According to the Tribune, Tom Ricketts and Crane Kenney are in talks with Naples, Fla. officials about potentially moving the Cubs' spring training facilities there. My first thought when reading this is that I hope Ricketts realizes Kenney should only deal with the business side of the Cubs. I suppose he is pretty good at what he does business-wise considering where the Cubs are in that regard, but everytime the guy ventures into the baseball side of things he makes a fool of himself and the organization.

Kenney apparently told the Naples News that "Collier County has a number of suitable locations for a world-class spring training facility." The article also discusses that if the Cubs were to build in Naples, the new facility would include a minature Wrigley Field. I went to Hohokam Park this past spring training and didn't see anything wrong with it. It was built in 1997 so it isn't out of date, and to me was more unique than a place like Phoenix Municipial Stadium. Parking was a bit of an issue, but no Cub fan would ever complain about that. It seems unclear to me whether Ricketts has a genuine interest in Naples, but I would bet it is Naples that has heavy interest in the Cubs as they do not have a spring training team.

The Cubs would join the Pirates, Cardinals and Astros in becoming the fourth NL Central team to play in the Grapefruit League. By my internal geographic calculations, they would become the fourth most-West team (behind St. Louis, Houston and Minnesota) in a league dominated by Eastern-oriented teams. From a fan perspective, I don't think going to Florida rather than Arizona would be an issue for people, and I think the Cubs would still have extremely high spring training attendance figures. The real question is whether you would rather be bitten by a alligator or rattlesnake? Both scare the hell out of me.

Let's delve into the hypothetical and assume the Cubs do build a state of the art facility in Naples. Ricketts already opened the purse strings and made Rudy Jaramillo the highest paid hitting coach in all of baseball. Moving to Florida and building a new place would just play to the point that he is willing to spend that much more. My bet, however, is that the Cubs remain in Mesa, and the Naples delegation has as much success as the Chicago 2016 bid. Good thing they will be in Arizona in 2010, because what would we do without the constant stream of Lou-Ozzie stories that has come the past few years.

Photo courtesy glenbigness.com.

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