For those who love the Chicago Cubs, Sam Zell may be their worst nightmare, but not because Zell has a minority stake in the Chicago White Sox. The Chicago billionaire purchased the Cubs’ parent company, Tribune, in a complex $8.2 billion transaction, and after the 2007 season he plans to sell the team, and with it the club’s equity stake in a local regional cable TV sports network and Wrigley Field. So there is reason for Cubs fans to panic, although for a club that has gone about a century without a world championship and more than six decades since a World Series appearance — panic is perhaps a long lost feeling for Cub supporters.

Zell intends to keep most of his newly acquired assets, including various newspapers, television stations, a TV production company, and a radio station but not the Cubs franchise because he has surmised that he can command a big price for the team. A proposed sale normally would not be a problem, but Zell wants to split the Cubs organization and Wrigley Field and sell off both to help pay down the debt on his purchase, and that is where the difficulty begins.

Already, two potential suitors — former Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo and the owner of the American Hockey League’s Chicago Wolves, Don Levin — are up in arms about Zell’s plan. Similarly Major League Baseball officials, who have to approve the Tribune transfer to Zell, might not be too thrilled with Zell’s plans to separate the Cubs from Wrigley. It’s unclear whether MLB and its owners have the authority to compel Zell to offer the baseball team and the ballpark in the same package.

Just what Zell can sell off continues to be a matter of speculation when it comes to the Cubs franchise. He will now own a number of newspapers, including Newsday, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. Zell is now also the proud owner of WPIX-TV in New York, WGN-TV in Chicago, and KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, among other stations, as well as the Chicago-based WGN Radio, and a stake in the cable television network collectively operated in a Tribune-Comcast-Blackhawks-Bulls-White Sox venture.

Cubs baseball is intertwined with both Wrigley Field and its TV and radio holdings. The Cubs’ ownership has the deed to Wrigley Field, and the old ballpark on Waverly, which could benefit from an upgrade, still delivers large revenue streams. If Zell splits the Cubs and sells off the team to one group and the ballpark to another, the team would have to enter into a revenue-sharing agreement with the ballpark owner, a deal that would of course significantly diminish the amount of money coming into the club.

Zell may think he can sell the Cubs at a steep markup, but without the revenue from Wrigley, neither Colangelo, Levin, nor anyone else interested in buying one of MLB’s finest brand names are likely to meet Zell’s asking price.

Meanwhile, what is Wrigley Field really worth? Without the Cubs, it’s just another athletic facility — an old one at that. And what if a new Cubs owner were to decide he wanted a new ballpark, rather than split Wrigley’s proceeds with its new owner? That would make Wrigley Field mostly worthless as a baseball park, although it might be a good real estate investment.

Only two ballparks remain from baseball’s early days, Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley. All of the other iconic monuments from baseball’s so-called Golden Era are gone; Tiger Stadium in Detroit and Comiskey Stadium in Chicago were among the last standing. Yankee Stadium II, rebuilt in the 1970s, was not the original facility and will be replaced in 2009. Sports shrines like the Boston Garden, Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, and the Montreal Forum have also vanished. Indeed, sentimentality runs short when it comes to money in sports. Prospective Cubs owners could probably reap greater profits in a new ballpark, and if Zell makes good on splitting the Cubs and Wrigley Field, the temporary stadium planned for the 2016 Summer Olympics (should the city get the Games) might be a good place to relocate Chicago Cubs baseball.

The television situation is slightly more muddled. Zell is willing to include the regional sports network in the deal and that should drive up the price of the franchise. Tribune Co. has about a 20% share in the network, and regional sports networks are typically cash cows. Tribune Co. has in the past placed Cubs games on WGN, a superstation carried nationally by cable operators like Comcast, but it’s unclear how much money Zell will want to spend on Cubs programming if he keeps WGN and sells the team. The Cubs (along with the White Sox) certainly provide a lot of content for WGN during the spring and summer, and in turn the TV station has been a key factor in creating a national following for the Cubs.

But very soon, MLB could put an end to WGN’s license to carry Cubs and White Sox games nationally because those games could take valuable audience share away from other teams on cable, satellite, or the Internet. What would the Cubs be worth to WGN then? In Chicago, the country’s third largest market behind New York and Los Angeles, the Cubs brand and the city’s population should guarantee that the new Cubs owner would be well compensated. But most of sports programming has migrated to cable TV; there could be some changes coming to the Cubs’ television package that may affect the bottom line.

Under Tribune Co., the baseball team, the ballpark, the over-theair and cable TV contracts, and the radio deals fit neatly into the conglomerate’s portfolio. In Zell’s world, that won’t be the case.

Still, there is a precedent that can serve as a guide for a Cubs sale. In 2002, a group led by hedgefund manager John Henry spent about $700 million to buy the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, and the New England Sports Network as part of a package deal. The entities were sold as one. For Cubs fans, the best thing Zell can do is to sell in the same way. Selling the Cubs, the ballpark, and the cable network in piecemeal and not guaranteeing long-term press and broadcast contracts could inadvertently set the franchise back for years. Then again, that may not be new news to Cubs fans. After all, they’re still waiting on that World Championship.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com