Tim Cowlishaw

Archive | Blog | E-mail

A long weekend in Chicago proved to be informative. The only thing the city's sports fans are more in love with than their red-hot Cubbies is the notion of Mark Cuban riding into town to save their beloved North Side franchise.

Whether it was columnists, talk show hosts and callers, random fans or the Cubs themselves, none of them could get enough of the idea of Cuban buying their team.

The trouble with this, for starters, is that it is almost certain not to happen. While Cuban has expressed interest in buying the team by submitting an application, Major League Baseball has too many old school owners with zero interest in bringing 21st century ideas to the game.

These guys couldn't handle Charlie Finley and his white shoes and orange baseballs a generation ago. No way will they tolerate being lectured on the game's outdated nature and its irrelevance to this country's youth by Cuban.

But since nothing is impossible, let's pretend that Cuban actually will be allowed to buy the Cubs. There are two very good reasons that the good folks of Chicago are exaggerating his ability to end the team's 99-year World Series drought.

While I think Cuban definitely has been a good owner for the Mavericks, it's easy right now to overstate that case. In 2007, he looks good by default.

The Stars have won one playoff series since 2002, the Cowboys haven't won a playoff game since the 1996 season and the Rangers never have won a playoff series.

So the Mavericks' success is pretty much all fans around here have to get excited about.

The second reason is that when Cuban bought the team, most of the things that eventually turned the franchise into a winner were in place. Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and Michael Finley were on the roster. Don Nelson was on the bench.

Now changes have been made in eight years, and you can certainly give Cuban credit for Avery Johnson. Letting Nash go isn't going to earn him a lot of owner points.

I'm not sure how much credit Cuban personally deserves for drafting Josh Howard or re-signing Jerry Stackhouse, but he does spend money beyond the luxury tax, so applaud him for that.

But the Cubs' problem, historically, has not been an unwillingness to spend money. Even if it was during part of this century of losing, it's not now. They guaranteed about $300 million in contracts during the off-season, $136 million alone to ex-Ranger Alfonso Soriano.

Besides, spending on free agents or paying top dollar to re-sign your own players is not as central to success in baseball as it is in the NBA. In recent years, Florida, the Chicago White Sox and the Angels (before Arte Moreno was tossing millions around) won World Series without top-ranked payrolls.

Superstars win titles in the NBA. Organizations and pitching staffs win World Series.

If spending money is the best thing that Cuban has done for the Mavericks, the second best has been to create a fan-friendly environment that keeps the seats filled at American Airlines Center – even when it's February and the Bobcats are in town.

What exactly is he going to do to make "The Friendly Confines" of Wrigley Field more fan-friendly? It already provides the best experience in baseball (it beats Fenway if for no other reason because the surrounding neighborhood is better), and the Cubs are going to draw about 3.1 million fans this season.

They are playing to 98 percent capacity, and even Cuban won't be able to fill that last two percent, putting warm bodies into ice-cold Wrigley seats in April.

Cuban hasn't said much on this topic, so we don't know what effect his interest in the Cubs would have on his ownership of the Mavericks.

Maybe he feels this basketball team has maxed out and is slipping away from a title rather than closing in on one. I don't know. That didn't seem to be his feeling from talking to him the night of the NBA draft.

There's no question that while winning a championship with the Mavericks would be huge for this city, the owner who wins a World Series with the Cubs will be the greater hero.

The Mavericks opened the doors at Reunion Arena in 1980. At that time, Cubs fans already had been waiting 72 years to win a World Series.

I don't doubt that if he could pull this off, Cuban would dive headfirst into baseball and learn everything that he could and figure out some of the right buttons to push.

He would have to. That's because the two major things we can give him credit for with the Mavericks already are in place with the Cubs.