Can Ricketts Find His Balls?

You know any chance I have to break into Bill Walton, I’m all over it. So, when I make the overstatement that this has been the shortest summer in Chicago history, I’m not just quoting one of the most unintentional funny people alive. It has been entirely too short and October will be here before you can say, “of course Soriano swung at a 58 foot off speed pitch.” Seriously, watching Aramis Ramirez run to 1st base after a week grounder to 3rd feels longer than this summer has. It’s almost as depressing and sad as Tom Ricketts’ ownership tenure has been thus far.

When he took over control of the biggest joke in sports, he sounded like a savvy man with a vision and a plan for what he wanted the baseball side of his operation to look like. I remember his introductory press conference, and came away extremely impressed with how he was going to go about reconstructing his new toy going forward.When we get to playoff time, not only will it be another season that doesn’t include the Cubs, it will mark the two year anniversary of the when they were given a schmuck of an owner. Only in Bud Selig’s world can a franchise be given a hand picked owner who dawdles like Ricketts does.

Silly me for believing words without action. It’s amazing to me how a supposed lifelong Cubs fan can take over the team and not have the balls to clean house and carry out his initial plan. If it were me, they wouldn’t have put the name plate on my office door by the time I fired Jim Hendry and Crane Kenney.

Do you remember when Ari Gold wrote “get the fuck out” on a dry erase board when he fired one of his slacker agents in an Entourage episode? If I had just taken control of a team that was saddled with hideous contracts that Hendry negotiated, I would have gone all Ari on the baseball dinosaur.

Therein lies the Flubbies number one problem. Ricketts let Hendry smooth talk his way into being retained last off-season, and the recent 7 game winning streak (that means absolutely nothing by the way) is giving Cubs fans nausea that Michael McCaskey 2.0 will again fall for Hendry’s bullshit.

Any real Cubs fan didn’t buy the 24-13 finish under Mike Quade last year, and they damn sure won’t fall for it again. I’d love to see Ricketts squirm and stumble his way through a press conference explaining how and why he is bringing Kenney, Hendry, & Quade back. Even if Quade is fired, how can he let Hendry pick another manager? That will be skipper #4 that Hendry would be picking.

Ricketts has wasted two years of his ownership tenure because he is petrified of making the big but needed decision. It is soooooo Chicago to be given a new owner that is incapable of telling someone to “get the fuck out” like Ari did. Does he understand that his reputation is taking an ass beating through this? What’s worse is that he might be choosing feelings over doing what’s right for his investment. Super. Hopefully, when other teams are making noise in the playoffs, Ricketts will have found his balls and, finally, carry out his vision for the future. I have my doubts.