Proposed Rooftop Club Upsets Cubs

Chicago, having resolved the great night baseball debate, has come up with a new cause to ignite fans on the city’s North Side. And the latest brouhaha doesn’t make Donald Grenesko, president of the Cubs, any happier than the last.

At issue are the team’s traditional rooftop rooters, and a controversial proposal to launch a private club atop a building across from Wrigley Field that would sell seats for baseball games.

Cub fans set up chairs and bars and television sets on other rooftops to watch games, but members of the planned club would have to pay for their seats. These, presumably, would compete with the Cubs’ 65 new skyboxes already sold out for this season at prices ranging from $45,000 to $65,000.

“They are clearly stealing our product,” Grenesko told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We strenuously object to it. If they can do it, then the people next door can do it, and the people next door to them and the people next door to them.”

Cubs II: The other side: North Side lawyer Gilbert Liss, a partner in the rooftop project, saw it another way.

“They are saying that 50 people, added to the 40,000 who are already there, are going to cause an undue burden to the neighborhood,” Liss told the Sun-Times. “Well, that’s ridiculous.

“Mr. Grenesko is not pleased. On the other hand. Mr. Grenesko features the rooftops in (TV) advertising for the Chicago Cubs and the happy fans.”

Trivia: Thirty-two teams will be awarded berths in the field for the 52nd National Invitation Tournament today. Who won last year’s tournament?

He left it where?The Detroit Red Wings didn’t do defenseman Gilbert Delorme any favors by trading Jim Pavese to the Hartford Whalers last week.

When Delorme stepped off the plane at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport on his arrival home from a five-game trip, he started looking for his car. And looking. And looking.

Seems Pavese had parked the car for Delorme, then left for Hartford.

Unbeaten and untied: The University of Washington is off to the slowest start in the school’s baseball history, even though the Huskies haven’t lost a game.

The team was rained out or snowed out in 15 of its first 16 games on the 54-game schedule.

More memorable trades: Follow this chain of events and you, too, could be a general manager in the NHL.

In 1987, the Philadelphia Flyers couldn’t agree to a contract with defenseman Brad McCrimmon.

The Flyers dealt McCrimmon to the Calgary Flames for first- and third-round picks.

This year, they packaged the No. 1 pick from Calgary together with their own No. 1 and obtained goaltender Ken Wregget from the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The net result: The Flyers traded McCrimmon, a second-team All-Star last season, and their No. 1 pick this summer for the sometimes-No. 1 goaltender on a perennial loser and a No. 3 draft pick.

Wregget’s main job is to give Ron Hextall a breather every now and then. Mostly then. He’s still recovering from mononucleosis and hasn’t played in a month.

Trivia answer: Connecticut won last year’s NIT, defeating Ohio State, 72-67, in the championship game.

Quotebook: On winning, golfer Nancy Lopez says: “Finishing second or third doesn’t do anything for me. The money is great, but winning is what it’s all about. The thrill of making a 10-footer on the final hole and having the hair stand up on the back of your neck. That’s exciting.”