell the Cubs for about $900 million to the Ricketts family, which has won exclusive negotiating rights to the fabled franchise.

"The Tribune ownership was great as long as you were not a Cub fan," said Mike Murphy, the midday host at WSCR radio in Chicago and a longtime Cubs fan. "The baseball team was run with one rule in mind, and that was, 'Avoid risk at all costs.'"

Al Yellon, who runs the blog Bleed Cubbie Blue and who has been a longtime season-ticket holder in the bleachers, expressed a widely held opinion among many fans.

"When Tribune Company took over the Cubs in 1981, fans were hopeful, because the ownership under the Wrigleys had gone from benign neglect to embarrassing to pitiful," Yellon said in an e-mail. "And Tribco delivered - it took only three years to make the playoffs. Even though 1984 was an ultimate disappointment, hopes were still high.

"Unfortunately, they decided to focus more on profits than players and dismissed the smart Dallas Green rather than promote him. Instead, we got faceless suits, incompetent GMs and many more 90-plus loss seasons."

With the Tribune Co.'s reign coming to an end, here is a look at its legacy.

There is the good:

• Keeping Wrigley Field viable, including the installation of lights in 1988, without ruining its character.

• Hiring Harry Caray to broadcast their games after Caray clashed with the then-new owners of the White Sox.

• Establishing an annual fan convention that draws thousands of people in the dead of winter to talk baseball and meet Cubs, past and present.

• Becoming the first Cubs owners to break both the 2 million and 3 million marks in home attendance.

There is also the bad:

• Failing to get to the World Series and making the playoffs only seven times: 1984, 1989, 1998, 2003, 2007 and 2008.

• Taking until 2003-04 to attain back-to-back winning seasons.

• Hiring a successful baseball executive in Green in 1981 to begin "Building a New Tradition" only to force him out in 1987, setting the franchise back for years.

• Failing to use its deep pockets to fund player payroll to its full potential.

In 1980, the Cubs finished with a record of 64-98, putting them last in the National League East. They drew 1.2 million fans that year, and 565,000 fans in the strike-shortened season of 1981.

The Trib hired Green to run the baseball operations. One of Green's first moves was to obtain a young infielder from his former club, the Philadelphia Phillies. That infielder was Ryne Sandberg, and he helped Green's Cubs win the NL East in 1984.

All the while, the Tribune-run Cubs benefited from a few other factors. Trib boss Jim Dowdle had the foresight to hire Caray to be the principal TV announcer. WGN-TV was emerging as a national superstation, and Caray became a national sensation.

The area around Wrigley Field, now called "Wrigleyville," was transformed from a seedy neighborhood to a newly gentrified area with myriad restaurants, bars and rehabbed housing.

The Cubs finally cracked the 2 million mark in home attendance in 1984, but the good times were short-lived.

Green was forced out abruptly in 1987. He's been known to tell people that the Trib bosses "learned the lingo" of baseball and decided they didn't need him and his forceful personality any longer.

The club Green built won the NL East in 1989 with a young pitcher named Greg Maddux. But during the darkest and most chaotic period of the Trib's ownership, Maddux was allowed to get away after a Cy Young season of 1992, with GM Larry Himes and Trib boss Stanton Cook at the helm.

Better times seemed to be on the way when the Tribune Co. hired "boy wonder" Andy MacPhail, who had two world championships on his resume with the Minnesota Twins, to become president and CEO.

MacPhail's first move was to hire former pitcher Ed Lynch as general manager. Lynch had no previous executive experience, and MacPhail had to step in and serve as president and GM in 2000.

Under MacPhail's watch, the Cubs' bottom line grew fatter, and the Cubs expanded the fabled outfield bleachers to rave reviews and added "premium" seats behind home plate.

Although the Cubs won the wild card in 1998 and came within five outs of the World Series in 2003, the team under MacPhail could not get to the World Series, and MacPhail had to defend himself against charges that he wouldn't seek bigger payroll budgets even when Tribune Tower execs were willing to offer them.

MacPhail resigned at the end of a disastrous 2006 season in which the Cubs finished 66-96 and played before lots of empty seats (including in the bleachers) on many days late in the year.

"For too many years, the goal of Andy MacPhail was to create his own job security," Murphy said. "If the team won, that was a secondary benefit."

John McDonough, the marketing whiz behind the Cubs fan convention and successful promotions such as Beanie Babies, moved up to the presidency and immediately declared it the Cubs' goal to win the World Series.

Under McDonough and Trib liaison Crane Kenney, the Cubs spent unprecedented sums of money on players, including an eight-year, $136 million deal for left fielder Alfonso Soriano, a power hitter with some big holes in his game.

McDonough left for the Blackhawks after the Cubs won the first of two consecutive NL Central crowns in 2007, getting swept in the first round, a scene that would play itself out again in 2008, when the Cubs won 97 games.

So the Trib exits with a tidy profit, but no World Series ring.

"It's good to see the Tribune go," said Chuck Gitles, who runs the blog Ivy Chat. "I'm sure that a lot of past CEOs like Denis FitzSimons and Stanton Cook wanted to win. But ultimately they were responsible to stockholders. The big plus to private ownership is that a new owner can run the Cubs like a private yacht. It's their luxury item to show off and brag about.

"Who cares how much it costs to maintain? The Trib as an owner with stockholders always had to care about costs."

The Trib people vociferously will deny the charge they had no "passion," but it's one they may have to live with.

"All in all, Tribune leaves the Cubs better off than they found them, with a rabid and devoted fan base hungering to win," concluded Yellon. "Tom Ricketts could become a local hero if he devotes resources to winning, and has a little bit of luck."

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