“It Was Wrigley, Not Some Goat, Who Cursed the Cubs”
That was the title of the last column that Mike Royko ever wrote. March 21st, 1997.
His epitomical work seems like a good epitaph today.
Mike Royko had opinions – about a lot of things – and he was of the opinion that P.K. Wrigley, who owned The Cubs until 1977 when they were sold to the Tribune Company, was responsible for a 22 year skid that began in 1947.
Royko wrote:
…all that could have been overcome in 1947 – two years after the Cubs’ last World Series [appearance] and the end of the war.
That was when Branch Rickey of the
And later continues:
Had Wrigley followed Rickey’s lead, he could instantly have a competitive team. And depending on how many black players he could have tolerated, maybe a great team.
He didn’t. His players made their feelings clear, voting not to play if other teams boycotted Robinson. And his team’s front office wouldn’t listen to those who urged them to sign black players.
It wasn’t a momentary hesitation. It was not until September 1953 – nearly seven full seasons after Robinson arrived – that Wrigley signed two black players.
Mike Royko was born September 19th, 1932, and penned his first newspaper column for the anti-Machine Chicago Daily News on September 6th, 1963. Readers took to him instantly. Royko’s career spanned four decades and three major dailies, through the death of the Chicago Daily News, the sale of the Chicago Sun-Times to Rupert Murdoch, and the unlikely union between Royko and a reformed Chicago Tribune at the end of his career.
For all of those years, Royko was the voice, the reason, the conscience of
Some one ought to name September 19th, 2008 in Mike Royko’s honor, and every year thereafter. He should be required reading in every
The Chicago Cubs will likely be under new ownership sometime soon. Instead of dwelling on whose responsible for the last 30 years of World Series drought, what would you give a new owner to bring a World Series Championship to the Northside?
2 comments:
Wrigley died a few years before the team was purchased by the Tribune in 1981. The sale of the Cubs came in part to provide cash for Wrigley's heirs to pay off a double Estate Tax whammy (much of Wrigley's estate was left to his wife, who died not long after, leaving their children with a tax liability and a cash-flow problem).
Property passing to the spouse isn't taxed unless she was specifically excluded from the income from the Cubs in this case.
So if they had a cash flow problem it was from the single round of estate tax imposed after she died -- not a double tax.
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