Roundup

A quick thought on Game 1:

If you have another team's starting pitcher at the 98 pitch mark at the end of 5 innings, you CANNOT allow him to finish the 7th inning. Yesterday's game was last as much by the impatience of the hitters in the middle innings as it was by Carlos Zambrano's wildness.

Now, on to the wrap up of yesterday's news of the impending sale of the Cubs.

The Cubs are being sold because:

(Sam Zell) has an interest in baseball. For years, he has owned a minority interest in the White Sox. But the Cubs emerged as a part of the company that easily could be sold to raise cash.

"It made sense to sell what is a really valuable asset, and use the proceeds to pay down debt," FitzSimons said in an interview.

Paul Sullivan asks and answers a lot of questions, some of them fairly accurately, including:

Zell has not indicated he will sell the ballpark, which sits on a piece of real estate that has gone up substantially in value since Tribune Co. bought the team in 1981. The ballpark has landmark status and cannot be torn down, but Zell could keep it and lease it to new owners or allow them to build a new ballpark, which obviously would take several years to complete.

Derrek Lee only thought about the sale briefly:

"(Talk of the sale) had no bearing on the game," first baseman Derrek Lee said. "It was a news flash before the game that we probably thought about for 30 seconds."

But that 30 seconds lasted 30 minutesfor reporters:

The Cubs violated Major League Baseball's clubhouse access rules before the first game, letting the media in almost 30 minutes late while holding a team meeting on the prospective sale of Tribune Co.

I guess Lou Piniella has a player sleeping in meetings. Paging Kyle Farnsworth...

Adn the Trib ran a graphic a showing the team history under Trib management:

It's amazing the payroll jump in 1991. It's almost as if the team spent money that year to make up for a drop in attendance the year before. Boycotts don't work, eh?