Chicago Cubs Rumors: 10 Announcements Tom Ricketts Could Make to Thrill Fans

If you have any idea what the Chicago Cubs are up to, please let them know. The weeks since the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline have been fraught with rumors about the team's intentions for both the near and the long term.

Carlos Zambrano has been one major distraction; Jim Hendry has been another. Through it all, Cubs fans have been waiting for a shoe they are not even sure will drop. There seems to be a vacuum into which some action must rush, but so far, not much has changed.

But owner Tom Ricketts may be about to shake things up. He will make public statements "of major interest to Cubs fans" in the next 10 days, according to ESPN Chicago. The exact nature of these remarks is unknown of course, but two hypotheses have widely circulated: 

1. Ricketts intends to fire Hendry or announce an intention to do so at season's end.

2. He has a plan in place to make major renovations to either Wrigley Field or Memorial Stadium in Boise, where the Cubs' short-season A-ball team plays. He toured the farm system just last week and could be ready to take action.

If Ricketts does part ways with Hendry, it will be big news. That also seems unlikely, though, given recent reports that the ownership group hopes to keep Hendry into 2012.

So what will Ricketts say? And when? His time is his own, but here are 10 ways he could endear himself to Cubs fans when he sits down at an open microphone.

1. Fire Hendry

For better or worse, public opinion has swung so far in this direction that Hendry's ouster would touch off a citywide celebration.

For all his recent foibles, Hendry has done some good lately, but it may be that no GM should stay in one place more than a decade, lest they get stuck in the mud of axioms and absolutes.

Ricketts needs to be ready, though. Firing Hendry means having his replacement handy, and that had better be someone significant.

2. Replace Crane Kenney With Pat Gillick

Not only does Pat Gillick have experience building a winner, but he has done it the Cubs way. Gillick's on-the-run reconfiguration of the 1993 Blue Jays helped the team he had built in 1992 repeat with only a few returning centerpieces.

Kenney has been around since the Tribune era, and plenty of people were surprised when Ricketts retained Kenney upon assuming control of the team. Getting rid of him would signal a true commitment to both winning and building a franchise from the ground up.

Kenney was never willing to sacrifice attendance for the sake of long-term improvements; Gillick might be more so.

3. Release Carlos Zambrano and Alfonso Soriano

For whatever reason, Carlos Zambrano lacks the mental makeup to play big-league baseball any longer. Soriano has no such block, but the fans treat him just as badly.

Though eating the remaining $70-plus million on the two men's contracts would be a poor baseball decision, it would be a fantastic PR move.

4. Announce Another Statue or Three

A new Cubs statue would have to depict Ryne Sandberg, who probably does not rightfully deserve that honor or at least not yet.

But if there's one thing Cubs fans have almost universally affirmed in recent years, it's their passion for a good statue.

Heck, maybe an homage to Rick Sutcliffe, Mark Grace, Greg Maddux or Andre Dawson would fly as well. A statue series would guarantee Ricketts months of good press, right?

5. Name Ryne Sandberg Manager

If Cubs fans favored Sandberg for the vacant managerial job last autumn, they downright demand it now. Mike Quade's rookie season has been a nightmare.

A move like this would be suicide in the clubhouse and a miserable demonstration of organizational philosophy, but in the hysteria that losing precipitates in baseball these days, it might actually be popular.

6. Plans to Build a New Stadium in Boise

Most fans would care little about this announcement, but it'd be an expenditure at least, and it would represent a follow-through on the promise of committing resources to talent acquisition and player development that Ricketts made when he took over.

The team already made huge strides there by drafting and signing amateurs aggressively this summer, but giving those new recruits a better place to play on their way to the show would hurt nothing.

7. A New Approach to the Wrigley Triangle Project

The team began surveys of neighbors near Wrigley Field this week, hoping to determine what those constituents would like to see from the decade-old dream of an expansion to Wrigley Field.

There seems to be room for compromise, and that spirit must extend beyond the plans themselves.

Ricketts tried, but will not succeed in securing public funding for this project. He could become a hero to the taxpayers, as well as a smarter businessman, by simply giving in and announcing an intention to build a scaled-back version of the needed addition at his own expense.

8. Reduce Ticket Prices for 2012

The Cubs' new model for ticket pricing is a good one. Games are stratified based on anticipated demand, and so games that people will almost certainly attend no matter what (Cardinals, White Sox, Brewers, interleague games on weekends, etc.) are obscenely expensive and those that might risk disinterest (visits from Houston, Florida, San Diego, etc.) are delightfully cheap. 

But the system is broken because it's all predicated on the team not being terrible. Ricketts could consistently sell out again, if only he would allow the market to do its work and deflate tickets prices next season in lockstep with the decreased demand that Cubs fans have shown this summer.

9. Extend Starlin Castro

This would probably be more a Hendry announcement than one for Ricketts to handle, but a long-term deal for Castro—perhaps modeled on the one Justin Upton of Arizona signed at a similar stage in his career two years ago—would be a wildly popular way to gain cost certainty on the team's best player.

It may be that the team should wait Castro out a bit and see if he will need to move to third base within the next few years. But a deal buying out Castro through 2017 or so would garner much praise from Cubs fans desperate for some sort of hope.

10. Announce Intent to Sell Team to Mark Cuban

Ricketts has not been an especially revolutionary presence for the Cubs, although it's impossible to deny the progress he has made in Latin America and in strengthening the lower levels of the Cubs' farm system.

Cubs fans, though, are hungry for more. In the context formed from over a century of losing, Ricketts' patience and modest money are an ill fit.

MLB would never approve the deal anyway; it's a pipe dream. But if Mark Cuban ran the Cubs, the expansion would already be in progress at Clark and Addison, and the team would have a much clearer chance of signing one of the three elite talents on the free-agent market this winter.

Ricketts is not a failure, but he's no success yet, and Mark Cuban would have been a better fit for this city and this team.