Our pals over at Wax Paper Beer Cup occasionally read Bruce Levine’s ESPNChicago.com blog, and I’m thankful they do it, so I don’t have to.

As we all know, Crane Kenney spends most of his media schmoozing time letting Bruce and the Orangutan take turns rimming him for information, so when one of them has the “poop” on something they feel extra, specially proud of, it means it came from the most loathsome Cubs executive this side of Stanton Cook.

Bruce has the rundown of what the Rickettses initial plans for Wrigley Field renovations are at this moment.  So let’s see what they’re going to be up to.

Part of his plans for Wrigley centers around the 100th anniversary of the famed ballpark.

Rickets and team president Crane Kenney will petition Major League Baseball to have the 2014 All-Star Game at Wrigley Field.

Ooh, nifty, an All-Star Game at Wrigley.  That’ll be awesome.  Three days of the media all bitching that Wrigley doesn’t have enough room for them all to eat during the game.  Plus, unless heart disease has mercifully taken him by them we’ll get lots of “Baaaaaack, baaack baaaack, gone!  That one went to Schaumburg!” from Chris Berman.

At that point, the new ownership group hopes to spend between $200 million to $300 million in modernization and renovation of Wrigley for the celebration.

Wait, “at that time?”  Doesn’t Bruce mean “by that time?”  Otherwise it sounds like they’re only going to start renovating the park after the 2014 All-Star Game.

Some highlights of Ricketts’ goals are:

• To refurbish the grand stand and upper deck. The plan will include new sky boxes, restaurants and bars as part of the infrastructure.

Well sure, there’s plenty of room up there for restaurants and bars.  You know what else would be neat?  A merry-go-round.

• A new building — known as the triangle building — adjacent to the west side of the park. That will house team offices as well as a hall of fame and multiple retail shops and restaurants. The building will extend from the edge of the park on the west all the way to Clark Street; and on the north to Waveland. A multi-tiered parking facility also is scheduled to be constructed as part of this new area.

They’ve got high hopes for this triangle building.  And I can’t wait to go to the Cubs Hall of Fame.  Which exhibit will you hit first, “Tuffy Rhodes’ brush with greatness” or an exhibit built around Turk Wendell’s licorice stained toothbrush?  Seriously, a franchise with the proud history of the Cubs really needs to immortalize all of the great teams and players they’ve had since the end of World War II.  Of course, if you did it that way you could pretty much fit the Hall of Fame into the hallway to the men’s room.

• Expanded wash rooms and a food court that will feature top restaurants and areas for families with young children to move around and relax in Wrigley’s vast new corridors.

Why not just keep the current food vendors and put them in the expanded bathrooms?  It wouldn’t be any less sanitary.  What Cubs fan hasn’t ordered a hot dog and watched one of the 87 year old Wrigley staff fish out one dog and her upper denture plate all in one swoop?

I’ve got a great place for families with young children to move around and relax.  At home.  Nothing warms my heart more than a family of four at a Cubs game, especially when the kids are both under five and the wife thinks that Ryan Theriot just scored a touchdown.

• A multi-purpose LED electronic scoreboard that will give fans the ability to see replays for the first time in history at Wrigley. The other purpose of the scoreboard will be to realize a significant amount of income selling advertising. Finding a location for the scoreboard may be tricky for the Cubs. Any change in Wrigley must receive permission from the landmark authority, which has final say-so over the historic structure. The Cubs could avoid that hassle by making a deal with a rooftop owner to have the scoreboard on an existing roof. Size and weight will determine if that would be feasible. In 2005, the Red Sox grossed $25 million in revenue from their scoreboard advertising. Both the city of Chicago and the neighborhood will have their say as to what noise pollution a new scoreboard outside of the ballpark would create. It’s likely the current scoreboard would remain intact due to the significance of the structure in the landmark deal.

This is my favorite part of the whole plan.  Notice Bruce concedes that the Cubs will probably have to buy out a rooftop and put a Jumbotron on it.  And also notice that his biggest worry about such a move is the “noise pollution a new scoreboard outside of the ballpark would create.”

Uhh, Bruce.  I have a hunch the JumboTron won’t actually have a big speaker on it.  They’ll probably come up with some 20th century techno-voodoo that actually allows it to display some moving pictures of some sort, while the speakers already in the park carry the sound.  Crazy!  I know.  I thought the same thing.  It has to be some of kind of unnatural wizard magic.  I’m not comfortable with it, either.

I can go either way on the need for a Jumbotron.  I’ve been to lots of Cubs games over the years and I can count on the fingers on Mordecai Brown’s pitching hand how many times I’ve actually missed not having a replay to watch.  But, think about something like game three of the World Series on Saturday night.  Alex “The Centaur” Rodriguez hit that ball that looked like a double, but actually hit a Fox camera jutting out just over the right field railing.  It should have been a home run.  The umps huddled around their little TV in the walkway to one of the clubhouses, saw the replay and came back out and called it a homer.  Though Phillies fans protested, they’d seen the replay themselves and knew that it most likely was the correct call.

How much fun would it be to be at a World Series game (yeah, I know we won’t have to worry about that) and see an ump come running out of the dugout giving the other team a home run and you not really knowing why?  Especially since Wrigley is the only home venue in any major American sport without a replay screen of any kind.  For chrissakes, even all of the MLS stadiums have them. They’ve got more replay screens than fans!

Lord knows the Cubs and their fans love to get all Unabomber in their stubborn refusal to adopt a new technology.  You know, like the lightbulb or moving pictures (or on base percentage.)

It’s charming.  Who doesn’t love charming?  Hey, the team pays big bucks to a radio analyst who only pays attention to a third of the game, what’s more charming than that?

Tom Ricketts appears to be committed to improving the experience of Cubs fans with a better product on the field and an improved ballpark.

• Naming rights are a viable means of income that the Cubs will have to explore as a part of their new business plan. The New York Mets have a 20-year deal that brings in $20 million per season with Citibank. Yankee Stadium, owned by the Steinbrenner family, refuses to mess with history by selling naming rights for their new park.

Nothing listed here has anything to do with a better product on the field, so that’s just some superfluous Levine ass kissing blown towards the Beaver.

And as for naming rights.  Ricketts admitted that the team probably can’t expect to fetch big bucks for the name of the stadium.  No matter how much a company pays fans are going to call it Wrigley anyway.  So you’re basically just spending tens of millions of dollars to have your company’s name painted on the cool red marquee in front of the park.  Instead, they’ll leave it called Wrigley Field and try to make up for it by selling ads on anything that will hold ink.  I don’t blame them.  Hell, if I owned the team, I’d accidentally kill a couple of huge sections of ivy on the wall and sell some nice big billboard ads on them.  And, I’d pepper that nice big green wooden scoreboard with enough ads to make a NASCAR team blush.

I’m completely in agreement with all of the changes the Rickettses have laid out.  And when Tom talks about patterning the revamped Wrigley after Fenway Park it’s his way of saying “We’re going to sell ads on everything, just like they do,” without actually saying it.

And you know what?  That family just paid over $800 million for the team and the ricketty old ballpark and only a dope would complain about their decision to turn it into one giant advertising delivery system.

You can’t have the big, fat payroll without getting some extra money somewhere.

I enjoy just how aesthetically pleasing Wrigley Field is, and I completely appreciate what a great job the Tribune Company did of keeping it up.  But it’s unrealistic to think that it doesn’t need to have sponsorships plastered all over it.

So the Rickettses are in for some fun times.  Nobody complains like Cubs fans do.  And if it’s not some dope complaining about how a replay board will ruin Wrigley for him/her forever, there’s the media making a big deal of something like Laura Ricketts’ sexual preference.

It’s 2009 (isn’t it?), how is this a story?  And the claim that she’s the first gay owner of a pro franchise is ridiculous.  There are hundreds of people with ownership stakes in professional sports franchises, there’s no way she’s the first.  And even if she is, why is this news?  It’s not news.  It was just Zach Christman’s way of saying, “Hey, Laura Ricketts is gay!”  Hopefully tomorrow his report will be “Hey, I’m a fucking idiot!”

My advice to the family is simply to have Todd go have a talk with Zach.  Todd seems a little off.  I’m sure it will end well.