🚧 The Cubs Have the Rarest Problem in Sports, and It’s Costing Them Millions

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I need to issue a formal correction to last week’s newsletter. Even though initial reports indicated that the NFL banned smelling salts outright, it turns out the league is only prohibiting teams from handing them out directly.

Players can still use smelling salts, it’s just on a strict B.Y.O.S.S. basis.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The Cubs Have the Rarest Problem in Sports, and It’s Costing Them Millions

📉 Biggest Loser: Orange Baseballs: MLB’s Shortest-Lived Experiment

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Meet the Most High-Tech Chinstrap Ever Created

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🗞 The Big Story

The Chicago Cubs have a problem that no other sports team faces, and it could start costing them millions of dollars every single year.

Wrigley Rooftops: Ever since Wrigley Field was built in the middle of Chicago’s Lakeview Neighborhood in 1914, it’s been normal to see fans watching games from nearby rooftops. However, what started as a fun local tradition quickly turned into a multi-million dollar business for local home owners, which caused the team to sue 13 of them in 2002 for what the Cubs described as “stealing their product.”

Eventually, the team and these homeowners struck a deal where the Cubs would receive 17% of revenue generated in exchange for not obstructing the rooftop views for the next 20 years. However, when that deal finally expired two years ago, the team suddenly faced a whole new problem.

New Ownership: See, instead of simply renegotiating another deal with local homeowners, the Cubs' new owner, Tom Ricketts, opted to force them to sell their properties to the team by threatening to block their views or even pressuring their mortgage companies.

His tactics were so effective that by the end of 2015, through a series of shell corporations, the Cubs had managed to secretly buy almost all of the neighboring rooftop buildings and immediately started charging $150-$400 per ticket.

But ticket revenue wasn’t the team’s real goal.

Because last April, the Cubs revealed their true endgame when they finally got approval from the city to add sponsored signage on the buildings they owned across the street.

The only issue is, they still don’t own all of the buildings.

Lingering Lawsuit: Now, this poses a massive threat to the team, because, as a creator Expedition Money smartly put it, if the Cubs can now put a huge Coca-Cola sign on top of a building, what’s stopping a bitter homeowner next door from putting up a giant Pepsi sign, devaluing that sponsorship and potentially costing the team millions?

And this seems to be the Cubs’ concern with the buildings pictured, which are still operated by an independent owner, and are currently the last home left still suing the team for the right to sell tickets to fans.

A case that could hinge on an 1886 Michigan Supreme Court ruling. I’ll update you when this gets sorted.

📉 Biggest Loser

There’s a problem with baseballs that no one is talking about, but when one man tried to fix it, he actually created a much larger issue.

Charlie Finley: This is Charlie Finley, and after becoming a millionaire before the age of 40 by selling insurance to doctors, he bought 52% of the struggling Kansas City Athletics in 1960 for $1.97 million.

Now, at the time, the Athletics were regarded as the worst team in Major League Baseball, so to keep fans interested, Finley had to get creative:

• Designed brightly colored green-and-gold uniforms

• Rented a live donkey to act as the team’s mascot

• Installed a mechanical rabbit that popped up from the ground to give baseballs to the home-plate umpire

But still, none of these were even his craziest idea.

Because in 1973, Finley decided to make a change to the baseball itself, it just didn’t have the effect he thought it would.

Charlie’s Idea: Ever since seeing Yankees first baseman Joe Pepitone lose sight of a throw during the 1963 World Series, Finley thought that baseballs should be designed to be easier to see.

So during a Spring Training game in 1973, he convinced the Cleveland Indians to use an orange-colored baseball, claiming it would be easier for hitters, fielders, and fans to track during the game. And even though the game was expected to be a pitcher’s duel between two of the best arms in baseball, there ended up being a combined 27 hits and 16 total runs.

After the game, hitters complained that they couldn’t pick up the spin of the ball because both the leather and the stitching had been dyed orange. However, pitchers proved to have the bigger complaint, claiming that the orange dye had made the balls impossible to grip.

And even though fans and announcers said that the bright orange made the balls appear larger, and therefore easier to see, they were only used one more time that year before being retired for good.

This guy was really the original Savannah Banana.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

This is the most high-tech chin strap ever created, but not for the reason you might think.

Background: Even though helmets themselves have evolved over the years to become as safe as possible, one part of every football player’s protective gear hasn’t: the chin strap.

Now, it’s important to note that about 50% of all impacts on a football field occur to a player’s face mask, yet studies have found that those same hits result in anywhere from 75% to 90% of all concussions.

This is largely a result of the fact that almost every chin strap on the market is meant to sync as tightly to a player's chin as possible, which means that the force of every impact to someone’s face mask is directly transferred to their neck, jaw, and head.

But what if it didn’t have to be like that?

Hydraulic Chinstrap: That’s why the same company that invented the Guardian Cap created the Guardian Chinstrap. Instead of causing a player’s head to snap back after a hit to the face mask, this chin strap uses technology from a company called SoftShox to absorb the force of a hit before it ever leaves.

Each strap actually features a small hydraulic shocks, which absorb any impact by using a small pouch of water, resulting in a significantly reduced force getting transferred to the rest of a player’s head.

The Impact on Concussions: According to Guardian’s own research, this new chinstrap reduces the Head Acceleration Response Metric (HARM), a key indicator in concussions, by up to 35%, which is by far the lowest compared to other chinstraps already on the market. Not to mention, another research paper theorizes that this same hydraulic technology used in helmets has the potential to reduce concussions by 2-10x in the NFL.

The only issue now is that these things aren’t expected to ship until the football season is actually over. I guess there’s always next year.

⏱️ In Other News

• Every NFL team’s updated valuation

• The trendy snack fueling elite athletes? Rice Krispies Treats

• The Blazers Got Sold, But What’s Next?

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

I asked for some help on LinkedIn last week, and to my surprise, almost 30,000 people saw it.

TL;DR - I’m looking to spin up a content series where I show what it’s like to work in some of the lesser-covered jobs in sports. Think grounds crew, towel boy, equipment managers.

And while I’ve gotten a ton of great ideas, what I’m lacking is access. If you think you could help get me in touch with a team, department, or person that would want to be featured, my inbox is open!