MLB cares about money, and there is a LOT more of it in Chicago than anywhere else left to put a baseball team, especially if we are talking about a couple of billion for an expansion team. With Vegas off of the map, it isn't like there is some huge market waiting for a team. Chicago is just under a 10 million person metro area. That is like 3 million if you even carve it down to 1/3 of the market. Every single market of that size already has a team in the US. The closest is Charlotte at 2.8 million. Nashville and Indianapolis are like 2 million people. Portland is 2.5 million. Salt Lake City is 1.2 million people. No where else nearly that small has a team in MLB today. Remember there will two expansion teams, and the odds are if the team moved, it would be to one of those markets, so essentially that means Chicago has a HUGE size edge on anyone else. It's not about emotions, it is about dollars, and Chicago has more of them, even divided up, than any other market place left.