ONLY IN CHICAGO CAN THE WHITE SOX LOSE 121 GAMES AND CRITICS ARE “ANTI-SEMITIC”
This is getting old when Jerry Reinsdorf, who thinks some of us hate Jews, is defended by ex-mayor Lori Lightfoot, who said critics are headed toward “criminal” cases when, in truth, both are losers
In the dutiful practice of respecting one’s religion, I never was called “anti-Catholic” by the McCaskey family. Never mind how I once described the Chicago Bears as the “Misers of the Midway,” a term the mom-and-poppers didn’t like but never threatened me with a courtroom.
The same applies to the Wirtz family, owners of the Blackhawks, who never referred to me as “anti-Protestant.’’ And the Ricketts family, owners of the Cubs, whose son Tom was raised Catholic. And the Tribune, which might have believed in moon gods or Hindu cosmology when the media company owned the Cubs. My stance is clearcut when it comes to the men and women who run sports franchises.
I don’t like bad owners, period. They ransack fans via money.
An anti-Semitic menace? The reason this resurfaces — after explaining recently how Jerry Reinsdorf expressed concern to numerous Jewish attorneys, something about me hating Jews — is because the stance has been lifted into stinky air by a former mayor. Lori Lightfoot lost her re-election bid last year, just as Reinsdorf’s White Sox have lost 121 games this year. Together, they are losers for life.
“We got a lot of shit done,” she said.
The Sox just left theirs piled, and much worse, with the ugliest single-season record in American sports history.
But Lightfoot is describing “sports commentators” — does she mean me? — among those who have “crossed the line” into “antisemitism” and should hire an attorney for our “vitriol.” I’ve already wondered if I should retain a Jewish lawyer and take down Reinsdorf for what he said years ago. Here we go again.
“Frankly, some of the stuff I’ve seen probably crosses the line to criminal. … People can have their own opinion, but when it crosses the line into threats, into character assassinations by people who frankly don’t know him personally, I think that’s out of bounds,” Lightfoot told reporter Tom Schuba at the Sun-Times.
Threats? Wasn’t Reinsdorf threatening me when he called me anti-Semitic? Did that explain why a Sun-Times editor-in-chief summoned me and asked if the claim was true, and when I prepared to leave his office, he blindsided me with a forearm shiver on the shoulder? Nigel Wade lost his job after the episode led to a union-led probe. Didn’t Reinsdorf cost Wade his gig while forcing me to absorb more loathing from owners Conrad Black and David Radler, who did what the sports owner wanted at the time?
Lightfoot emerges as a dismayed Sox fan. She doesn’t appreciate how some of us have detailed Reinsdorf as a cheapskate — the only narrative when he never has paid more than $75 million for a free agent, in the age of Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal, joining only Oakland-to-Sacramento crank John Fisher in that sad baseball boat. He is cheap. I don’t care about his faith.
“When people are calling him the cheap owner, I’ve gotta tell you, that’s like one step removed for me from saying the cheap Jew. And don’t I like that. I don’t like antisemitism,” said Lightfoot, who added, “As somebody who’s been the subject of those kinds of attacks, it is a slippery slope between that kind of vitriol and people making death threats against the person who’s the target of the vitriol. It’s a very, very thin line.”
No, the line is thick and obtrusive. Unlike Chicago product Mark Walter, who has poured billions into Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Reinsdorf is at the low point of expenditures. His second-rate baseball profile never made sense to me because Chicago is America’s No. 3 market.
I would suggest Reinsdorf, at 88, start winning a few ballgames and not let the ex-mayor fight for him. Yet his latest weak excuse for a general manager, Chris Getz, is warning Sox fans that it might take years to create a team worth watching. Why would anyone return to Guaranteed Rate Field, ever again? As Lightfoot said, “It’s hard to go to the ballpark and feel like you can literally count the number of people that are in the stands. That’s painful. And you know for me, I only wish for a return to relevance.” Try telling that to a fan named Zac Lyons, who brought a sign this week asking Reinsdorf to sell the team.
He was kicked out of the park by a security guard, the Washington Post reported. Don’t waste your god-given moments at 35th Street and Shields Avenue.
“There are situations that front offices have endured before where you’re stuck in the middle and perhaps you’re stuck in mediocrity, and you don’t know how to get out of that,” Getz said. “Where we stand right now, it’s very clear that we’ve got some work to do and the pathway out of that is to be healthy underneath the organization. And that’s what we’re determined to do. We’re not going to take shortcuts.”
If Reinsdorf doesn’t have a new stadium lined up by 2025 — and the politicians are saying no across the board, despite a beautiful skyline view in “The 78” neighborhood — he’ll have to sell the franchise or move to Nashville. Or be stuck on the South Side. At this point, the smart people of Music City would prefer an expansion team. Why would anyone want the Sox? No real free agents are coming. Losing 121 (123?) games won’t allow them to pick before 10th in next year’s draft, thanks to Major League Baseball rules that ban tanking. “The rules are the rules, and it’s our job to find competitive advantages for us,” Getz said. “It’s about going out and identifying players we want to bring in and develop properly.”
Life expectancy in this country is 76.33 years. The Sox lost 103 times last year. That means, with two more losses in Detroit, they’ve lost 226 times in two years. Might they veer toward 130 losses next year?
What birdbrain would go near the ballpark?
Nor will I write about this hellhole-ishness any longer. If I am heading down a “criminal” path, as Lightfoot said, I should contact the same lawyers he might pursue against me. Seems they might be on my side. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a news source established in 1917, the Jewish fans don’t like him either.
“Jerry Reinsdorf has some serious repenting to do this time of year,” said Henry Bernstein, 42, who works at a Jewish day school in Chicago. “He should be there all day saying ‘Ashamnu bagadnu’ and asking for forgiveness from every single fan.”
“Jerry Reinsdorf, what a shonda,” said Rabbi Tamar Manasseh, a Cubs fan who calls him a disgrace in Yiddish. “A shonda, what he has done to the White Sox. I’m not even a fan, and I am mortified and I’m saddened. My heart breaks for Sox fans.”
He is a shonda.
I am not.
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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.