How Sam Zell's bungling botched the Cubs deal - and lost $150 million

These Ricketts continue to impress:

In January, Zell settled on the Ricketts family, whose fortune stems from the TD Ameritrade brokerage, as the favored bidder. Sources said the price then was about $900 million.

Exhaustive talks followed, with Zell trying another detour: pressuring Ricketts to raise his price by inviting a previous bidder, New York investor Marc Utay, back to the table.

But insiders said the Ricketts family held firm and continued to negotiate hard on certain terms -- including how Tribune Co. evaluated the Cubs' broadcasting rights with its corporate cousins at WGN TV and radio and Comcast SportsNet Chicago. Tribune's 25 percent stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago is part of the sale to Ricketts.

"You can look at this deal and say the Ricketts family got a lot of concessions," said one source close to its bid.

There can't be too many people out there who've outfoxed Sam Zell on major deals like this.

Meanwhile, the Tribune is giving as good as it gets in its coverage of the Sun-Times disastrous financial straits:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sat-sun-times-0822aug22,0,251...

Vote it up here: http://www.windycitizen.com/adelle77/media/2009/08/24/sun-times-media-gr...