THIS IS HOW YOU DESTROY THE CHICAGO WHITE SOX AND REINSDORF, FOREVER

Silly media ask about the manager, but in the largest picture, this team has no reason to be on Planet Earth and should be exterminated from a sale, a stadium deal, a Nashville move and any future

     The new goal is to destroy the Chicago White Sox. Forget about moving, as Nashville has zero interest in spending billions on a new ballpark. Forget about a sale, assuming business people have monitored baseball’s fatal media demise as the NFL and NBA earn the mightiest broadcast deals. What we want is the death of the South Side franchise.

     And the final exit of the owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, who should be buried on the corner of 35th and Shields. That’s where two women were shot in the bleachers last season, at Guaranteed Rate Field, when MLB prohibits “the possession or use of deadly weapons” in its facilities. That’s where four fans were struck by a hit-and-run car before a game, with a silver sedan crashing on the outbound Dan Ryan Expressway. That’s where three shot glasses were thrown on the field last Friday night, one of which nailed a kid in the head in the front row, according to the city’s ace reporters.

     “Flying full bottles of liquor,” said Paul DeJong, the shortstop.

     “I was on-deck and heard a loud thud and looked down and there was a little shot glass right in front of me,” said Andrew Vaughn, the first baseman.

     “I really don’t know where they came from. One landed close to me and closer to some fans there,” said Pedro Grifol, the manager.

     If any team should go away and never return to American sports, it’s the White Sox, who are playing their 107th season since 1918 and have only one championship in that period. They threw a World Series and are better known for that asininity than anything else they’ve done, which includes blowing up disco records and a family tag team (William Ligue and son) attacking a Kansas City first-base coach. They continue to lead the major leagues in attendance declines — they announce an average crowd of 16,601, a loss of 4,804 per game since last year. Even the Oakland Athletics, whose fans are boycotting forever with an impending bye-bye to Las Vegas, have lost only 3,183 fans per game. By season’s end, the Sox will compete with the Miami Marlins for the lowest total figure beyond the A’s.

     I am considering departing Los Angeles, where the Dodgers attract 46,668 a game, and sitting behind home plate for a Sox game, where seats are empty and I’d lift my feet while enjoying a Campfire Milkshake. It might be a way to remind Reinsdorf, who drags his 88-year-old body and sits alone in a suite, that he created this all-time mess. He went through rebuilds and finally gave up on the bosses, Ken Williams and Rick Hahn. He has ambushed any interest in attending a game, with a 17-49 team prepared to lose more than the 2003 Detroit Tigers, who went 43-119 as the worst to play 162 games. The 1962 Mets, of course, went 40-120.

     He also is trying for a madman deal with an Iraqi-British billionaire. Nadhmi Shakir Auchi teamed with 76 others — including Saddam Hussein — to assassinate Iraq’s prime minister and has been convicted twice. Auchi owns 62 acres in the South Loop and has not said no to Reinsdorf, who wants to turn Chicago’s 78th neighborhood into the new home of the Sox. Never mind that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has no interest while Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is busy with the Bears and their new lakefront stadium bid. At this point, as the Sox plunge into no-man’s land in the standings, wouldn’t the Nashville mayor prefer another bad honky tonk instead of taking over the Sox woes?

     Yes, there is a way to see an end to Reinsdorf. The fanboy media people generally focus on Grifol and when he’ll be fired. In fact, he’s a victim for taking the job last season. At 78-150, he has a winning percentage of .343, heading toward an all-time Sox crash near Ed Walsh, who finished .333 in 1924 — one hundred years ago. Soon enough, general manager Chris Getz — who never said he was firing a minor-league manager, Omar Vizquel, when he was accused of sexually harassing an autistic batboy — will trade slugger Luis Robert and pitcher Garrett Crochet. Sometime in August and September, when fans are watching every move of supposed Bears savior Caleb Williams, it’s possible a few hundred people will enter the ballpark and sit where they please. Like me.

     Ciao, Jerry.

     A time will come when any bloke who wants to rescue the Sox will see no hope. At least Athletics owner John Fisher had Vegas, after Mark Davis made the shift of the NFL Raiders. But Reinsdorf is in a town where downtown office vacancy tops 30 percent and population is dropping, leaving Houston and Dallas as potentially larger markets. Once the home of newspaper warfare, the city might be left with one rapidly declining rag, the Tribune. Chicago is not the place to save a baseball team when the much bigger club, the Cubs, plays at Wrigley FIeld and already attracts 35,497 a game before summer. This is not a town worthy of two teams, unlike New York and possibly Los Angeles, unless the Angels continue to slide.

     Expansion is not atop commissioner Rob Manfred’s list when the collective bargaining agreement will be wrecked in 2026. Vegas remains a logistical mystery until shovels invade the Strip and a new park opens in 2028. On top of it all, guess which franchise — not including the A’s — has the worst reputation among active MLB players.

     The White Sox.

     Said the players, off the record, to the Athletic:

     “I’ve never heard a good thing.”

     “It sounds like no one wants to be there day in and day out … like it’s a grind just to show up to the ballpark. I couldn’t imagine.”

     “It’s not good over there. You can tell by how often there’s turnover that usually means something’s going on. Players leaving the organization and automatically doing better (with their new team).”

     “Unlike some other bad teams, they have more potential to be good.”

     “Poor communication.”

     In his lame world, Reinsdorf thinks someone will give him $3 billion or more for the Sox. Really? The Baltimore Orioles were sold in March for only $1.725 billion. What Chicago idiot would make the man even richer after he trashed two teams through most of the 21st century? It wasn’t too long ago when Carl Pohlad accepted $250 million to contract the Minnesota Twins. He didn’t.

     But might we make Reinsdorf’s life such bitter hell that he’d shutter the Sox? See you soon at the ballpark. Hopefully, no one will shoot me, run me over in a car or hit me with a shot glass.

     ###

     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.