Saturday, October 5, 2019

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Cubs Fans,

In a season full of ups and downs, we are grateful for your incredible, ongoing support. While we enjoyed several exciting wins at Wrigley Field and solid individual performances from many of our players, we struggled to deliver as a team in the moments that mattered most. Falling short of our potential and failing to make the postseason for the first time in five years was extremely disappointing for all of us. We share your desire for change and are committed to building our next championship team.

As we look forward to creating our future success, it is important we also take a moment to honor a vital part of our past five years. I join our staff, players and fans in offering a heartfelt thank you to Joe Maddon. Joe’s leadership and dedication helped ignite one of the greatest eras in Cubs baseball. He guided us to the most postseason victories in our franchise’s history and helped bring the World Series trophy home to Chicago. We are forever grateful for Joe’s immense impact on our organization, fans and city and wish him continued success and happiness.

As Theo shared during his end-of-season press conference, we are focused on strengthening our roster, defining our team identity and fostering a culture of accountability to help us return to championship-caliber form. Selecting our new manager is just one of the many actions we’ll take. While it’s premature to predict the extent of change, we will be open-minded, thoughtful and thorough as we explore new opportunities and evaluate all levels of our operations to identify areas of improvement. I’m confident our Baseball Operations staff will make the right decisions to maximize our opportunity to win now while also ensuring our long-term success.

Whether we’re working to field a competitive team or preserve Wrigley Field, we keep you at the heart of everything we do. We don’t take your support for granted and will continue to find impactful ways to enhance your experience and provide best-in-class service at our ballpark and Gallagher Way.

While we’re already working to address our challenges, we understand October should be a time for meaningful baseball games not promises of offseason action. We appreciate your faith in our team and look forward to enjoying more division titles and deep postseason runs together. We believe that’s what we’re capable of and what you deserve.

Go Cubs,

Tom Ricketts