JERRY REINSDORF WANTS TO BUILD A NEW BALLPARK … TRY NASHVILLE, MOPE

This is the worst time imaginable for the White Sox owner to fish a 62-acre site by Roosevelt Road, with his Chicago approval rating lower than zero and few in any mood to keep a bad franchise in town

     Let’s start with sleazeball politicians. From Ed Burke and 37 other Chicago City Council members convicted of crimes, along with Rod Blagojevich and three other Illinois governors sentenced to prison — I trust them more than Jerry Reinsdorf.

     Same goes for gangsters, from Sam Giancana to John Dillinger to Al Capone, going back through time. I trust them more than Reinsdorf, who says he’s talking to a developer about building a new stadium for the White Sox on a wedged-in plot of 62 acres, where parking would be wicked and traffic trouble is unbearable over a river and train tracks.

     Worse, according to the Sun-Times, the site was owned by a dethroned local power force, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was sent off to 10 1/2 years in prison for corruption and extortion. He was in business there with Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, who was convicted for dirty play in a France oil deal. No one knows if Auchi remains involved with the Related Midwest firm in the South Loop site, known as “The 78,” because it remains undeveloped with skyscraper views and dead bodies in nearby sinkholes.

     So here we have an owner who has won one World Series and barely reached the postseason in 43 years of trying. Here we have a man whose wickedly awful ballpark experience included two women shot by a handgun, though Reinsdorf claims the wounds came from outside Guaranteed Rate Field, and a car that crashed into four fans crossing 35th Street at Shields Avenue.

     Here we have a man among only three Major League Baseball owners, including the off-to-Vegas Athletics, who hasn’t spent $100 million on a free agent when the Los Angeles Dodgers just spent $700 million on Shohei Ohtani. Here we have a man who staged a foolish Ring of Honor ceremony for his Chicago Bulls last week, with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman wisely staying away, and saw the wife of booed and deceased general manager Jerry Krause cry her eyes out.

     Here we have one of the worst people in Chicago, one of the worst scums in sports, a man who runs a business surveillance firm — Global Security Innovative Strategies in Washington, D.C. — that focuses on anyone he wants in “executive management” and “government advisory.” Here was a man who said ESPN lied in “The Last Dance” documentary about the Bulls, lying himself when he said, “Yeah, except for people thinking I broke up the team. When, in fact, it was Michael Jordan’s cigar cutter that broke up the team.” Here’s a man who wrecked baseball, when the sport was in its prime, with a relentless 1990s bashing of the Players Association until a World Series was canceled and the NFL and Jordan bypassed the “national pastime.” Here’s a man whose team, as baseball added fans with shorter games last season, had the biggest attendance drop in the majors.

     And now, Jerry Reinsdorf is daring to hatch an idea without addressing a monumental question when he’s so ungodly cheap: Who is paying for his new stadium south of Roosevelt Road and west of Clark Street? He met with Mayor Brandon Johnson, who didn’t report money talks. He has spoken to aldermen, such as the 3rd Ward’s Pat Dowell, who said Thursday in a statement, “I will meet soon with the developers of The 78 to discuss the possibility of a stadium being built for the Chicago White Sox.” And Ald. Nicole Lee, who represents the area where the team currently plays: “The White Sox have proudly called Chicago and Bridgeport home for over a century. As a lifelong fan and now alderperson of the 11th Ward, I am wholeheartedly committed to keeping the Sox on the South Side.”

     But who pays? Certainly not Reinsdorf. Who ever can forget the old governor, Jim Thompson, preventing the Sox from moving to Florida after a midnight deadline in 1988? It was more than a sweetheart deal for Reinsdorf, thanks to a tax increase in Chicago hotel rooms, with freebies along the way and a current “requirement” to pay $1.5 million in annual rent while the city and Illinois each pay $5 million a year. Ohtani could have two shoelaces at those rates. The White Sox are precariously close, by those standards, to resembling a minor-league debacle.

     So, will a politician bow down again to a faux owner? When Reinsdorf only has mismanaged two teams with one title, the 2005 Sox, since Jordan left in 1998? Chicago times have changed for the worse, with emphasis on the fraught. Newer generations grew up with both teams pretty much reeking. No one is waiting in the weeds to save the Sox with any stadium money. Besides, Reinsdorf turns 88 next month. Don’t we want to know any day now who succeeds him? Will he ask his son, Michael, and other family members to sell the Sox?

     All in all, this is bullcrap from a man full of crap. Reinsdorf already has spoken to the mayor of Nashville, Freddie O’Connell, about potentially moving the team to that expansion-ready town. Already, he says he won’t sell the Sox while alive, saying it after describing 2023 as “absolutely the worst season I’ve ever been through.” Write this down for safe keeping: “I’m going to couch this so nobody writes that I thought of selling. Friends of mine have said, why don’t you sell, why don’t you get out? And my answer always has been, ‘I like what I’m doing, as bad as it is, and what else would I do?’ I’m a boring guy. I don’t play golf. I don’t play bridge. What else would I do?’ And I want to make it better, I want to make it better before I go.”

     He hasn’t made anything better in 43 years. The 44th is turning into an uglier farce. And gee, if I’m not careful here, Global Security Innovative Strategies will be after me.

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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.