Oct 27, 2009 9:53 pm US/Central
Sports Franchise Owners Offer Advice To Rickettses
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Welcome to the club! That's what the owners of some of Chicago's biggest sports teams are saying to the Ricketts family. Pete, Tom, Laura and Todd Ricketts were born in Nebraska, but have been Cubs fans all their lives. Now they own the team. CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports that the owners of Chicago's other big franchises have some advice for the Ricketts family.
Call it a series of "Dear Tom" letters to Tom Ricketts, the new Cubs chairman, and his brothers and sister, who'll run a team which has changed hands only twice in the last 90 years. In a city where fans' moods mirror the fortunes of their teams.
Rule number 1 from Blackhawks owner Ricky Wirtz.
"Well, winning helps," said Wirtz.
He may be the most popular owner in Chicago after taking over for his late father, Bill Wirtz, two years ago.
The McCaskey family was the toast of the town when the Bears last won football's Superbowl in 1986.
"Wives would come up to me, and tell me how much it meant to their family, their household, that the Bears were winning again. It just made life so much better," said Mike McCaskey, whose family has owned the Bears since they started playing 90 years ago.
But losing, like the Bears did Sunday, can be pretty tough on owners.
As Jerry Colangelo, the Chicago Heights native who now owns the NBA Phoenix Suns, said: "The highs are never as high as the lows are low."
Colangelo won a World Series when his expansion Arizona Diamondbacks were just four years old. His latest triumph, rebuilding the U.S. Olympic Basketball Program, is chronicled in a new book out this week. He thought about bidding for the Cubs, too.
"The Chicago Cubs have one of the great brands in professional sports," Colangelo said, "and great loyalty on the part of their fans. So it's kind of a new owner's dream to walk into a situation like that."
"There's nothing quite so unifying for the city of Chicago," McCaskey said, "as a Chicago Bears win or doing well, and the same thing would be true for the Cubs."
McCaskey's grandfather, George Hallas, founded the team in 1920, turning to the Cubs for a place to play, even a name for his new franchise.
"He was been born on North Side," McCaskey said, "grew up a lifelong Cubs fan, and said 'it's pretty clear, if the baseball players are Cubs, the football players have to be Bears.'"
But Chicago teams and owners, all with the same goal, have more in common than fields and names. They also offer similar advice.
So what's the one thing every Chicago sports franchise owner needs to know?
"He needs to know the fans are the heart of everything that happens," McCaskey said.
"Just being accessible to the fans in some way, in some form," said Wirtz.
"Be passionate about what you believe in," Colangelo said. "Go for it, and don't be afraid to fail."
White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf politely said he didn't think it was right to appear to be giving advice to his new cross-town rivals.
CBS 2 did spend a lot of time with the Ricketts family. Tom took us on a tour of his old Wrigleyville neighborhood, and bantered with his brothers and sister about how the deal for the Cubs went down.
You can see our revealing profile of the new Cubs owners on CBS 2 News at 10 p.m. Friday.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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