ON HIS 89TH BIRTHDAY, REINSDORF SHOULD WELCOME JUSTIN ISHBIA AND GO AWAY
Instead, he expresses concern to editors at The Athletic — join the club, after he tried to fire me often — and is ignored by the petty Tribune, making me wonder again about the Chicago sports media
The fanboys could walk outside in shorts. They are so overheated by news that Justin Ishbia might take over the Chicago White Sox, they’ll ignore the 39-degree weather and congregate in The 78 neighborhood, which might be the team’s future home.
“Sooner rather than later, he’s gonna have his fingerprints all over this franchise,’’ David Kaplan said on the radio.
“The second-richest owners in baseball, behind Stevie Cohen,” said A.J. Pierzynski, the former catcher, now a sports-talk fanboy raising a fist. “So, let’s go! They can start buying players and buying superstars.”
Mike Mulligan hasn’t been this thrilled in years, detached from South Side mopiness, such as the day I took him to Wrigley Field for the first time. “My reaction after I fainted was one of pure elation,” he said. “This is great news. It hints at more to come. It hints at a future with promise. It is all about moving forward what’s best for this team. And a guy with coin who wants to invest who is based in Chicago indicates that they’re going to stay on the South Side, that they’re not going to move to another place. I love this idea.”
So why has the Chicago Tribune refused to run the story? Ishbia’s $77 million mansion in Winnetka is worth more than any contract given to a Sox player — in Jerry Reinsdorf’s four-plus decades of owning the team. Abandoning plans to pursue the Minnesota Twins, Ishbia owns a stake in the Sox and intends to purchase shares from minority partners. He aims to control a troubled franchise and discard Reinsdorf as the worst owner in the 21st century of athletic life.
Why nothing in the Tribune? The paper is so petty, it refused to credit me and the Sun-Times for breaking the story of Michael Jordan’s return to basketball — with Sam Smith referring to us as a “newspaper.” I contacted Paul Sullivan, who rates as the modern-day Jerome Holtzman in baseball circles, and asked why he wasn’t lathered in the story. The Athletic broke the news Friday night.
Yet all I see is a piece written by Ishbia in October 2023, when he said he has lived in Chicago “for 20 years and fell in love with this city” while pleading for Winnetka to unify parks. This was his published reaction to a park board withdrawing permits, ending his land swap that would meld Centennial Park and Elder Lane Park. He was trying to come clean about the lakefront when most of Chicago doesn’t think Winnetka exists. It was an intriguing story about a man in his mid-40s building a massive home, as concerns were raised in the neighborhood.
This is the fifth day. There’s still nothing in the Trib. Sullivan apparently didn’t think it was worthy of his fingers the first four days. And the Sun-Times? One story appeared and then a column, both indicating what’s obvious until, well, it happens: “Just because Justin Ishbia wants to buy the White Sox doesn't mean Jerry Reinsdorf is selling.”
Today happens to be Reinsdorf’s 89th birthday. When Bears owner Virginia McCaskey died at 102 and Larry Dolan of the Cleveland Guardians died at 94, Reinsdorf is in the zip code of San Francisco Giants owner Charles Johnson (92), Indiana Pacers owner Herb Simon (90) and Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown (89). They are the senior members of sports proprietorship in North America. How nice if Reinsdorf celebrated by wishing Ishbia well and explaining why a 47-year-old local tycoon — $5.4 billion in net worth, as a private equity investor — is a desperate addition for a team that needs fans, a stadium, a real TV network and some sort of presence.
But that’s not Jerry. He and his attorneys — the same dudes who tried to get me fired about 100 times — were in touch with The Athletic. Above the story by Jon Greenberg is an editor’s note: “An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the impact of a new investor on White Sox minority partners. Those partners’ shares will remain the same. They will not be diluted.” We’re glad the partners will be paid from a $1.8 billion franchise valuation. We’re happy lawyers had something to beef about after losing two weeks ago, when a sexual discrimination case filed by former Sox athletic trainer Brian Ball — who says he was fired because he is a homosexual — was returned to a jury mode by an Illinois appellate court.
Reinsdorf needs to get lost. He needed to get lost 15 years ago.
He has found his savior, somehow. Welcome him. Don’t banish Ishbia from speaking to the media and fans.
The beauty of writing at Substack is my freedom from Jerrymania. During my 17 years in Chicago, he dispatched lawyers to chat with my Reinsdorf-appreciative editors. I said he was cheap, which was true. I said he was bypassed by progress in his 70s, which was true. I wondered why his baseball boss once threatened me on a Chicago rooftop, which could have created a rough fall for Ken Williams. I wondered why his TV broadcaster, Ken Harrelson, tried to start a fight in Minneapolis. I wondered why manager Ozzie Guillen called me a “f—ing fag.”
If I had written the Ishbia piece, I would be the enemy. In fact, I’m worried for Ishbia’s future because The Athletic broke the story and I quickly followed with a column. Last Sept. 24, when I sat in Section 121 on the South Side while awaiting the season’s 121st loss, I wrote this sentence via pure instinct:
“Justin Ishbia, who is razing hell on a Winnetka beach while building a $44 million mansion, might want to buy the ballclub as his brother, Mat, runs the Phoenix Suns.”
Reinsdorf doesn’t like that take, either. Jerry doesn’t like anything.
Please, please, please: Blow out your candles, sign away ownership and leave on a slow train that never will return.
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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.