Team Ricketts: 'We are here to win'

CHICAGO — The taverns are empty. The ivy on the outfield wall is brown. And the Chicago Cubs are long gone from Wrigley Field — home for Halloween yet again after failing to win baseball's ultimate prize for the 101st straight year.

Just another oh-so-typical October day in Wrigleyville, until four native Omahans arrive at the stadium, amble up to a temporary stage and proceed to say crazy things into a microphone.

“We're gonna win the World Series,” Tom Ricketts says.

“I'm sure there are going to be more Cubs fans in Omaha once we win the World Series,” says his older brother, Pete Ricketts.

“There's no curse,” Tom Ricketts adds. “If anybody on our team thinks he's cursed, we'll move him to a less accursed team.”

If the Ricketts siblings sound like diehard Cubs fans, that's because they are.

The Ricketts quartet — Pete, Tom, Todd and sister Laura — has spent sun-drenched afternoons together in the right-field bleachers. They've downed Old Style and debated the strength of Andre Dawson's throwing arm.

But they've gone and done something that regular Bleacher Bums cannot.

They have sold a big chunk of the Omaha-based financial empire their father built. They've spent three years haggling with lawyers, bankers and more lawyers.

And now, they own a legendary ballpark, the famous C logo and contractual rights to the less-than-beloved Milton Bradley.

They own a wildly popular baseball franchise whose championship hopes are less reliable — and less frequent — than Halley's Comet.

“We saw the opportunity to create a family business,” Pete Ricketts said. “The new Ricketts family business is the Cubs.”

The Rickettses, led by Tom, chairman of the new Cubs' board, spent the better part of a Friday morning press conference saying things that surely will endear them to fans.

They promised to build a championship baseball team from the ground up, do it the right way with great scouts, a great minor-league system, a great staff.

They promised to keep Wrigley Field as is, only better.

Maybe next year they'll clean it up a little, add a concession stand here or an advertising banner there. Eventually, Tom Ricketts said, they'll try to remodel the way the Boston Red Sox refurbished Fenway Park — another legendary stadium that got a face-lift without losing its old, wrinkled charm.

They even promised to spend a little more money on players next year, although they acknowledged that a small payroll increase would come with a small hike in ticket prices.

And they kept repeating that World Series pledge until you wondered whether Cubs general manager Jim Hendry wanted to spring from his chair and clamp his hands over the new owners' mouths.

Instead, Hendry — himself a former Omahan — sat quietly.

Before the press conference, he found Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, and pumped his hand. “Congratulations, congratulations,” Hendry said. “This is great. This is great.”

The story of how the Rickettses got to this day is every bit as incredible as the idea of Cubs players pouring champagne on each other to celebrate a World Series title.

It began in 1982, when Pete Ricketts, the eldest son, moved from Omaha to attend the University of Chicago.

In Omaha, his dad had coached Pete's Little League team. In Chicago, Pete rediscovered his love for the game out in the Wrigley bleachers, a love he shared with Tom and later Laura and Todd as each eventually came to Chicago for college.

By the late 1980s Tom and Pete lived together in an apartment over a Wrigleyville bar.

“The best memories I have are of going down there on a Sunday morning, buying a newspaper, and sitting in the bleachers waiting for the game,” Pete Ricketts said. “Gates opened at 11 a.m. Beer sales started at noon. Game at 1. It was great.”

Tom Ricketts had a life-altering experience in those same bleachers.

Waiting for a game to begin, he and his three siblings struck up a conversation with a group of nearby fans. Turned out they were from Omaha, too. Tom got the phone number of one of those fans and asked her on a date.

The rest is holy matrimony: Tom and Cece Ricketts now have five children.

“That's true, by the way,” said Laura Ricketts on Friday. “All of us were here.”

The Rickettses went about their separate lives, with the eldest son living in Omaha and the three others staking out careers in and around Chicago.

Pete became an executive in the family brokerage company and three years ago unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson. Tom built an investment banking firm. Laura is a lawyer and spends time advocating for gay and lesbian rights. Todd, the youngest, owns a bicycle shop and manages his investments.

Then, in 2006, Tom Ricketts got an inkling that the Tribune Co., longtime owners of the Cubs, might sell the team.

He casually brought up the idea to his father and eldest brother during a car ride to a Cornhusker football game.

“We were like, ‘Go ahead, crazy guy,'” Pete Ricketts recalled.

Go ahead, Tom did.

Soon enough, he'd hired financial managers and lawyers skilled in the art of buying sports franchises. Slowly, Tom Ricketts and his negotiating team worked their way toward an official bid. Slowly, the other family members started believing they might actually own the Chicago Cubs.

A turning point came when the Rickettses rented three of the rooftops across from Wrigley Field and held a giant family gathering during a Cubs game.

The sun was out. The stands were packed. And Tom Ricketts stood with his father, pointed to Wrigley and said, “This is what I'm talking about.”

Once a skeptic, Joe Ricketts got fully behind the family's Cubs bid.

The actual purchase of the team — seemingly all but finalized in January — turned out to be as rocky as the typical Cubs season. The recession made it difficult to borrow money. The family and the Tribune Co., the group selling the team, argued over the value of broadcast rights.

In June, the Tribune Co. invited another potential buyer back into the negotiations, kick-starting another bidding war. For weeks it looked like a New York investor, not the Nebraska family, would end up with the team.

But this story, unlike every Cubs season since 1908, does have a happy ending: The Ricketts family and the Tribune Co. eventually agreed on an $845 million price tag.

And the four Ricketts siblings stepped in front of TV cameras Friday, more than willing to say what every Cubs fan wants to hear.

“Everybody needs to know that we are here for the long term,” Tom Ricketts said into the microphone. “We are here to win.”

Contact the writer:

444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com