Chicago Cubs: new sports broadcast network a political pawn?

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The Chicago Cubs organization is not officially linked with one political party or another. But recent moves by ownership makes me wonder if that’s changing.

It’s no big secret that most of the Chicago Cubs owners are conservative and tend to support the Republican Party. Many Cubs fans watched the last election and saw members of the Ricketts family endorsing, stumping and campaigning for now-President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Personally, this was not such a revelation to me as it is well-known the Ricketts family is wealthy and the president has longstanding relationships from his time in the private sector. So it was not surprising that the Ricketts were on the Trump train to Make America Great Again.

I, like many fans, didn’t think much of it. The Ricketts have the right to support whoever they want in the political arena and if Trump was their man, so be it. No big deal. Cubs fans who supported Trump were overjoyed their new owners were backing their man. But I think most baseball fans would agree with the following: when I go to a ballgame, I don’t want to get solicited to join a political party or vote a certain way.

The most fans can tolerate at a ball game is the “get out and vote campaign”. This campaign runs very neutrally saying you can vote for whoever you’d like – just vote. That’s it. That’s the extent of politics that any real fan of the game wants to hear when they go to the ballpark.