The Cubs won two awards last night at the Sports Business Awards, but the way team Chair Tom Ricketts sees it, they have another 4 million or so to go before everyone who deserves one for the team’s remarkable '16 gets one. Ricketts won Sports Executive of the Year to close out the event, just an hour after accepting the Team of the Year prize. He insisted he share the honors with everyone from Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein down to the fans who would tell him their age and beg for a title before they died. “Most importantly, the people that really deserve this trophy are the people who stayed with the Chicago Cubs for over a century without getting that championship,” Ricketts said. “Chicago Cub fans deserve their own trophies. I can’t give out 4 million of those, or whatever we need, but the fact is, during those dark years ... walking through the park every day gave me strength because people would come up and say 'It’s OK. We’ve got your back. We’re going to be here. Take your time, build it the right way, do it the right way, and get us our championship.'” Ricketts backstage said the Cubs are "just a normal team now,” freed from the psychological binds of curses, goats and being merely lovable. But of course, the business continues. “We don’t want to be a normal team from a profile standpoint,” Ricketts said. “We think obviously with a large fan base, both in the Chicago, around the country and a little bit overseas, we want to keep growing that. We want people to associate the Cubs with winning, associate the Cubs with championships and to so to do that we have to keep being consistent.”
