LET’S PICK THE CRAZY ISHBIAS — SUNS AND ALL — OVER THE POOR-QUALITY REINSDORFS
The White Sox finally have an ownership future, with Justin Ishbia and his brother owning 35 percent after throwing insane money at a losing NBA team, but Jerry is set to put his two sons in charge
Will a rock fight happen? A series of lawsuits? Worse?
The future of the Chicago White Sox might be more ludicrous than the past, if that is possible. The worst team in baseball history has new owners — the Ishbias — who have turned spending into outrage as fortysomething multi-billionaires. They have fired three NBA coaches in two years and just spent league highs of $214 million in salaries and $152 million in luxury-tax payments.
Their team, the Phoenix Suns, finished 36-46 and will pay the latest coaching casualty, Mike Budenholzer, $10 million a year into 2029. Mat and Justin Ishbia spend madly, make crazy changes and demand a championship every season. Young? Irrational? No doubt, for now, but their super splurge is exactly what the city needs after decades of old, tired, stale owners. Let the Ishbias lose their money. See what they try next. This is Chicago, remember, the worst sports town in America.
But in the new ownership breakdown, as reported Monday by 670 The Score, Justin and Mat own only 35 percent of the Sox. Jerry Reinsdorf, who does turn 90 next winter, continues to operate the team. But what happens when he doesn’t operate the team? He has a 20 percent share and has given his sons — Michael, who runs the Bulls poorly, and Jonathan, a tech guy — a share of 30 percent. Other limited partners own 15 percent.
There is no chance Jerry gives his 20 percent to the Ishbias. They will be backups, even with monster money, while the Reinsdorf kids are in charge the way Michael keeps the Bulls in a wasteful no-man’s region in the standings. They learned from their father, who never has spent more than $75 million on a baseball free agent and wreckingballed the Michael Jordan dynasty so he could build his own, um, dynasty.
Welcome to the new world of the Sox, who likely won’t be moving to Nashville. If the Ishbias build a new stadium and the Reinsdorfs do not, isn’t the pecking order strongly ass-backwards? One side has nothing in common with the other. Jerry has done weird things in his life, and this arrangement is up there. Just last week, he used USA Today’s Bob Nightengale to write he “has zero interest in selling as long as he remains in good health” and that he “has rebuffed all of minority investor Justin Ishbia’s requests to purchase controlling interest of the team.” OK, that much is true.
But what if the Ishbias wish to go haywire financially on the next Juan Soto, the next Shohei Ohtani, the next Vladimir Guerrero Jr.? And what if the Reinsdorfs say no, as their father did, when he said he wouldn’t chase Ohtani and was scolded by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred? Sox fans have dealt with a cheap owner for decades. Now they’ll have wild spenders who can’t spend. What if the Cubs, suddenly scorching, happen to sign Kyle Tucker to a long-term deal? Justin doesn’t want to play minor-league ball.
Are the Ishbias certain they bought the right baseball team? Justin gave up a chance to take over the Minnesota Twins, and now, he has to play percentage games. What if the Ishbias seek to chase free agents this offseason? What if they don’t like a $64.9 million payroll when they’re getting rid of Kevin Durant in Phoenix? Doesn’t make sense.
One thing the groups have in common: They create headaches and stomach pain. But the Ishbias are brand new. Jerry Reinsdorf bought the Sox in 1981 and has won one World Series and otherwise lost in precious few postseasons. He bought the Bulls in 1985 and, beyond Jordan, he has accomplished almost nothing in the 21st century.
We thought he was dumping the Sox. He handed part of them to nutty kids with $15.5 billion in net worth. I like the nutty kids, don’t you? Far more than Jerry.
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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.