Gammons: Wrigley Field Is A 'Dump'
CHICAGO (WSCR) Due to the Chicago Cubs' struggles on the field, coupled with falling attendance, the Ricketts family has almost no "honeymoon" period to their ownership of the franchise. Two years in, it's clear the organization needs a lot of improvement.
"The problem that [Tom Ricketts] has, and the Ricketts family has a serious issue, is they're going to have to understand it's not only rebuilding personnel," Peter Gammons, of the MLB Network, said on the Mully and Hanley Show. "They got to make that ballpark livable, it's a dump, Wrigley Field. They're going to have to spent $200-and-something million on re-renovating Wrigley Field, do what the Boston owners did with Fenway Park. And the investment is far greater than, I think, maybe they realize. That the amount of work that Wrigley Field needs is, I mean, there's a ton of money that has to go into rebuilding that."
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The Ricketts family would likely be able to handle the issues with the aging ballpark, if that was their own problem. But at 25-36, the Cubs have the third worst record in baseball, and things are progressively getting worse.
"So they've got it on both ways," Gammons said. "You know, they have to figure out: 'OK, we're assuming unmovable contracts in [Alfonso] Soriano, [Carlos] Zambrano, a couple of other guys, and we have to invest somewhere between $100 and $250 million in the ballpark.' And that's a lot of investment, but the Cubs are a gold mine and they are one of the three or four national teams, but at the same time, they require a lot of work."
