Interest in the Cubs depends on Wrigley

Two potential bidders for the Chicago Cubs said they want the team only if the deal includes landmark Wrigley Field, with one bidder saying he was willing to pay what would be a record price.

Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell won a bid for Cubs owner Tribune Co. on Monday, offering to take the newspaper publisher and broadcaster private in a deal valuing it at $8.2 billion. Tribune also owns The Times.

To help finance the deal, Tribune said it would sell the Cubs. But Zell said in a newspaper interview he may sell Wrigley, the second-oldest ballpark in baseball, separately.

Some analysts have said the Cubs could attract bids topping the $700 million, including debt, that an investor group paid for the Boston Red Sox and a large stake in a regional cable TV sports network in 2002. Others say a $1-billion price is within reach.

William Marovitz, a real estate developer and former state senator, told Reuters on Wednesday he has a bidding group for the Cubs and Wrigley Field, which was built in 1914. “I would never be part of a Cubs ownership that didn’t involve Wrigley Field,” he said.

Marovitz said the $700-million figure quoted by analysts seemed reasonable. “If the due diligence and the facts and the documents that we see merit it, we would be able to pay a figure in that range.”

Jim Anixter, president of electrical wire and cable maker A-Z Industries in Northbrook, Ill., also is interested. But he said for a deal without Wrigley, “you’d have to make a heck of a reduction off the price.”

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A bronze statue of late New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle will be created in West Covina, where he played high school baseball.

City council members approved the statue’s placement in a baseball park under construction. Lidle, who played at South Hills High, and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger, were killed when the pitcher’s plane hit a Manhattan skyscraper Oct. 11.