A Cuban lending crisis for the Cubbies

It's pretty easy to connect the dots between what happened on the stock market and the early word that Mark Cuban hasn't won the Chicago Cubs sweepstakes.

Word on the street is that Thomas Ricketts and the Ricketts family are the winning bidders for the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, and a 25 percent stake in ComcastSports Chicago. Thomas Ricketts is the chief executive of Chicago investment bank Incapital LLC and his son, Joe Ricketts, is the founder of TD Ameritrade Holding Corp.

The dumb guy's perspective on this is that Sam Zell and the Chicago Tribune Co. want, to quote Maury Brown, a "tax-avoidance deal" that effectively means the buyer would not purchase the team, but more or less acquire it piecemeal over an extended period, like 10 years. It requires a lot of loans and financing and well, that might not be a lot harder to swing after what's happened on the financial markets.

(Mark Cuban, incidentally, has a thing or two to say about the financial market. Why can't he run for President?)

Related:
Rumor: Ricketts Will Land Chicago Cubs (Maury Brown, The Biz of Baseball)