At first I was surprised to see the Cubs mentioned on the Advertising Age Web site. Then I thought about it and concluded that this franchise probably has more to crow about in a business journal than in Baseball America.

Naturally, the story had to do with the team's two-year advertising deal with Under Armour, and it mostly repeated a lot of the obvious debate and the Cubs' easy-to-anticipate responses. One part of the story, however, caught my eye because it referred to a statement by Jay Blunk, Cubs Marketing Director--or is he just the Interim Marketing Director?--that I hadn't seen before:

Mr. Blunk said it was important that the outfield signage be related to baseball and competition, rather than doing a deal with, say, an insurance company or car company.

This almost makes me look forward to 2009, when Geico and State Farm and Nissan and the Chicagoland Chevy Dealers and whichever pharmaceutical company is making the leading erectile dysfunction remedy at that point in time vie for the opportunity to replace Under Armour.

They'll make February, 2007, look like the good ol' days, when the Cubs still had some respect for their home park and would only agree to descrecrate it on behalf of a manufacturer of sports underwear.