Thursday, November 20, 2008

"Circumstantial Evidence Can Be Quite Revealing...

...as when one finds a trout in the milk."  (Thoreau)


OK, bear with me.  As the media market crashes around him, Chicago Tribune owner Sam Zell is getting pretty desperate to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team.  Mark Cuban, the brash, multi-billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks (and a blogger) has a wallet bigger than God's and is one of those considered "in the running" to buy the team.  Baseball commish Bud Selig considers Cuban the trout in baseball's milk and, reportedly, wants him nowhere near the clubby, white bread world of golf-playing, baseball team-owning muckety-mucks.  But darn it, Cuban does have the money and Zell is just bat-shit crazy enough to take it...

What to do?  What to do?  Aha!

Suddenly and (for Selig) quite miraculously, the Feds announce insider trading charges against Cuban for, allegedly, "timely selling" of stock through which he, allegedly, avoided a $750,000 loss.  (I thought "timely selling" is what you're supposed to do, and $750,000 seems like petty cash for a billionaire but I am, apparently, mis-informed on both counts.  Allegedly.)

Boy, sometimes life is really funny.  Selig's LEAST favorite owner candidate is almost certainly disqualified just as the sales process enters the ninth inning. Coincidence?   Yeah, sure.  Not for REAL Cubs fans.  Selig's gonna stick us with HIS choice - undoubtedly some doofus from Omaha - and doom the team to another century of futility.

"Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys." (Emma Bull)

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