1) The unbelievable can happen. You can’t predict anything anymore. The Chicago Cubs won the world series, and did so in dramatic fashion: by coming back from a 3 games-to-1 deficit to Cleveland.
2) The Gods have mixed feelings about Cleveland. The city’s fortune, sportswise, has swung widely this year. The Cleveland Cavaliers won the national basketball association series after being down 3 games-to-1 this summer. Five months later Cleveland’s baseball team looked poised to win the World Series, but then it all fell apart and there was a rain delay.
What does it all mean? To quote newyorker dot com writer Jelani Cobb on Twitter, God likes a head fake.
3) A foolish fan and his money are soon parted. People spent ridiculous amounts of money to sit near the diamond. StubHub reports that the ticket price for Game 7 box seats along the first base line was nearly twenty five thousand dollars. $25,000! For one game.
In our new sharing and digital economy, people are willing to overpay for quote “experiences.” And Overpaying for an authentic life experience is priceless.
4) The Courtship between the tech sector and sports ownership continues unabashedly. In 2009, the Chicago Cubs were bought by the Ricketts family, whose fortune stems from the Internet. The Ricketts’ family trust owns the team and all four siblings and both parents share interest in the team.
For what it’s worth, son Tom Ricketts runs the Chicago Cubs, not his father, Joe Ricketts.
5) And that Ricketts family–they have money and influence and like to use it. Forbes estimates the Ricketts’s family wealth to be one billion dollars, and placed the family at #371 on the Forbes 400 list.[2] The family plays and pays on both sides of the aisle, when it comes to political donations.
6) Baseball umpires are a dying breed. Those soft, round, graying men harken back to a halcyon era where size mattered. When a sign of being a “man” was having a beer belly. Luckily, here in Wisconsin, bellying up to the bar is not yet a metaphor. Those umps are welcome to have a locally owned brew anytime they want here in the Dairyland. Those umps look like the kinds of fellas you would want to have a beer with.
You know who else I want to have a beer with, besides the umps? Theo Epstein. He is the president of Baseball operations for the Cubs, and the mastermind of their season. Oh, and he may have created a serious long-term contender in the Cubs.
7) No I in Team; but there’s an I in capitalism. Theo Epstein, smart man that he is, negotiated a new contract for himself in September. Tom Ricketts, the smart owner that he is, extended Epstein contract. The five-year extension could be worth $10 million dollars a year.