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from Left field:
As American as baseball, hot dogs and … cancer
A non-profit organization is linking cancer to hot dogs outside one of the most iconic U.S. sports parks.
The Cancer Project is reminding fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team of the connection between consumption of hot dogs and the occurrence of colorectal cancer with a billboard outside Chicago's storied Wrigley Field.
The 48-foot-wide billboard (pictured above) -- featuring an image of hot dogs jammed into a cigarette pack labeled "Unlucky Strike" -- is scheduled to debut on Monday at the intersection of W. Addison and N. Halsted, just east of Wrigley Field.
The organization is not asking the Cubs to ban hot dogs at Wrigley. (They don't want a fan insurrection after all). The group even lauds the Cubs for offering such vegetarian options as veggie burgers and hummus at Wrigley.
Cuban sees the Cubs in a whole new way
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban went on Dan Patrick’s radio show on May 22 to talk about all sorts of things, but what got us interested were his comments about the Chicago Cubs, which he wants to buy (You can read about his thoughts on smoking marijuana here). No one seems to have picked up on what he said until an excerpt ran in the latest edition of Sports Illustrated magazine, which came out Wednesday. Here are his verbatim answers, with Patrick’s questions paraphrased by us:
Q: When you go to Cubs games, do you go to be seen?
A: I go to have fun. …I’ve turned down 99.9 percent of [news] interviews when I’m in Chicago. You don’t see me on every news station in Chicago trying to promote the fact [that I want to buy the Cubs]. That just defeats the purpose.
Q: Is chasing the Cubs like trying to get the girl you want to notice you? She’s expensive and you may not have a shot at her.
Mark Cuban is the man for the Cubs. HTTP://www.CubanandtheCubs.com
Cuban and the Cubs, a slam dunk?
It was a case of baseketball at the Sports Lawyers Association annual conference in San Francisco this week when the Chicago Cubs came up in conversation.
The Cubs, as most Media File readers know, is the pro baseball team being sold by Tribune Co as it looks for a way to dig away at its mountain of debt after it was taken private by Chicago real estate mogul and noted raconteur Sam Zell (careful with that link. It’s NSFW). One potential bidder is Dallas Mavericks owner and blogger Mark Cuban, who got quite a plug during the conference.
Thomas Ostertag, senior vice president and general counsel for Major League Baseball, was giving a state-of-the-sport speech to an audience of several hundred sports industry officials and attorneys. Here’s what he said about the Cubs:
“We do expect this sale to get more public attention than really almost any sale I can think of in the history of our game, putting aside perhaps the sale of a guy named Babe Ruth to the Yankees way, way back.”
He let Steve Nash go in favor of Dirk Nowitzski and then desperately tried to reverse that move six years later by picking up Jason Kidd. Both were bad decisions. He is the perfect choice to perpetually market the Cubs as lovable LOSERS, because that is what Dallas has turned into.
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Google’s executive leadership team has the strategic foresight to be prepared for their future opportunities. What’s interesting, to me, is how so many other companies have been totally unprepared for this economy. It didn’t have to be that way, since most could have planned better during the good times. My point: short term thinking, by definition, lacks any meaningful foresight.