Tom Ricketts

CHICAGO — A billionaire brokerage family will attempt what a newspaper publisher and a chewing-gum dynasty failed to do: Break baseball's longest World Series drought.

The Rickettses, longtime Cubs fans whose wealth comes from family-owned Ameritrade, signed an agreement Friday to buy a 95-percent stake of the team and its Wrigley Field home from Tribune Co. The $845 million deal also includes Tribune's nearly 25 percent share of regional cable TV network Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

The deal, which requires approval by a bankruptcy court judge and Major League Baseball, might not help deliver a title to a profitable but hapless franchise that last won the big one in 1908. But the new owners can't do any worse, championship-wise, than Tribune has during a 28-year stewardship or the Wrigley family during its 60 years at the helm.

Fans said they hope this will be the ownership that ends the century of failure.

"Hopefully the Rickettses will spend money on the team" for good players and rehabbing Wrigley Field, said Devon Vowman, 21, who works at a sports shop across from the ballpark.

"It'll be nice for a family to own the Cubs that cares about more than the bottom line," said his co-worker, Alex Sheehan, 20. "I think it definitely helps because if you look at the teams that win the World Series and the people that own them, it's always a single guy who cares more about winning than anything else."

Joe Ricketts, who founded Omaha, Neb.-based TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., issued a statement saying his family is "thrilled" to acquire a controlling interest in one of the most storied franchises in sports. "The Cubs have the greatest fans in the world, and we count our family among them," he said.

But it is his son Tom Ricketts, 43, who led the purchase bid and is expected to assume the most active ownership role. The Chicago investment banker grew up watching the team, once lived across the street from Wrigley and first met his wife in the stands at a game there.

Ricketts likely needn't worry about missing out on a chance to collect a World Series trophy as owner this fall. The Cubs, favored to win the National League Central Division going into the season, are a distant second behind the St. Louis Cardinals and fifth in the wild-card chase.