Steve Stone was on WSCR earlier today and observed that while the Cubs are spending $95 Mil. on payroll this year, the St. Louis Cardinals are only spending $78 Mil. Stone further pointed out that the Cubs the past few years have consistently outspent the Cardinals, yet the Cardinals have just as consistently outpaced the Cubs in the Wins column.

Stone also pointed out that despite this, the big shots at the Tribune Corp. seem mighty satisfied with how they have run things with the Cubs so much so that everyone in team mgmt. & coaching staff who want to stay on has already been re-upped or is in the process of being re-upped. He also said that its a done deal with Baker's extension and its only a matter of time until its announced.

Finally, Stone also pointed out that once the Marlins series is all over, none of the teams that the Cubs are to play between now and the All-Star Game break are what you could call "soft teams." This means that if Cub fans think that the last few weeks have been particularly rough, they have not seen anything.

And so it goes for Cubs fans..............................................

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Source:

http://suntimes.com/output/sneed/cst-nws...

Here's what female gossip columnist Michael Sneed reported a few days ago about the real priorities of top Cubs mgmt.:

Sneed hears top Chicago Cubs executives Andy McPhail and Jim Hendry berated Chicago Tribune sports editor Dan McGrath and Cubs beat writer Paul Sullivan over what they felt was the paper's unfairly critical coverage of the team. The expletive-laced tongue-lashing supposedly took place last week at Wrigley Field, according to a source.

Source:

http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribun...

The Official Tribune Response:

OK, so let’s look at what happened between MacPhail/Hendry and the Chicago Tribune. They were unhappy with the way the Tribune was covering the Cubs. So they wanted to express those feelings to the sports editor and his reporter.

This happens all the time. Bill Adee, the former Sun-Times sports editor now with the Tribune, said it occurs often enough that to him it isn’t even news. John Cherwa, the former sports head at the Tribune, said he twice had meetings with management of Chicago sports teams (not the Cubs). And phone calls -- from team employees at every level from PR people all the way up to the top -- are commonplace; part of the job, John said.

My Take:

Its disheartening to see that the first priority of the mgmt. of the Chicago Cubs is not the fact that the team is headed towards last place in the NL Central (the gap between the Cubs and the Pirates has been narrowing the last few weeks), but rather the way that the flagship newspaper of the company that owns the Cubs has been covering the debacle.

Then again, the way that this team has been run over the years of the Tribune ownership, its not especially surprising.