IT’S 15 YEARS, REALLY, SINCE JERRY REINSDORF SHOULD HAVE GONE AWAY
Somehow, the man allowed his baseball franchise to fold into horribleness, which makes us forget his NBA championships — in the 1990s, a very long time ago — as his sons make the White Sox go away
Ten years ago last May, Jerry Reinsdorf said he was in “triple overtime.” Is this far beyond grief? Are we in post-torture? Should I ask if he hopes to win again now that his streak is 1-for-43, continuing one of the worst in Major League Baseball history, now that the White Sox have gone 1-for-106?
I said that correct. The Cleveland Indians have 31 years to go before hitting 1-for-106. The San Diego Padres have 54 games and the Milwaukee Brewers have about the same. What’s the point of bringing up the Tampa Bay Rays, who have been closer to winning it all than the Sox have most of those 100-plus seasons? Turning 88 next February, Reinsdorf somehow has become such a pathetic loser that the national baseball writers just ignore him, choosing to label Tim Anderson — who just last season was one of the sport’s best shortstops — as a moron who played for The Man much too long.
The time has come, I’d say, to conclude it at present. That’s 18 years too long, actually? What is the point? You can’t win and spend most of your time with the writers, who aren’t doing their jobs. You keep putting the team in the hands of Ken Williams — who has won once in 23 years and once threatened me on a rooftop of a Loop hotel — and Rick Hahn, who has misplaced the mechanism with 13 missed postseasons in 15 years? Back in 2017, Reinsdorf asked Hahn “that he mentions his age to me in a fair amount of those conversations, usually prefaced by, ‘How long, given my age.’ ’’
Look, it’s very much over. We’ll be 20 years and counting the year after next, and if he were smart, Reinsdorf would have quit then. Instead, he won his sixth championship with the Chicago Bulls in 1998, which is 26 years from today but never is followed by any serious anniversary after the team missed the playoffs 14 times, failed to win a playoff series eight times and made the Eastern Conference finals or semis only four times. He won his only baseball title in 2005, which means it’s his only title without Michael Jordan, who is out of basketball and onto feuding with Scottie Pippen over his son and Pippen’s former wife. And now, quickly, there’s yet another rebuild — but this time, the Sox have among the highest number of attendance decreases besides the Oakland Athletics, who will be off to Las Vegas at some point. By season’s end, is it possible only the Kansas City Royals and Miami Marlins will have lower numbers than the White Sox?
That isn’t just a brief reprieve. The fans have long had it with this group, this thing. No longer at nine million, Chicago no longer can support a bad team. It is closer to Houston and Dallas, and no one is asking if they can uphold a new MLB team or another NFL team. Chicago is the one place in all of sports where we ask, about a second team, other than New York and Los Angeles. The Sox may end up being the lost cause — unless they ask me, where I’d put a team on the lakefront if the Bears go to Arlington Heights. Sure, right. Jerry is paying for it?
No. If he’s smart — and he says so, though I’m not — Reinsdorf will give the Sox to his sons, including Michael, who is the Bulls’ president. “I recommended it to the boys,” he said in 2013, “but it’s up to them when the time comes.” Look, the Cubs are back to building again in the National League Central, which really should belong to them in a Midwestern flyover region. For all the political fallout, owner Tom Ricketts did rally a World Series in 2016 and this is only seven years out. The Sox? They won in 2005. They’re done.
Now they have to deal with Keynan Middleton, who came out of nowhere to tell ESPN of their problems under first-year manager Pedro Grifol. “We came in with no rules," Middleton said. “I don't know how you police the culture if there are no rules or guidelines to follow because everyone is doing their own thing. Like, how do you say anything about it because there are no rules? You have rookies sleeping in the bullpen during the game. You have guys missing meetings. You have guys missing PFPs (pitcher fielding practices), and there are no consequences for any of this stuff.”
What? “The second I found out I was traded, I shaved my face," Middleton said. "I was ready to play by their rules because all I want to do is win games. You know how to act (here). You know not to be late and you know there are consequences if you are late. When I got to spring training, I heard a lot of the same stuff was happening last year. It's happening again this year, so not sure how I could change it. They don't tell you not to miss PFPs. They don't tell you not to miss meetings, and if it happens, it's just, ‘OK.’ ’’
Wait, what? Here would be his ownership point.
“Leadership in general. They say s— rolls downhill. I feel like some guys don't want to speak up when they should have,” he says. “It's hard to police people when there are no rules. If guys are doing things that you think are wrong, who is it wrong to? You or them? It's anyone's judgment at that point.”
Said Lance Lynn, now 2-0 with the Los Angeles Dodgers: “I was there a lot longer than Key was. He’s not wrong.”
That would be Jerry Reinsdorf. I would like to think he’d retire and move away for the rest of his life. If not, he has allowed baseball to die on his watch. We can start with that and carry on with the coffin.
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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.