Gawker: chicago cubs

Unlovable Loser Sells Lovable Losers

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:56:03 EDT

The bankrupt Tribune Co. has finally reached a deal to sell the Chicago Cubs, reportedly for close to $900 million. Only, ah, $11 billion more until Sam Zell has that debt knocked out! [Pic: AP]

Newspaper Companies Selling Everything Not Nailed Down

Hamilton Nolan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:53:01 EST

The New York Times Co. is selling its building! The Tribune Co. is selling its baseball team! Anything else you would like to buy from a newspaper company? Just make them an offer!

Item: The NYT Co. is in "advanced negotiations" for a sale-leaseback deal of its headquarters, in which the company sells the 19 floors that it occupies in its fancy new building, then stays there while paying rent, with an option to buy the space back in ten years. The deal should net the company $225 mil, which it will use to pay debt, which may or may not prove to be the equivalent of setting the deed to the building on fire, just for fun.

Item: Tribune Co. picked the Ricketts family of financiers as the lucky winning bidders to buy the Chicago Cubs, because they offered $900 million, and much of it is in cash, and the Tribune Co. could really use cold hard cash right now, because it is bankrupt.

Item: And there are still plenty of actual newspapers for sale. Bid now! Anything at all!

Mouthy Mark Cuban Charged With Insider Trading

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:12:03 EST

Tech billionaire, anger-driven blogger, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has just been charged with insider trading by the SEC. The (civil, not criminal) charges center on an incident in 2004 in which Cuban allegedly got early insider information about a company he had an ownership stake in, and used that info to avoid a loss of $750,000. We have no idea whether the charges are true, but if they are, it's a foolish business move by a guy who's already been fined more than twice that much by the NBA just for running his mouth. Though it is possible to formulate a wild conspiracy theory about this!

Mark Cuban would be just another rich guy except for his penchant for saying whatever pops into his head. He constantly criticizes the NBA, which is a no-no by owners. The flipside is he gets great PR. Although half of it is bad! Oh well. He also has a blog that is sometimes hilarious and not well thought out a bit.

At the moment, Cuban wants to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., which needs to sell the storied baseball franchise to raise cash, which it will burn in a vain attempt to save its newspapers. The idea of Cuban—a maverick—owning the Cubs absolutely kills traditionalists, who think he would totally ruin all the great Chicago traditions, such as having ivy on the outfield walls and losing constantly.

So is it possible that there was some shady conspiracy that caused this allegation from 2004 to surface just in time to (likely) torpedo any chance Cuban has of buying the Cubs? You would have to be a crazy conspiracy freak to believe this, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, so please don't sue us.

Mark Cuban still in the running to buy the Cubs with Yahoo's money

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:40:00 EDT

Mark Cuban, the boisterous fellow who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1998 and later bought the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, now wants to own the Chicago Cubs. He's submitted a bid which the the Chicago Tribune reports has made it through a first round of eliminations. Don't get your hopes up, Mark: Former Deadspin editor Will Leitch wrote here in January that he'll never get the Cubs, or any other baseball team, because he's far too nuevo rico for the stuffy Major League Baseball owners' club.

In our world of social networking and high-definition television, Mark Cuban is the 1,000-pound gorilla in every room. But in the boardrooms of professional sports, he's just this punk Internet new money kid who doesn't understand how proper decorum and deals get made. And Mark Cuban is almost 50 years old! He's old enough to be Mark Zuckerberg's dad!