I know this doesn’t interest everybody, but the whole saga around the Cubs sale really intrigues me.  It’s not even the sale itself, it’s how the news about the sale is getting out.  And the fact that right now, the one person claiming to be the definitive expert on this topic is none other than Dave Kaplan.

What, Lou Manfredini has the week off?  (And yes, I did hear that he sang the anthem before last night’s game and I can’t wait for the Tribune to not own the Cubs, too.)

Yesterday, Tribune reporter Ameet Sachdev reported that over the weekend Sam Zell and the Ricketts family had reached an agreement and sent the term sheet to Major League Baseball for their review.  This is the required first step.  Baseball gets its eggheads together to look at the outline of your deal and see if your eggheads set it up in an acceptable, and workable fashion.

Moments later, Reuters ran a report that confirmed the Tribune story, but added that the deal was for less than the $900 the Ricketts had originally bid.

A couple of hours later, Kaplan posted on his wildly popular Chicago National Organization for Women blog that it wasn’t a done deal (though neither story had claimed that the final deal had been negotiated) but his “sources” indicate it was getting close.  You know, like close enough to send an outline of the potential deal to MLB, for example.

The rest of the local and national media decided to boldly ignore Kaplan’s warning and started to report on the story.

Then, today, Reuters reported that the Tribune had come to terms with Marc Utay’s group, too.

This seems possible, considering that somebody had told us the day before that there was no formal agreement between Ricketts and Zell, so what would there be to stop Zell from getting another “handshake” deal with another bidder?  Who was that who told us nothing formal was in place with Ricketts?  Oh, yeah, it was Dave Kaplan.  So why wouldn’t they still be talking to Utay, too?

But then he posts this (and his headline writing skills are for shit):

All of the Misinformation Out There About the Sale of the Cubs

There is so much misinformation regarding the sale of the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Company that I have to set the record straight and separate fact from fiction.

First, here is the fiction reported in a Reuters story this morning that is loaded with inaccuracies. The story quotes anonymous sources that say the Tribune has reached an agreement on the terms for a sale of the team to a group led by private equity investor Marc Utay.

That is 100% incorrect.

It’s kind of hard to believe that Reuters just made up the story.  But Kap is so sure he’s claiming it’s 100 percent incorrect.  It’s not like 40 percent wrong, it’s all wrong.  Take that Reuters!

The Tribune has reached no agreement to sell the Cubs with ANYONE and that includes the Ricketts family, the Utay group, or the man on the moon. Tribune VP of Communications Gary Weitman confirmed to me today that no agreement has been reached with anyone.

Wow, Kaplan just broke some huge news.  The Man on the Moon has not agreed to buy the Cubs from the Tribune.  Is he available for comment? My sources tell me that the Man on the Moon had to pull his bid when Zell determined it was too heavily leveraged with green cheese.

Several sources that I spoke with this afternoon told me that the bankruptcy court does not sift through multiple offers. They simply look at the offer that is presented to them and they say yes or no if they will give their approval.

Also, the Tribune itself is reporting this story. Only, they are reporting it like actual journalists.  They’re laying out the facts and the reports, getting quotes from people and printing them as quotes, instead of just telling us they talked to someone and then paraphrasing for them.

Did Kap talk to David Hernandez?  Now there’s a guy who knows his way around a bankruptcy court.

Our pal Chuck over at Chuck-to-Chuck.com has a theory on how this two bids-one bankruptcy court thing might work.

One of the reasons that the court could reject the Ricketts bid is if the court determined that the value the Trib was receiving for the team was too low.

Zell has a ready answer for that. A higher bid, but with less cash up front. This makes a fascinating choice. Does the court take the higher value, but place the debt holders at greater risk as there’s actually less cash at closing to pay the debtors, or, does the court approve a plan that gives the debtors less cash on Day 1, but substantially more at day, say 1,825 (5 years).

I didn’t get the impression from either Reuters or Chuck that Zell would just dump two plans on the bench and say, “Hey, pick one!”  Chuck’s point is that if the Ricketts’ bid isn’t accepted, Zell has a fallback.  A similar deal, worth more money long term, structured much differently.

The Reuters’ report hits on that, too.

Both offers are likely to be submitted to the bankruptcy court for review, with the Tribune recommending one.

So it’s not “Here your honor(s) what do you think we should do?”  Kaplan’s source (Deep Chode?) is likely correct and the court won’t review them both and just tell Zell to turn one in.  He’s got two to pick from.

Back to Kaplan’s blog:

Here is how the process will play out. Once the Tribune Company reaches an agreement with a prospective buyer they will then submit the terms of the deal to Major League Baseball to make sure that the deal is structured properly along the rules that MLB has in place regarding the sale of a team.

Then once that green light is given the agreement will be sent to the bankruptcy court for their approval which various sources have told me is a lock to happen. Then and only then will the transaction be sent to Bud Selig and he will call for a vote of the other owners.

If they approve of the new ownership group then the deal will become official. Should the bankruptcy committee approve of a group but the other owners of MLB do not approve them then the deal falls through. The bankruptcy process does not take precedence over Major League Baseball’s approval policy.

It does not matter if there is a higher bid out there for the team. If the other owners don’t approve of who that bid is from then it does not pass. The dollars being offered are irrelevant if the person or group offering them doesn’t receive league approval.

The most interesting thing would be for the bankruptcy court to accept a plan (and there’s no way in hell that can be a “lock to happen” as Kaplan insists) but for the other 29 MLB owners to not accept the proposed new owners of the Cubs.  That’s sure to trigger a lawsuit, likely from both the Tribune and the prospective owners who were denied entry into MLB’s crummy snobatorium.

No one seems to think that either Utay or Ricketts would be denied, especially when the idea that in this economy the Cubs can still be sold for almost a billion dollars is so absurd.  The owners would risk turning down an ownership group, reopening the whole sale process and then seeing the Cubs finally sold for far less than either of these offers.  The owners won’t do that.  The value of their franchises go up if either Utay or Ricketts’ bids are accepted.  They risk the value going down if the process starts over.  They won’t risk that.

Over at Wax Paper Beer Cup they have a good look at the Ricketts’ bid using some information that ESPNChicago.com’s Bruce Levine has reported and one part of it is a harsh reality that most Cubs fans seem to be ignoring.  The Ricketts family might be big Cubs’ fans and they might be rich, but they’re going to have a hard time making any money on this deal, and there’s no way they can spend the way Cubs’ fans seem to expect they will.

From Levine’s story:

The Ricketts family borrowed $450 million from three major banks: JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citicorp. The rate of the financing will be between 5 and 6 percent annually; that means that the Cubs’ new owners must come up with $25-30 million per year just to pay financing on the loan. An impeccable major league source told me that the Cubs netted $45 million in 2008. New revenue sources, including personal seat licensing (PSLs) will be a part of the aggressive way the new owners will look for more cash.

Those of you who love Sam Fuld might get to see a lot of him, because even when the contracts of Derrek Lee, Kosuke Fukudome, Milton Bradley, Rich Harden, Kevin Gregg, and Ted Lilly go off the books over the next two years, the Cubs might not have a lot of money to replace them.

Here’s my favorite thing Kaplan wrote all day.  So I’ll leave you (mock applause fills the Internet) with this.  It’s from his second sale related post of the day:

The Breaking News Center over at the Tribune has a new story up that is fairly accurate regarding the involvement of the Utay group in the sale process of the Cubs.

Fairly accurate? I’m sure that the actual journalists who have been working on this story for many, many months, really appreciate that tepid vote of confidence for their reporting.  If you look the the horizon, you can see their middle fingers waving lovingly back at Kap.