Sox must be enjoying Cubs' mess

White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf must be stifling giggles over the Cubs' current mess.

Let's face it: The Cubs are a sitcom come true for anyone associated with the Sox.

Think in terms of what Charlie Sheen's implosion means to Ashton Kutcher.

The Cubs are losing on the field. Today's tender elbow is a prelude to tomorrow's groin pull. Wrigley Field is full of empty seats, uneaten hot dogs and dusty souvenirs.

And now the Cubs are exposed as one of nine franchises that aren't in compliance with Major League Baseball's debt guidelines.

The Cubs are in no danger of going out of business. Nor will the Ricketts family have to sell part of the club to meet payroll.

What the debt situation means is that it'll be awhile before the Ricketts can operate like the freewheeling, big spending, major market, boffo-brand juggernaut that the Cubs should be.

The Ricketts' purchase of the Cubs was pocked with potholes from the start, considering the cost was $845 million for what included a decaying Wrigley Field, bad team and incurable curse.

So it's no surprise that the Ricketts own what they paid for: A 103-year losing streak, players with absurd contracts, a money pit of a ballpark, lagging revenues and overall hard times in a hard economy.

Conspiracy theorists might even wonder whether MLB power broker Reinsdorf could have orchestrated the Cubs' sale any better for the White Sox if he tried.

OK, so he probably didn't try. But Jerry Reinsdorf is too wise a businessman to not have recognized the challenges facing the Ricketts.

Sox management has been annoyed for decades that their team generally played better baseball while the Cubs generally remained more popular.

This is baseball and this is business and these two organizations are competing for Chicago supremacy in both.

Saturday morning on WMVP radio's “Talking Baseball” with hosts Bruce Levine and Fred Huebner, Levine mentioned that the show promotes ticket sales for both the Sox and Cubs.

“They don't need any help, they don't need any help,” Sox senior vice president/general manager Kenny Williams said of the Cubs. “They just open the gates.”

Williams chuckled as if he were half joking, though he might have been just quarter joking or one-tenth joking.

Sox employees won't say so out loud but they're probably encouraged by the Cubs' struggles.

The Ricketts family was expected to give the Cubs a booster shot of adrenaline and momentum, sort of like Tribune Company ownership did in the early 1980s.

The Trib hired impatiently aggressive general manager Dallas Green, spent wildly for players and won a division title within three years.

Three decades later indications are that the Cubs' process will take longer under the patiently deliberate Ricketts family.

Club chairman Tom Ricketts has to figure out how to renovate Wrigley Field, stimulate revenues, develop a farm system, pay down debt and restore consumer confidence.

In the meantime the White Sox – even though they aren't exactly breaking attendance records – have an opportunity to make inroads in what has been a Cubs' town.

Even if Jerry Reinsdorf didn't help engineer this current Cubs' predicament, he should be enjoying it.