(Steve Stone’s issues with MLB ownership are greatly exaggerated.)

With the Cubs’ fat-ass payroll insuring a solid number of important returning players for 2008, the off-season gossip is mostly about who they’ll be working for, not where. Bonds, Cuban, and Piniella were yesterday’s dream team of Cub gossip. Today, as The Trib’s Fred Mitchell and ESPN report, the names are Stone, A-Rod, Cuban, and a road-block named Jerry Reinsdorf.

Stone, 60, was described in a Thursday Tribune story as the Cubs’ probable next general manager if Chicago financier Lou Weisbach and his group land the team ….

“The role would be determined later, but I’ll tell you what it won’t be: The role will not be like a president, a chief executive officer, a chief operating officer or a general manager or an assistant to the general manager.”

Although Stone and Weisbach are friends of long standing, Stone said he was listening to overtures from other parties seeking the Cubs as well.

“I have made sure to be absolutely ¦ probably fanatical to not be aligned with any one group, which I am not,” he said. “I have talked to a lot of different people, but that’s as far as it has gone. The message I have tried to impart to them is that I have something to offer. And if your group were to get [the Cubs], I would love to be a part of it. I am not in Lou’s group.” Stone apparently wants to be a “free agent” adviser for whichever group lands the Cubs.

“If you’re looking at a free agent of the magnitude of Alex Rodriguez ¦ a guy to turn around your team ¦ I’m one of the guys who can help in a number of ways,” Stone said. “But I am not the Alex Rodriguez of free agents.”

ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski offers some source-free, highly questionable intel on MLB baseball owners and Mark Cuban’s possibilities as Cubs owner:

“I happen to make the personal choice to reinvest 100 percent of it into players and organization,” Cuban told me in an e-mail. “I don’t know why anyone would be upset with that approach.” Upset? Some MLB owners aren’t upset, they’re mortified. Terrified. Petrified. The last thing they want is Cuban making them look bad with his reinvestment model. It will take a three-quarters majority vote — 22 of 29 — for Cuban to be approved by MLB owners. There’s a better chance of the Wrigley Field ivy being replaced by popcorn strings than there is Cuban getting those 22 votes. He will become the victim of politics, grudges and inertia. Selig has made it clear he prefers local ownership. Sure, makes sense. Except that the Cubs have been locally owned for decades and have exactly zero World Series championships since 1909. So maybe it’s time to try something else. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about Cuban being an absentee owner. Ask the Mavs or NBA refs how absent he is. The guy becomes more attached to his teams than barnacles to a ship hull. Cuban already has said his regular spot at Wrigley wouldn’t be on luxury suite row of the stadium’s mezzanine level, or in the plexiglass-protected seats (preferred by Trib execs) next to the Cubs’ on-deck circle. Instead, Cuban has picked out some space in the right-field bleachers. For some reason, I don’t see apparent bidding front-runner John Canning Jr., who just happens to be a Selig buddy and an investor in Selig’s old team, the Milwaukee Brewers, sitting shirtless as a Bleacher Bum. It also doesn’t help Cuban that Selig is influenced by the advice of Reinsdorf, who is chairman of the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Bulls. And isn’t it interesting that billionaire Sam Zell, who is taking Tribune Company private, is an investor in Reinsdorf’s Bulls and White Sox.