Put baseball before profits

As a loyal Cubs fan, it truly sickens me to see what has happened to the team and especially to Wrigley Field. Since the purchase of the club, the Ricketts family has turned Wrigley into an even more commercialized and now generic ballpark.

I was not surprised by the ostentatious and hideous Toyota sign in left field; however, I was shocked and disgusted to hear booming pop-style music playing over the loudspeakers when Cubs players are introduced at bat instead of the traditional organ playing. Never in my life would I have imagined Wrigley would go the way of so many other ballparks by following this ugly trend. All that was special about Wrigley - minimal advertising, organ music, and the like - is eroding faster than the team's standing in the NL Central all in the name of revenue generation.

These changes would be welcome if they yielded a winning club, yet we continue to see mediocre play on the field while paying increasingly expensive ticket prices out-of-reach to the common fan. I'm sure more changes are coming to the once-Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field. The Ricketts are all about pumping as much money out the ballpark as possible, the fact that baseball is played there is secondary.

They have already alienated throngs of loyal fans in Arizona by talking about moving the spring training facility to Florida, and they are doing a great job of doing the same here in Chicago through their actions both on and off the field. I, for one, will not be attending any more games at Wrigley this season until a serious attitude adjustment takes place in the ownership and the front office. Maybe if the Ricketts' were hit in the pocketbook they would halt and reverse their greedy pursuits.

Steve Howard

Schaumburg