New owners, new talent, same old Chicago Cubs.
Once again playing their own worst enemy, the Cubs’ ground crew failed to properly deploy the tarp when a downpour halted their game against the San Francisco Giants. That left the field unplayable, giving the Cubs a rain-shortened win that held up after the Giants protested to resume play later.
This kind of incompetence is not new at Wrigley Field. Given the foibles of the players and front office, why should the grounds crew be any different? Why this happened, though, is worth noting.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, 25 grounds crew members were initially on hand, but club management sent 10 of them home earlier in the day. The move was part of a “wide-ranging reorganisation” to keep staff from working 130 hours per month, thus avoiding having to pay into the employees’ health-care plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
This betrays ownership’s penny-wise, pound-foolish mindset. The Ricketts family, who bought the team in 2009, have an estimated net worth of billions of dollars, and the Cubs were baseball’s most profitable team last year, according to Forbes magazine. Why are they willing to risk public humiliation and hurting potential play-off teams such as the Giants in order to save a few thousand dollars? Are they trying to do this reclamation project on the cheap?
Perhaps the Ricketts hope to claim a religious exemption from the ACA. After all, what are the Cubs if not high priests in the Holy Church of Perpetual Defeat?
pfreelend@#thenational.ae
