How many businesses in major cities are allowed to run their businesses fully as they please, though? And as for other major league teams, most of them are shadowy, elaborate corporate welfare schemes that exist virtually above all laws and jurisdictions--there's one just a few stops down the line--and so I guess all you can do is concede that you're not one of them and settle for the moral high ground of not being part of a big American problem.

Are the rooftops theft? In a sense, yes, more or less on the same level of scalping -- a practice which the Cubs engage in with themselves, let's not forget. So of course the Cubs are entitled to more than 17% of that. But they're part of the package now, like it or not, and the Cubs don't get to run roughshod over them any more than they do the stores that sell Cubs shirts or the restaurants that sell hot dogs and hamburgers, no matter how much Tommy Boy stamps his feet and says he's a real business and he should be the only one within eyesight of Wrigley Field.

I don't think there's any point in threatening anymore. It's an empty threat. It's always been an empty threat. Of all the baseball teams that have shaken down their cities by threatening to move, we've had one relocation in over forty years, and that was less a direct response to Montreal calling the Expos' bluff as it was good old Jeff Loria letting the team die a slow, disemboweled death. I mean, who'd pay them to build their billion-dollar Dan Bernstein wet dream of monopolistic baseball commerce, anyway? Not the state, not a city, and God knows they themselves don't have the money.

And like attendance would be an issue without the "neighborhood charm" if the Cubs were winning every year.

Many that is true, but an incomplete statement.

The victims are the American People and the Republic itself.

I'm not so much sticking up for the Ricketts family as I am fed up with the political games that they are being forced to play. They own the Cubs. They own the building. No other team in MLB has to deal with the restrictions that they have to. Tom R put it really well when he said they are a business, not a museum.

I'm not saying I want the Cubs to leave Wrigley. Far from it (faaaaaaar from it). But the Alderman and his precious rooftop owners need to wake up and at least see the threat of the Cubs leaving or they will just continue to push the Cubs around. The rooftops were cute when it was 2 guys with a BBQ and lawn chairs or a girl and her dog (I have family members who did that back in the day). Now they are a multimillion dollar industry based completely off the, let's call it what it is, theft of somebody else's product. They don't have a leg to stand on other than the Alderman and his zoning laws. The fact that their latest offer was "here. We'll pay to put up advertising on our businesses and you can keep all the profits" shows that they know it and are scared. If at least the threat of leaving, like the Chariman did back in 1989, is out there I think there would be a quantum shift of attitude from Tunney and the rooftoop owners. If the Cubs left, the rooftops go belly up and Wrigleyville becomes Uptown. Biggie would be the expert on this side but I would bet property values in the area take a nosedive. Nobody wants to see the Cubs leave. But nobody is gonna let them run their business how they want until the threat is there.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

I don't think anyone would argue that they could stand to give more to the Cubs. But let's abandon this tack and talk about how putting giant billboards up in such a way as to block the rooftops in the first place would look really fucking ugly and shouldn't be done on a purely aesthetic basis. It's another slash to the golden goose. We don't want Wrigley to look like where the Mets play.

If those billboards are in the back of the ballpark, how much are you really looking at them?

They don't have a leg to stand on other than the Alderman and his zoning laws. .

If those billboards are in the back of the ballpark, how much are you really looking at them? You look in the direction of the field of play. The people that see the billboards are Television viewers. Are they going to detract slightly from the ballpark's appearance...probably. But if it brings in 10 million dollars or more a year and that money goes towards better players that allow the team a better chance to compete for a WS title, I'm okay with it. It's not gonna be any major change. How much does the Toyota sign really bother anyone Doesn't bother me.

The victims are the American People and the Republic itself.