LET THE WHITE SOX DIE WITHOUT A NEW STADIUM AS THEY APPROACH 40-122 MADNESS
Jerry Reinsdorf is looking at the ugliest season in modern sports history, which has me pondering a Sept. 26 trip and should lead to politicians telling him to get lost with his horrible organization
Brick by brick, failure by failure, the problem with Chicagoans involves a politeness about stadiums. Why aren’t they burning down the South Side craphole, still funded by defrauded taxpayers? This is how enraged people fire back in certain countries, and while I’m not suggesting personal damage, pick a weekend night at 4 a.m. and turn Guaranteed Rate Field into a massive insurance claim for Illinois.
That way, if firemen let it burn, Jerry Reinsdorf has nowhere to play ball. That way, he can’t keep stealing the money of White Sox fans, decade after decade. That way, he’ll stop vandalizing community pride. Remember: No one has to build a new park for Reinsdorf, as Gov. J.B. Pritzker has noted a thousand times. In Nashville, Mayor Freddie O’Connell says a Major League Baseball stadium must be privately funded, saying, “Our public investment strategy is focused on existing obligations and ensuring that we do get to that philosophy of a better Nashville for Nashvillians.”
So if Reinsdorf can’t have a field built for him in Chicago or Tennessee — as a 2029 lease expiration requires a decision fairly soon — just let his team die. We assume that hasn’t happened already, with a 27-84 abomination on a 17-game losing streak after semi-worthy players were traded. Never mind the 1962 New York Mets, who finished 40-120 and were supposed to lose as an expansion team. The 1935 Boston Braves went 38-115 and played one home game before 95 fans, declaring bankruptcy at season’s end. The Washington Generals won once and lost 17,000 times to the Harlem Globetrotters, as they were told.
If the White Sox crash to the rock of all bottoms — 40 wins and 122 losses, or worse — this will be the ugliest season in modern sports history. The 2008 Detroit Lions were 0-16 and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 0-14, but at some human juncture, a 122-slimed season is crummier from March through September. The city is Chicago, which has fallen often but never has seen anything so corrupt and anathematic.
“It sucks, man. It sucks. We’re in the middle of the freaking eye of the storm here,” said manager Pedro Grifol, who lost 12 of 13 games to the Kansas City Royals, his former team.
“If you dwell on it too long, it will eat you up,” said outfielder Andrew Benintendi, the highest-paid player in Reinsdorf’s tenure at merely $75 million for five years.
Allow me to say what isn’t said by the local media. Reinsdorf is the sorriest-ass bastard in the buttcrack of 21st-century sports ownership. He runs a franchise in America’s third-largest market and laughs at the idea of major free-agent signings. As Shohei Ohtani climbed into the $700 million pay range, Reinsdorf drowned in boorish insincerity, as he hasn’t cared about winning since allowing Michael Jordan to leave 26 years ago. He’s in the ballgame only because he has nothing else to do at 88. If he cared about a city and a godawful organization, he’d sell the White Sox now. But that won’t happen because, deep down, he might enjoy angering whatever fans remain.
It also deduces that anyone would be stupid enough to buy them, in a sport lacking the media fortunes of the NFL and NBA, in a town where Sox value has dropped below $2 billion. When the Baltimore Orioles were sold in March for $1.725 billion, before a possible World Series appearance, who would give $1 billion to Reinsdorf? Maybe he should give the club away, or dissolve it entirely. Only two other teams — the 1932 Boston Red Sox (27-84) and 1916 Philadelphia A’s (23-87) — have lost 84 times or more in the first 111 games of a season.
Can the Sox lose 38 and win 13? Can a team that has won only one championship in 107 years somehow do worse? I am planning a trip to 35th and Shields, which will include a bulletproof vest in case handguns go off, and a ride dropping me off blocks away so no cars will hit me by the entrance. Our day is Sept. 26.
The final homestand begins with “Dog Day,” sponsored by Tito’s Handmade Vodka. That dose should take me from Tuesday night to Thursday afternoon, where I will sit just behind home plate in the Wintrust Scout Seats. There is a spot in section 131S, on the aisle in view of the TV camera. This could be the 121st loss.
My price is $282 with fees. I will sneak in and not pay.
Why would anyone guard the doors when no one is coming?
And Garrett Crochet will not pitch.
Rather than throw in the postseason for, say, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Crochet manhandled the Sox with an odd demand: Any team that acquired him would have to extend his contract. We see such extortion attempts in the NBA, but when it happens in baseball, Reinsdorf is buried. Figures. Chris Getz was primed as the general manager to win prizes in a huge deal. Crochet said no, forcing Getz to deal him in the offseason. “A little surprised and taken back by how they went at it,” he said.
Sometime soon, Crochet will be shut down after throwing 114 1/3 innings this year. He responded after Tommy John surgery and eventually became an outstanding starter, with a 3.23 ERA and 160 strikeouts in 22 starts. Was he overly concerned he’d never thrown more than 54 1/3 innings, back in 2021? What if he’d gone to a big-time team and landed an extension after the season?
It was his call, his punch to the gut. The Sox lose once again.
“Ultimately, whether a deal went through or not I don’t think was dependent on that being said or not,” Crochet said. “I think any team would find it reasonable. I think that it was ultimately the right call. … Anybody can understand where I’m coming from in that regard. I think it may have come across as greedy to some, but I think those in the industry realized it’s logical to have that line of thinking.”
He will see infamy, then, not history. “Garrett has had strong interest from clubs for obvious reasons,” Getz said. “He’s become one of the top starting pitchers in our game and his story kind of speaks for itself, his climb toward the top being a starting pitcher. We were having discussions with clubs up until the last hour. Obviously nothing came together. We didn’t feel like it was the right move to move Garrett although there was that strong interest.”
And the future? “I know that I talked (Monday) about Garrett and with the comments that his team had put out there. We are going to work past that. He’s a high-character individual,” Getz said. “He is a competitor. He wants to be the best that he can be. And I don’t think anything is going to get in the way of him trying to accomplish that. We are in good standing. There’s going to be plenty of opportunity for Garrett and I to sit down and map out the remaining part of the year, just like we had been doing up until this point with so much of his attention on maintaining his health for his long-term health and becoming the pitcher he wants to become.”
He’ll be swapped for a few players we don’t know, the usual. The Sox lost 101 games in 2023. Let’s say they lose 122 in 2024. Next year, they could lose 130.
Let them die.
At least Reinsdorf was one-upped in headlines. Donald Trump was in town. On Wednesday, he said of Kamala Harris, “I've known her a long time indirectly, not directly, very much. And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don't know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”
We know Trump’s act. I know Reinsdorf’s act. Saturday, a stranger called me — found my number online — and said he fears Reinsdorf for personal and professional reasons. The man has a story to tell.
Trump is Trump. Reinsdorf is Reinsdorf.
One man is half-hated in America. The other man is thoroughly despised.
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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.