FanHouse Bleed Cubbie Blue

Speaking of the Cubs' impending sale, one of the most serious issues any future Cubs owner will have to deal with is the Morass That Is Wrigley Field, one of America's favorite -- and most deteriorated -- ballparks.

Everyone in the Chicago area is weighing in on this topic, and solutions have ranged from moving the Cubs to the suburbs in a new, vintage-style ballpark to keeping things as is and simply budgeting for the likely $100 million needed to fix the current stadium.

All sorts of blogs have weighed in on the topic, too, including today's post over at Bleed Cubbie Blue, which tenatively agrees with Jay Mariotti's column today. The argument, in so many words, is simple: let's fix the Wrigley we've got:

Mariotti goes on to say that the grandstand could and should be reconstructed (and I agree), leaving the bleachers, brick walls and ivy, scoreboard, and other things that make Wrigley Field what it is. Elsewhere in the Sun-Times today, writer Neil Hayes says the model for how to do this is what the new Red Sox owners did with Fenway Park.

To be perfectly honest, I agree too. $100 million is too much to pay for simple structural renovations. Much of this will depend on the owner and his willingness to spend -- and maybe this is where Mark Cuban comes in -- but the idea that a new Wrigley could be built in the same spot, and with room for new revenue streams, doesn't seem all that unlikely. Keep the things that make Wrigley great (especially the bleacher fans) and rebuild the rest.

That beats fixing falling concrete forever, or watching games in Schaumburg, Ill.

Previously at the FanHouse:
Mark Cuban Playing Coy When it Comes to the Cubs
The Cubs Are For Sale

Those aren't my words (though I share the sentiment). Those are the words of Al over at excellent Cubs blog Bleed Cubbie Blue, who saw Mark Prior pitch this morning in Mesa, Arizona, and came away with a depressing diagnosis of Prior's career:

I'm here to tell you it's unhinged. Prior threw four innings, fifty-nine pitches (only a little more than half of them, thirty-two, were strikes). He walked two, hit a batter, was constantly behind hitters, gave up two hits and no runs to a team consisting of players who will wind up spending this year playing for Tennessee and Daytona (some names I recognized: Dopirak, Fontenot, Spears, Simokaitis). ...

But while Prior was throwing, this player (who I couldn't identify; he was wearing warmups) hid the gun so no one but him could see it. It didn't matter. It was easy to see that Marquis' fastball was popping into the catcher's glove; Prior's wasn't. Prior seemed to be dropping down his arm again -- that's a sign of something wrong, even though he and everyone else denies it.

But most importantly, the guy who used to look like he was on top of the baseball world had absolutely no mound presence. Constantly wiping his face (it wasn't that hot at 8:30 in the morning!), scuffling around, he looked as if he'd rather have been just about anywhere else in the world than on that pitcher's mound.

Do I think he's done? No, but he is absolutely not ready to pitch in the major leagues at this time.

Man, that's sad. One of my and probably many other Cubs' fans fondest sporting memories involves Mark Prior's 2003 dominance, the dynamic performance that got the Cubs to the verge of their first World Series in decades. (We won't talk about what happened next.)

But now, to think that a guy who was lauded as the best college pitcher ever, a MLB sure thing, Roger Clemens' heir - to think that he's practically debilitated at this point - shows you just how vulnerable we all are. If it can happen to Prior, it can happen to anybody.