Editorial: Chicago says thanks, Javier Báez, Kris Bryant and, especially, Anthony Rizzo

For the controversial owners of the Chicago Cubs, the Ricketts family, Friday afternoon brought both $150 million in payroll savings and vituperative criticism. For fans of the Chicago Cubs, it brought unspeakable misery.

Fueled by that day’s trade deadline, the Cubs unloaded (among others) three of the main reasons fans bought tickets: the beloved players Javier Báez, Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo.

The replacements for these great stars of the Wrigleyville branch of the national pastime? The euphemism known as “prospects.”

On social media, furious fans called it a fire sale and denounced the arrival of the Wrigley Mills Outlet Mall. Mocking the Facebook emergency system, they declared themselves safe from general manager Jed Hoyer’s deal-making. Mostly, though, they wailed and gnashed their teeth. By Monday the pain had only gotten worse: all three of these players hit home runs over the weekend for their new teams.

Why was Friday so rough? Individually, these three men were extraordinary on the field.

Báez, a.k.a. El Mago, was a master improviser whose simple presence meant anything could happen and often did. Game after game, he rebelled against the often-sedentary rhythms of baseball, like a gifted, fearless actor always in the real-time moment. Bryant, whose image now mocks Wrigleyville from a huge Hebru Brantley and Max Sansing mural, was the consummate MVP, an athlete of astounding versatility. And Rizzo? He was the ringmaster.

Collectively, the three represented the memory of the pre-pandemic bliss of the 2016 World Series win, a sun-kissed moment of autumnal triumph when this city gathered in communal celebration on Michigan Avenue, unmasked and (for a week or two) unworried about crime or economic prospects.

Looking back from here, it feels like a lost halcyon moment for our city and the collective exit of these world champions is only a further reminder that we can’t have it back and that, alas, the world only spins forward.

Some also had an echo of their feelings in 1998 when general manager Jerry Krause became worried that his aging Chicago Bulls team would struggle to compete and decided to rebuild. That was an agonizing end, too. It made everybody in Chicago suddenly feel much older.

Was Friday smart business? Perhaps. Forbes pointed out that Tom Ricketts, reeling from pandemic losses, was acting like an investment banker at Goldman Sachs instead of “the sentimental fan who met his wife in the bleachers at Wrigley Field.” The Tribune’s oft-sardonic Paul Sullivan, who has seen it all, remarked again that the game had “no room for sentimentality.”

This was, of course, a bet on the drawing power of the Cubs franchise, a gamble that the fans still would come, and still pay the ever-increasing costs of a ducat and a Bud Light, to see those less costly “prospects.” Friday reasserted that the team was the star, not individual mortal players. Broadway producers, media companies and Hollywood studios make the same gamble all the time.

The Ricketts own the team, or what’s left of it. They have the right to run their business as they see fit. They just would be well advised to remember that sentimentality is baked into all aspects of the game. It’s part of the brand. It’s part of life.

But it’s all done now. We just didn’t want to see these three guys go without paying tribute to how much fun we had watching them all these years.

And there is something else worth editorializing about.

Had you spent a Cubs-in-town Tuesday on the 17th or the 18th floors of the Lurie Children’s Hospital before the pandemic, you’d have likely run into Rizzo, often with his family. Just ask Sarah Zematis, whose daughter, Sophia, was a long-term patient there. “There was such excitement and buzz every week,” she says. “Anthony would always remind the kids to be strong, that he had beat cancer and they could too. He’d hand out stuffed animals and signed paraphernalia, but he’d also have the kids sign his jersey with their signatures. Who ever gets to see a baseball star wanting a kid’s signature?”

“Anthony is a quiet, gentle giant,” she says. “Sophia was only three when she met him. She didn’t know who he was. He’d scoop her up in his big arms and they’d talk about his dog and what was going on in her life.”

in the early weeks of the pandemic, Rizzo sent the Lurie families care packages with protective equipment. He and his foundation fed hospital staffers, hosted drive-in movies and bought out the Santa’s Village amusement park for a family day out. And away from the cameras, he also picked up some bills so that strapped families could focus on caring for their kids.

Rizzo led on the field, but his greatest contribution to Chicago was philanthropic, always asking for (and usually getting) help from his teammates and bosses.

Sentimentality? No. Business? No. Human decency? Absolutely.

Zematis and some Lurie families have bought tickets for a game in August when the Chicago White Sox play the New York Yankees.

They plan to sit by first base.

“He’ll be our Anthony wherever he goes,” she says.

We couldn’t say it any better. Good luck and thanks, fellas.

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