Wrigley Field All-Star Game Is A Tribute To Tom Ricketts' Vision

Forbes

5 hours ago

Given the flood of technicolor advertising displayed at baseball parks, including patches on jerseys and batting helmets, it was fitting Major League Baseball staged a game in the infield at Bristol Motor Speedway, where Richard Petty won 15 races.
In its desire to capture all possible revenue streams, MLB has followed NASCAR's lead in almost every way. But it was less than 20 years ago when the Chicago Cubs caught grief for daring to place four words on the outfield gates at Wrigley Field.
Before Opening Day in 2007, the Cubs' unpopular owners, the Tribune Company, agreed to sell sponsorship on the two dark green gates to Under Armour — 7-foot by 12-foot logos to appear between the ivy-covered outfield walls. For lifelong fans and baseball traditionalists, it was like painting a mustache onto the Mona Lisa.
Never mind that ownership had just followed the splashy managerial hire of Lou Piniella by investing in big-ticket free agents Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez, along with eight-figure deals for Ted Lilly, Jason Marquis and Mark DeRosa. Also that Wrigley, which was then entering its 94th year, was showing its age.
There was massive pushback in the media, which held the Cubs to a standard that didn't exist elsewhere.
'There is just something inherently wrong about ads being placed among the ivy at Wrigley Field as part of some lame marketing ploy,' wrote one blogger in one of the milder public critiques.
Under Armour wasn't surprised by the outcry against the ads.
'The Cubs will tell you what happened when they played the first night games,' then-Under Armour Vice President Steve Battista told the Los Angeles Times. 'But it's all part of putting a winner on the field.'
The Cubs didn't play night games at their home park until 1988, and a vocal segment of their fans seemed to like it that way. It's safe to say broadcasters weren't as happy, which is why the Cubs were threatened with losing home-field advantage had they advanced to the World Series in '84.
Yellow 'No Lights' T-shirts were sold outside Wrigley throughout much of the 1980s before Tribune Company installed lights.
As a reward for adding lights, then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth selected the Cubs to host the 1990 All-Star Game. They were unsuccessful in lobbying for another one until last Friday, when Rob Manfred formally announced that Wrigley will host the flagship event in 2027.
It's recognition for how well owner Tom Ricketts — who bought the Cubs from then-Tribune Company owner Sam Zell in 2009 — brought the franchise and its ancient ballpark into the modern era of professional sports.
If you work in baseball or baseball media, you're often asked about your favorite ballparks. There is no one right answer, as MLB currently has more delightful stadiums than blah ones, but if the safest answer is Fenway Park for a night game and Wrigley for a day game.
Both have been massively renovated and updated by the current ownership groups, and both have seen the end of historic championship droughts. There's something magical about the energy of Fenway at night — it's hard to miss the lights on in the middle of the city — and so promising about strolling into Wrigley for a day game, with the anticipation of a good time at the ballpark and an evening in the city afterward.
Given the presence of landmark commissions and hard-to-please neighbors (and city aldermen), common sense improvements at Wrigley Field have always been made despite kicking and screaming. The Cubs were sued by rooftop operators when they announced plans to install long-overdue video boards, which arrived just in time for the trip to the NLCS in 2015.
Eight miles to the south, the White Sox annually updated their ballpark — which opened in 1991 — at taxpayer expense through the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority while Ricketts had to fight for approval to spend his own money for improvements to Wrigley.
Ricketts said in a 2020 interview his ownership group had spent about $740 million on ballpark renovations, which had originally been projected at $500 million.
'No one could have known in advance the level of the issues we were going to find,' Ricketts told the Athletic's Patrick Mooney and other beat writers. 'We were also very much in the mindset of: 'Let's measure twice, cut once. Let's do it right.' We intend to own the team for the next generation or two. We want to make sure that the person that follows me in this chair doesn't have to worry about the same problems that we had to deal with. So we spent all the money to make sure Wrigley Field was not only an improvement for the fans but something that's structurally viable for the next hundred years.'
While fans were frustrated with a lull in spending for player payrolls after the run to the 2016 World Series, Ricketts denied stadium expenses impacted the baseball budget.
'We financed (renovations),' he said. 'One of the things we did was we sold pieces of the team. We paid for it by selling off assets, selling off equity in the team. That effectively covered the expenses that we didn't anticipate — that we could not have anticipated — early on.'
While heavily investing in the rooftop buildings beyond the outfield walls at Wrigley, Ricketts made a point of getting improvements outside the ballpark. Initially that meant better lighting and sidewalks for security but will soon include the installation of security bollards along the streets that ring the stadium.
A public-private funding measure passed in June that will allocate an estimated $32 million for security measures. That was the final hurdle the Cubs had to clear before MLB allowed them to host an All-Star Game.
Because baseball's collective bargaining agreement ends in 2026, there's fear of an extended player lockout leading into the '27 season, however. Ricketts understands that as well as anyone, of course, but for the moment let him enjoy a feeling of accomplishment for not only preserving but improving Wrigley Field. He deserves it.