I love this commercial. It features a lot of the things I loved most about my first trip to Wrigley. The things I loved back in 1981 when my idea of advanced baseball wisdom was the fact that Ivan DeJesus wasn't pronounced I-vuhn de-JEE-zus. The scoreboard changed by hand. The brilliant colors. The flags. The ivy. Harry Caray. He was real then, not a statue, and there were no light standards protruding from the Wrigley Field rooftop. But at that time, I had no idea who the players were. Honestly, at my first Cubs game, my familiarity with the game (and our seats) was so poor, I wasn't even sure where the infield was. It didn't matter. Just being there was enough to make the experience, the Wrigley Field experience, a religious conversion of sorts.
I hate this commercial. Like the other facets of the Chicago Cubs 2010 marketing campaign, not a single player makes an appearance. It's all ivy and blue skies and icons. It tells
Spitting in the face of the ancient wisdom that tells us those who don't learn from failed Jack Black movies are doomed to repeat them, the Cubs' crack marketing staff has settled on the slogan, "Year 1" for the 2010 season. Requisite eternal optimism aside, the moves the Cubs have made this winter seem less like the foundation of a new beginning and more like the premise of The Neverending Story III: Escape from Fantasia.
I understand what they're trying to do here. There's a new owner in town. The ill-fated decisions leading up to 2009 have been virtually undone. There is no curse. The Cubs care about this year, not the 101 championship-free seasons that have preceded it.
It seemed like a perfectly magical moment for Ryan Theriot--he had just driven in one of the biggest runs of his life to complete a dramatic 8-7 comeback against former teammates Kerry Wood and Mark DeRosa and the visiting Cleveland Indians. Little did Theriot realize that almost all of the players who mobbed him in celebration would be former teammates less than a year later. Milton Bradley. Jake Fox. Reed Johnson. Rich Harden. (I can't tell if the Aarons Miles and Heilman are included in that picture.) And even though Theriot hasn't joined them in the ex-Cub club, he may feel like he's on the outside looking in after losing his arbitration hearing.
The unofficial theme of the 2010 season has been clubhouse chemistry, and not the kind that Jose Canseco used to inject into his teammates' buttocks. So it seems a bit odd that Jim Hendry and the Cubs would pick this offseason for his first venture into the arbitration process over a difference of $800,000. I can't rightly say what Theriot is thinking or feeling, because he's probably going to say all the right things. And people pretty much have their minds made up about whether he should be upset about losing his case or the fact that the Cubs allowed it to go to a hearing in the first place. He is, after all, getting a 520% raise from last year.
Whatever laws exist to curb scalping, they don't apply to the Cubs. (gothamist.com photo)
The Cubs have announced a plan to give fans who want to purchase single-game tickets in advance of next Friday's full-scale sale event at a 20% markup. Of course, they'll offer a 5% discount and a contrived Cubs.com shopping e-coupon to customers who use their MasterCard to buy tickets. So is this a rip-off? Are Cub fans the victims of corporate greed?
