WHO WILL DIE FIRST IN CHICAGO? THE WINLESS WHITE SOX OR THE SUN-TIMES?
All was well with the baseball club and the newspaper when Ozzie Guillen unleashed a karmic blunder — “f—ing fag” — and ever since, the Sox and my former publication are lost causes that can go away
In my Carlos Alcaraz blur, where I’ve smashed a forehand past Novak Djokovic, I gaze at the ocean from a Malibu panorama and enjoy the entirety of life. Another anniversary is upon us, No. 18, when a major-league baseball team and a newspaper died at once. It came in a mid-June period as I covered the NBA Finals and golf’s version of the U.S. Open. I was nowhere near Chicago for major sports events, where high-profile writers appeared in the day.
Someone called me on the phone. The manager of the White Sox, Ozzie Guillen, wanted to know my whereabouts and referred to me before a game as a “f—ing fag.” In that period, my newspaper was faring well in the city’s media battles, while the Sox were coming off their only World Series championship since 1917. I am not gay, as he might have been trying to claim, but I do have two wonderful daughters who joked at school about the Blizzard of Oz’s nuttiness.
I viewed it as part of the job but also noticed how my bosses didn’t care. And how the owner of the Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf, didn’t care. Wait. Were they in bed together? They expected a columnist, who sometimes didn’t appreciate the prattle from Guillen’s mouth, to simply accept being called a “f—ing fag” because he wanted to scream at me in his office. They wanted me to deal with national TV interviews, one from Tucker Carlson, where I explained to millions why Guillen was a creep in any number of ways. They expected me to carry on, as a local alternative reporter wrote, and “laugh at it all someday.”
Yeah, I laugh.
Delightfully.
Since that day in 2006, the Sox have collapsed and become one of the worst teams in North American sports. Their stadium, obsolete as I called it from the outset, is old and cold and dangerous for those hit by gunfire in the bleachers or struck by a car on 35th Street. On the field, they stumbled in that year’s playoff race and have had 11 losing seasons since. They’ve reached the postseason only three times, winning no series and managing three victories. They’re in another phase of an eternal rebuild, and as Reinsdorf somehow seeks a new stadium in a town that views him as a diarrhea stream, his players showed up last week after a 101-loss season and gave away junk food in the Loop.
“Who doesn’t want a hot dog at 10 a.m.?’’ Gavin Sheets said.
They are 0-4 after losing 9-0 to Atlanta, with a Monday crowd much lower than the 13,781 tickets that were sold. The Cubs were starting their home season at the same time, which should remind commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners why Chicago doesn’t deserve two teams anymore. People should grow accustomed to apathy that might compare to the Oakland dregs, where the Athletics are headed to Las Vegas while the Sox dangle Nashville in political tomfoolery.
“I really don’t have much for you guys,” said manager Pedro Grifol, whose batters are 1-for-18 with runners in scoring position. “These are ones you’ve just got to flush.”
Like the owner.
And since that day in 2006, the Sun-Times has similarly failed. The paper tries to survive with FREE digital output, dropping a paywall, and provides “keychains” with any donation amount on a desperate web page. Print circulation has dropped to a frightening 32,000 when our sports staff understood the keen interest of nine million potential readers and produced around 350,000 daily copies. This is a non-profit site. Good thing. Seems like yesterday when I left after the Summer Olympics in Beijing, when no one could figure out how to post our Michael Phelps stories for eight hours.
On occasion, I write executive editor Jennifer Kho and ask about the depletion of sports coverage. She inherited the mess. How does a paper known for sports lose almost every subscriber so fast? Recently, a respected baseball writer named Dave van Dyck passed away. The likes of Rick Sutcliffe, Billy Williams and Robin Ventura would have said nice things as former players, but for some reason, the paper used sports editor Chris De Luca to lead off the obituary. De Luca should lead no one’s obit but his own. He wrecked a section with zero vision and crusty local stories and a hundred thousand pieces about Justin Fields, while the hedge-fund-controlled Tribune, of all outfits, takes over sports readership in America’s No. 3 market as the Athletic bores. The Sun-Times beat writers try. Why?
I merrily resigned, on the best day of my career, disgusted by corruption in the management ranks and an absurd thought I’d stay for big money despite a mood of impending enormous declines. I’ve lost track of the owners — a plumbers union? — along with bankruptcy and red ink and how a path with a public radio station can’t work. And every so often, I recall a time when all was well for everyone at the paper and the team, including Guillen, until “f—ing fag” flew. He eventually was fired, after his sons made fun of boss Ken Williams, and he was dismissed later in Miami for praising Fidel Castro inside a Little Havana ballpark. Today, he’s on a pre-game show where a star of the Sox past, Frank Thomas, dropped a full-blown “f—ing’’ on the air last weekend.
“Yeah. I wish I still could f—ing run,” he said. Guillen stood there and smiled, at 60, his days long gone in managing or anything but surveying another rotten team.
Karma, some might call it in 2024. Notice how everything corroded from “f—ing fag” on. Who will die first? The Sox? The Sun-Times?
They’re both winless.
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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.