It's a Sign

So it’s game day and a guy decides to put a Cubs sign in his yard. He grabs his favorite Blue Banner and plants it in front of his house. People are walking past on their way to Wrigley and he’s exchanging pleasantries with the passersby. Finally a guys stops and says “hope no zoning guys come by here.”

Huh? What the bleep? Well it turns out that there's a law on the books in Chicago which states that certain yard signs can be no larger than 1 ft. x 1 ft. Period.

Now imagine that instead of that guy, it’s the Ricketts family. The front yard is Wrigley Field. And the sign they want to put up is roughly the size of the state of Iowa. Oh and by the way, it’s a sign for Toyota. All of which means lots of hours will be spent with the Zoning Department. And the Building Department. And the Landmark Department. But they’re probably used to all that red tape since they somehow managed to get through it all before just to stick a monument to Captain Morgan on the front the ballpark, which totally dwarfs Harry Caray’s.

It might occur to the casual observer that beyond the mandatory bureaucratic cast of thousands, one little group not mentioned anywhere in this whole process is none other than the fans. Of course they’re not in the same league as Toyota, who is willing to pay $2.5 million for their thousand-acre sign. All this kind of makes you wonder what would happen if some day Mickey Ds wanted to pay $50 or $100 million. Would we see Big Macs instead of brats and the Cubs wearing Ronald McDonald clown suites instead of uni’s for home games? Hey everything has its price.

Thing is, maybe the Ricketts have been great for the Cubs. But they now own something that’s priceless— namely 100 years of Wrigley tradition. Knowing that the Cubs & Wrigley Field are inseparable, it would be nice to know that there’s a real respect for the integrity of both.

I’m just a lowly Cubs fan and can’t match those millions of dollars to sell cars over the Cubs. But I can offer some free marketing focus group-of-one research results: (as Jimmie would say) What’s on my mind at this moment isn’t the burning Prius in the parking lot, it’s the Cubbies in my Wrigley Field.