THERE’S MORE: HE APPEARS, BLAMES POLICE AND HIRES AN ODDBALL AS GM
No one has hope for Reinsdorf, but he took one final shot, blaming the police for saying two women were shot by gunfire inside the stadium and then hiring the general manager who helped Omar Vizquel
To a mixture of peeps including former President Barack Obama, mayors and imprisoned politicians, newspaper publishers and editors, broadcasting morons and those who’ve allowed themselves to be conspired by the four-decades-plus owner of the White Sox and Bulls, hey, let’s welcome in Fred Waller.
He’s the interim superintendent of Chicago’s Police Department. And for some reason, he permitted himself to be dressed down — the most significant leader of his organization, for now, in America’s third-largest market — by Jerry Reinsdorf. When I’m 87, I won’t be stumbling toward a microphone at a news conference for one of the worst teams in sports. Ever, never. That doesn’t make me feel sorry for him in any way. Rather, it makes me feel giddy that he’s a karmic fool when, I don’t know, he’s better off examining the rest of the world before he’s gone like the rest of us.
To be clear, Reinsdorf didn’t show up at Guaranteed Rate Field to introduce 40-year-old Chris Getz as the team’s next general manager. He wanted to take down Waller, who said, with reasonable qualification, that the gunshots who burned two fans last Friday night were taken inside the park. His words: “Almost completely dispelled …” which turned the owner into a simpleton. Otherwise, he doesn’t care enough about Getz or the team’s dismal future or his longterm stake in the Sox. Look, as someone who has dealt with his b.s. through time, I know why he was there. He is frightened Chicago will execute him, which is what he deserves since 2005, by declaring shots couldn’t have been taken inside the ballpark. That way, he would let other fans at the stadium hire attorneys — who’ve waited forever to bring down Mr. Gavel — after Major League Baseball decided in 2015 to have a “Weapon-Free’’ Workplace Policy requiring metal detectors at gates.
Reinsdorf never came out when he removed Michael Jordan from the Bulls. He never went public when the stories were politics and messes with other sports owners. He wouldn’t even talk about gutterage involving Getz, who became GM despite a horrific mess in 2019. Remember when Getz allowed Omar Vizquel to leave one season in Birmingham with a compliment — a “good environment” — and refused to acknowledge he ran out a manager who “repeatedly exposed” and sexually abused himself in a lawsuit filed by an autistic batboy? But Reinsdorf didn’t show up even to acknowledge the heinous hostility of wicked hazing, in a town where Northwestern recently ran off its popular football coach.
He has a bullet to pick with the interim police superintendent. There he was, before a holiday weekend, making sure the city’s hoi polloi won’t nab him in the end. Question is, will it help? It shouldn’t. Wouldn’t a big, solid “no” from Waller initiate Reinsdorf’s departure for good?
“I spoke with Superintendent Waller last night, and he authorized me to say that regardless of what anybody has said, up ’til now, they have not ruled out that the shots came outside the ballpark,” Reinsdorf said in a unique media session in his office, which is done only with a few and when he has something hard to say. “And you can call him and contact, and he’ll verify that. They’re still investigating. I don’t want to get into specific facts while they’re investigating, but we’ve really done a deep dive into this and I don’t see any way in the world that the shots could have come from inside the ballpark.”
A deep dive? Is this the man who spies on people with a distinguished group in Washington? Why is Reinsdorf’s name and photo listed among principals fronting Global Security Innovative Strategies? What exactly is the mission of this bizarre operation? From the firm’s website: “GSIS leverages its extensive private sector, homeland and public security, public sector and international expertise to provide comprehensive solutions for its clients. These solutions range from investigations, end-to-end security assessments, design and implementation to government relations support and business advisory services such as due-diligence, new market entrance and business intelligence.”
Does this mean he has spied on me and other people he doesn’t like? Or you? Better, why wouldn’t he explain why his stadium security is run by a registered agent named William Waters? He is vice president of finance for the Sox. These are the oddities we want to know about. We don’t care, sorry, about Getz. “I don’t want to comment on specific details because the police are still investigating and haven’t come to a final conclusion,’’ Reinsdorf said. “But we have done a lot of investigations, we have gathered a lot of facts. … I believe it’s totally safe to be in this ballpark. I don’t think a gun has ever gotten past security, and I think that ultimately will come out.”
So if the White Sox say they have the facts, what do the police know about anything? In Chicago, both deserve each other. In this case, stick with Waller, unless he has been paid off with two good tickets next season, plenty available.
For now, Reinsdorf should ponder selling the team tomorrow. Early last week, someone close to him — or him — told Crain’s Chicago Business that he would sell to a leveraged local buyer or perhaps offer it to Nashville. This would have been a fine time to do so. At the press conference, he claimed, “Friends of mine have said why don’t you sell, why don’t you get out?”
Well, you’ll be 88 soon, followed by 90. “My answer always has been, ‘I like what I’m doing, as bad as it is, and what else would I do,’ ’’ Reinsdorf said. “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.”
And the more likely scenario, he won’t. “It’s obvious, if we have six years left, I think that’s what it is, we’ve got to decide, what’s the future going to be?” he said, referring to the end of the stadium lease. “We’ll get to it, but I’ve never threatened to move out. We haven’t even begun to have discussions with the Sports Authority, which we’ll have to do soon.”
Like, this morning. “The 2023 season was my 43rd in baseball. It was absolutely the worst season I’ve ever been through,” he said. “It was a nightmare. It’s still a nightmare. It’s embarrassing. It’s disgusting.”
Earlier, he said, “Now I lost my train of thought. I feel like Mitch McConnell.”
Get some rizz, Jer. McConnell needs Reinsdorf, vice versa. According to the Tribune, a company with links to Reinsdorf bought West Side property — near the United Center, as I’ve said for 10 years — and might seek to move the Sox there. Or, maybe not, as USA Today writes he might want to move to Soldier Field, the United Center and Arlington Heights. Should he see a doctor soon?
To me, Thursday should have been an afternoon of connecting the new GM to his worst day — Omar Vizquel — and why it won’t prevent hazing excrement down the road. It also should have been about Reinsdorf talking about his own future and letting the damned police, seven days in, do their jobs.
Of course, it’s always about everything else with this freak of freaks. On comes Year No. 44 — 43 of which have been pretty damned brutal in a town that deserves so, so, so much better.
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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.