This Just In...

Some rich guy is buying the Tribune Company, which apparently means that the Cubs will be spun off after this season, like some failed corporate division. This is news. This is big.
Mark Cuban wants to buy the Cubs.
I love the Red Sox. I am passionate about the Cardinals and the Braves. I deeply enjoy the Giants (due to Jon Miller's work). But if Cuban buys the Cubs, all bets are off.
If you've been in a cave, Cuban is the boy wonder who invented some internet audio streaming system while sitting around in his dorm room during college, while most of the rest of us were drunk at the fraternity house. Cuban and his partner, whose name I cannot recall, sold their invention to some larger .com during the boom for about a bazillion dollars. The partner must have bought a remote South Pacific island and disappeared. Cuban invested a miniscule amount of his serendipity in the then-woeful Dallas Mavericks. You know, the Mavericks? Who employed Roy Tarpley, the Steve Howe of the NBA. The Mavs, who signed some skinny German kid, Dark...Dork...maybe Dirk something. The Mavs, with cranky old Don Nelson coaching them and trading away Steve Nash.
Yeah, that'd be the Mavericks, who lost the NBA Finals to the Miami Wades last Spring, and are far and away the best team in the league this year. Because of their owner. He's smart. He has learned. Fast.
Cuban is also crazy. He yells at referees. He challenges David Stern. He tells the truth. He couldn't care less about fines for all of the above, because, again, he has half a bazillion dollars.
And Avery Johnson. And Dirk Nowitski. And Josh Howard, Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, Erick Dampier and Devin Harris. And, in all likelihood, an NBA title in his near future.
I want Cuban in baseball. I want Cuban in Chicago. I want Cuban ruling Wrigley. I want Cuban to include his friend, Bill Murray, in his ownership group. Why? Have you seen the Pebble Beach Golf Tournament? The ghost of Bill Veeck lives in Bill Murray's soul (via Veeck's son, Mike, a Murray partner in the St. Paul Saints of the Northern League). Baseball needs that spirit. And I want Cuban to make friends with Steve Stone, and bring him back in whatever role Stoney wants. Baseball needs passion and intelligence like Steve Stone's. And I don't ever want to hear of another stuffed suit on a high floor of the Tribune Building making any decision that impacts Wrigleyville, the Cubs, or the longest-suffering fans in the world (even before the Red Sox and White Sox ended their droughts).
Let Mark Do It.
That's the only campaign slogan I want to hear this year. Sell the Cubs to Cuban. He will know what to do with them. And if he doesn't, he'll learn. And it will be fun. And the Cubs will win a World Series. Because Cuban is the most dangerous thing in sports ownership: a passionate fan with half a bazillion dollars. I love him. He's me, and all of us, with bucks. He's just the guy to entrust with a public trust like the Cubs and their Friendly Confines.