AT 87, REINSDORF GETS IT: WHITE SOX TO NASHVILLE, CHICAGO KEEPS THE CUBS
At long last, a chairman gives the town a happy day — he finally might sell the team he trashed like few in sports, saying he’ll sell to a Chicago person or hope a move to Nashville ends the nightmare
We have awaited this wonderful day for decades. At what point would Jerry Reinsdorf, nearing 88, finally understand he can dump the White Sox when he’ll never reach the World Series for an impossible second time? This is truly one of the worst ownerships in sports — one World Series trip in 43 years, none ever again — and his decision shouldn’t be seen by someone in a town of dwindling population to take on the Cubs.
What this should be is a reminder locally that Chicago, far below metropolitan regions in New York and Los Angeles, has fallen too low in inhabitancy to keep supporting two Major League Baseball teams. There is a reason the Sox rank this season among the worst teams in home-attendance numbers as the sport, in a clock-saving renaissance, regains fans at the park. Do not give Reinsdorf about $2 billion for his team and a bad future at a renegade stadium. Do not take his stodgy bid, as he and/or his right-hand colleague spoke to Crain’s Chicago Business.
Do not let someone who already has ruined the sport, as we once knew it in a glorified national pastime, to take more of your money as one of only seven men to trump 40 years as an owner. Seven? Why him? Why Chicago? And isn’t it perfect that his lease at Guaranteed Rate Field, which Reinsdorf pushed off to taxpayers, expires in six years with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. Where would he have to go if no one wants his god-awful franchise? He’d be stuck at 35th and Shields, forced to sell to someone who would take the team to another town.
Would anyone in Chicago even care at this point?
What I would do now is let the Sox fade away. Who needs them? When he or his right-hand man mentions “relocating to Nashville” among many possibilities, just let him go. Anyone who grew up heading to old Comiskey Park can’t see any logical reason to save him, not when Reinsdorf is one of only three owners — along with Kansas City and the Oakland Athletics, off to Las Vegas — never to spend $100 million on a single free agent. The game has changed dramatically, even in a year when the New York Mets and Yankees and even the San Diego Padres will miss the playoffs, but it has grown so off-track that Reinsdorf’s old methods can’t work. When he or someone close to him says he doesn’t “like baseball’s current financial structure or see it improving to his liking, sources say, and nevertheless would be more likely to cut ties with baseball” — then, say goodbye. And thank him for the Bulls dynasty, now given to son Michael as president and CEO, that didn’t end until he wanted to rebuild with late workmate Jerry Krause … and nothing at all happened the next 25 years.
Let another person run the Sox in a town that deserves them, such as Nashville, which once served as an affiliate team and serves as a boomtown with younger people who’d greet baseball like the NFL and NHL. No one talks anymore about giving Chicago a second NFL team. It’s a town with a NASCAR street race, which somehow worked in a rainstorm, and no one needs two baseball teams anymore. America has changed, which is why Nashville is hearing the sounds of Reinsdorf. It’s one of four cities considered for expansion — with Vegas getting the A’s and Charlotte, Salt Lake City and Montreal among others.
This way, let a new owner take over. The A’s are going away. The Tampa Bay Rays should be staying in St. Petersburg, unless they pull a shocking move with Orlando. Charlotte and Salt Lake City seem expansion candidates, with Montreal no longer worthy.
Reinsdorf only wrecked baseball with endless rebuilds and awful recklessness. A situation got worse with horrific episodes off the field, where he was protected by local media always afraid to mix it up in courtrooms. His problem was the park he saved in 1988, when the team was kept on the South Side by former Gov. Jim Thompson after a midnight deadline in Springfield. Comiskey Park was fine until I walked around the place and saw cracks in the cement in the early years, then read long-ass stories from older people in Rockford who couldn’t make it up steep stairs and had to go home. They had to resurrect the park in a rush, thanks to me, if you wonder why he hates me. Quickly, the place became obsolete as Baltimore and newer places created more time on clocks. Wrigley Field, too, was turned into a place for Cubs fans to enjoy for many years longer.
The South Side had to win. Reinsdorf won for just a bit, then allowed interest in the 1994 strike — I was in the press box when he wanted to be a “hawk” as a killer impasse neared — and the sport never recovered. A steroids smear started as the NFL and Michael Jordan already had taken over the sports world. Funny thing was, Reinsdorf owned Jordan but wouldn’t let him take over baseball. So Jordan left and football and basketball took over, anyway. Finally, somehow, Reinsdorf had his shocking way in 2005, when the Sox overcame a late-season fadeaway and won the only Series since throwing one to Cincinnati in 1919 and actually winning one in 1917.
This is, truly, a Chicago embarrassment.
Finally, Jerry Reinsdorf knows it. Hope he sells soon before the rest of your life, not mine, is ruined by this madman.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.