The Uphill Battle Facing The Chicago Cubs, Ricketts Family

Chicago is a fantastic sports city, arguably the best in North America. As the third largest city in the United States and one that celebrates diversity as well as anywhere in the world, Chicago is home to a every major (and minor) professional sport there is in the USA.

There has been, and will continue to be, a debate about which teams "owns" Chicago. During the early part of the Twentieth Century, Chicago was a baseball town. The Cubs, of course, won consecutive World Series in the first decade of the century, and the White Sox played for a handful in the first 20 years.

But on the heels of the Black Sox scandal the city was open to new ideas and sports teams. In 1926 Chicago helped to found the National Hockey League with the birth of the Blackhawks. Some have jokingly said that the Hawks late owner Bill Wirtz locked the payroll at it's 1926 total until he passed away in 2007.

Chicago was also a college town. Believe it or not, the University of Illinois, though hours south in the state, was the most popular football team in the state for years. Even when they began, the Bears aspired to be as popular as the Illini; if you listen to the Bears' fight song ("You're the pride and joy of Illinois") and think about their colors (blue and orange), Illinois alumnus George Halas didn't stretch very far for a marketing scheme.

Since the 1950s, the town has seen some of the greatest players of their sports histories come through the Second City. From Stan Hack, Ernie Banks and Ryne Sandberg to Shoeless Joe Jackson, Luis Aparicio and Carlton Fisk, Chicago has had great baseball players.

The Bears have more Hall of Fame players than any other franchise, headlined by Sid Luckman, Gale Sayers, Mike Ditka, Dick Butkus and Walter Payton.

Before there was a Gretzky, there was the Golden Jet - Bobby Hull. And in case you weren't familiar with the Bulls history, a guy named Jordan won six NBA championships here in the 1990s.

While this has been a Hawks, Sox, Bears or Bulls town, for the past 15 years it has largely been considered a Cubs town. Perhaps because of a perceived media bias favoring the Cubs (remember, they were owned by the largest paper in town and had the first television deal with their own network), maybe because of superb marketing, or possibly because of the aesthetics of Wrigley Field (and the surround bars), the Cubs have seemed to have a foothold on the city for some years.

On Thursday, the Tribune Company announced that the Ricketts family has won the bidding to own the Chicago Cubs, bringing in a new era of baseball in Chicago.

As the Ricketts family takes the reigns on the North Side, there are some cracks in the might Cubs empire that need to be addressed.

• In 2005 the White Sox won the World Series, a stark contrast to the Cubs October embarrassments of the past decade.
• As you can see from the photo accompanying this story, the most powerful (and apparently popular) man on the planet, President Barack Obama, is a Sox fan.
• The loudest, and perhaps largest, crowd at Wrigley Field in the last five years was for a hockey game on New Year's Day (between the Hawks and Detroit Red Wings).
• The Hawks are the trendy, hot team in the NHL, with the leading All Star vote recipient among Western Conference forwards (2008 Rookie of the Year Patrick Kane).
• The Bears played in the Super Bowl just two years ago.
• The Bulls, though a miserably bad team, have hope in local hero and Number One overall draft pick Derrick Rose.

Meanwhile, the Cubs have had issues in October and are famously entering their second century without a championship.

How will the Ricketts family address the potential loss of their strong market share in Chicago? Only time will tell. As a Chicagoan, I am glad that a legitimate fan won the bidding and hope to see the Cubs continue to prosper. If the trends in the city continue upward in every sport, it will be a remarkable time to be a fan in Chicago.