David HaughSo I was enjoying a rare sunny Sunday when I got direct messaged by someone in the Chicago media asking if I had read David Haugh’s column today.

Consider Sunday ruined.

We long ago established that Haugh is an idiot, and a terrible columnist.  Days like today though, it sure looks like he’s worried we might forget that, so he goes out of his way to write something so wrong, and so naive, that unless he’s trying to get people to discredit him, you really almost have to feel sad for the guy.

If he really thinks any of this is true…well, God have mercy on his soul.

Unless Carlos Marmol gets involved, the Cubs still hope to close a deal with the city to renovate Wrigley Field by Monday’s home opener.

Hahahahaha!  Good one, because Marmol loves Wrigley the way it is, and he’s planning on asking for an injunction to stop the deal right?  What a scoop!  Oh, he means Marmol has blown a save this year, so he could somehow fuck up a business deal.

Assuming the agreement can overcome a late-inning scare, planned improvements at the venerable 99-year-old ballpark include a large video scoreboard in left field, a hotel and office building across the street and a parking garage at Clark and Grace. That also represents a good spot for a sign befitting the $500 million investment in the neighborhood, one that says: Welcome to Rickettsville.

Which, is right next to Haughsburg, welcoming home to waterheads all over the city.

Long after Mayor Rahm Emanuel returns to crises more likely to define his tenure and Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, backpedals his way back to angry rooftop owners, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts could emerge as the one who put progress ahead of profit in the best interests of Chicago.

Got to hand it to Haugh here, the guy clearly understands that this deal is going to cost the Rickettses hundreds of millions of dollars they could get somewhere else, but they’re so benevolent they are turning all of that down to keep Wrigley the beautiful little jewel of a ballpark it is, and most importantly, to keep the urinal troughs flowing!

Except of course, there are no hundreds of millions of dollars to get anywhere else, because there is no viable place to move the Cubs to even if the Ricketts wanted, because they’d have moved there before the ink dried on the sale papers in 2009 if there was one.

If Tunney had taken that same civic-minded spirit into the final phase of negotiations like a leader representing the many instead of the few, everybody would be shaking hands.

I’m not here to defend Tom Tunney, but some facts are sort of apparent.  One, for him the few are the many.  Most of the people in his ward who give a shit about the deal own a rooftop or a business near Wrigley, the rest, despite breathless writings to the opposite don’t give a shit.  Since the Cubs aren’t going to move…ever, Tunney can dig in without any real political cost.  Some version of this deal will get done, and if you’re running for re-election (which every politician always is) you make public shows that reinforce your base.  Tunney’s base doesn’t want to see dramatic changes that could impact them losing a single dollar that they already get.

If they eventually do, one day history will smile on the baseball executive who prides himself on being a man of the people taking the people’s needs as seriously as his own.

And that baseball executive still has not been born, and never will be.

Estimates say the project will create 2,000 jobs and generate $19 million in tax revenue alone, not to mention how new revenue streams and increased night games should improve the product on the field — which benefits everybody.

The first two numbers are Ricketts penned fiction, and the idea that more night games will cure the Cubs ills is laughable.  The reason the Ricketts want night games has nothing to do with on field performance, and everything to do with more 7 pm TV broadcasts.

Obviously, winning a World Series would create the legacy Ricketts cares about most. But being known as the guy who saved Wrigleyville from itself can only enhance his reputation.

Making money is what he cares about most, winning a World Series would be neato.

Consider that Ricketts easily could have responded to the constant special-interest meddling by returning the flirtation of Rosemont Mayor Brad Stephens.

If that Rosemont boondoggle had any chance of happening, Ricketts would have been giving Stephens handies under the table at one of Rosemont’s finest chain restaurants, and screaming sweet nothings into his ear trying to be heard over the roar of jumbojet engines.

Even before that realistic option surfaced,

There was nothing realistic about it, ever.

Ricketts secretly could have lined up suitors from DuPage County or Arlington Heights or any other municipality that would have loved to entice the Cubs into suburbia with tax breaks and free land.

Ahh yes, the pipe dream that is building a stadium near or hell, right on top of the racetrack.  I thought only Barry Rozner tried to pretend that wasn’t ridiculous.

Even at this late stage, as 16 rooftop owners dangerously threaten completion of a deal that would benefit millions of Chicagoans, Ricketts has avoided self-serving stunts that often mar negotiations.

Why would he need stunts when he has you to write pointlessness like this for him?

Over two years, Ricketts essentially has stepped up to the plate with a whiffle-ball bat. He chose to negotiate without ever trying to gain leverage by threatening to leave Chicago’s North Side even if studies showed the Cubs stood to make even more money away from Wrigley and the grip of local government. Those studies still make relocating a legitimate option for Ricketts until the ink is dry, by the way.

Hey guys, David Haugh has seen the secret “studies!”  All he had to do to find them was to follow a map the Masons engraved into the back of the 1914 US dollar bill, then turn some donkey wheels in the sewers deep below Washington DC which opened a wormhole that Haugh used his whip and fedora to traverse, into a secret reading room where all imaginary documents are kept.  I’d like to go there too some day, I hope to read about the secret plan to run cars on saltwater instead of gasoline.

Emanuel or predecessor Richard M. Daley might have laughed at such threats and called Ricketts’ bluff.

Because a) it would be funny.  b) It would be a bluff.

We never will know because Ricketts chose not to engage in discussions to move his team the way the McCaskeys and the Bears did or White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf before them.

The Bears bluff didn’t really work, and they have one of the worst stadium deals in all of sports.

Reinsdorf’s only worked because Jim Thompson and Mike Madigan are awful human beings.

From a business perspective, there was something naive about Ricketts’ approach. From a personal standpoint, there is something admirable. He refused to put a price on abandoning Wrigley Field.

The funniest thing written in 2013.  Maybe ever.

For better or worse, that allegiance put Ricketts at a negotiating disadvantage. So why did a successful, trained businessman make that choice?

Because he’s got a plan to make even more wheelbarrels full of money.

Overly romantic or not, Ricketts still feels strongly about his role as a steward of Wrigley Field. He met his wife, Cecilia, in the bleachers.

Are we still pretending this is true?  I guess you believe that Todd met his wife at a Jerry Lewis film festival.

He knows ushers by name and that Eamus Catuli is a slogan, not a menu item.

He forces every usher to change his or her name to Buddy, and Eamus Catuli’s not a slogan, it’s mistranslated Latin.  You know, like Desipio.

He simply remains an unabashed, true-blue Cubs fan, and fans let their hearts lead their heads, which is what Ricketts did throughout a process he made longer than necessary. At times Ricketts made decisions like Tom from Wilmette instead of the chairman of an $845 million corporation.

And Tom from Wilmette has a much higher winning percentage.

Not surprisingly, Ricketts’ initial clumsiness prolonged negotiations. In December 2010, Ricketts whiffed worse than Dave Kingman on a high fastball when, in the midst of a bad economy, his first proposal asked for $200 million in public funding from the Illinois Sports Facility Authority that helps every other team in town. Gov. Pat Quinn and Daley, whose support Ricketts needed, scoffed at the political newbie.

Well, it’s a good thing he kept Crane Kenney around to help him make savvy business deals and navigate local politics.

Just when Ricketts had regained some momentum toward a reconfigured deal that was close last May, his father, Joe, alienated Emanuel when reports linked the elder Ricketts to a proposed $10 million smear campaign of President Barack Obama.

All it did was give Emanuel a ready excuse to tell them to piss off, instead of having to make one up.

It didn’t matter if it was unfair to hold a son responsible for the alleged actions of his father. Emanuel did, and this clearly was his show.

It worked out fine for the Rickettses.  They used it to guilt dad into giving them the money to pay for the project themselves, so they don’t have to pay anything back…ever.

Those were among the lessons in the school of hard knocks Ricketts referred to at an event last week in Florida when he addressed what surprised him taking over the Cubs.

“There are lots of little learning curves,” Ricketts said. “Chicago politics is one.”

Number two has to be to stop using Steve Lavin’s old hair goop.

The price of his education cost Ricketts more than he expected but clearly staying would make it worthwhile to him. Litigious rooftop owners who disagree will make Ricketts feel like the worst guy who ever invested a half-billion dollars of his family’s money in their neighborhood. Eventually, their views might change, figuratively and literally, once they see designs and remember how many fans go to rooftops for the party more than the baseball.

Because it’s going to be easy to sell rooftop tickets with the promise of the view of the back of a sign instead of the field.  But nobody will care because they’re just there to drink Coronas and dry hump.

Indeed, this saga is all about perspective.

And thank you for not having any.

From where I sit, rooftop owners and all Cubs fans should be thanking Ricketts today instead of planning to sue him.

Because “all Cubs fans” are planning to sue Ricketts, not just the few dozen with stakes in the rooftops.  I, for one, plan to sue them for mental cruelty.