White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf talks to reporters last season at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago.
AP
THE 2024 CHICAGO WHITE SOX are very public poltroons as they limp toward a final out far beyond mere ridicule and scorn.
If only they were intended to be a floating comedy troupe — something along the lines of the yellow-hot Savannah Bananas.
Then their historic baseball ineptitude would be expected, if not downright applauded.
Instead, they’ll flail into perpetuity as the losers Bill Veeck warned Chicago about, bad karmic testimony to the distinctly double-edged sports overseer career of Jerry Reinsdorf.
As a businessman, no one can question that the man has been platinum-gold.
As a competitive sports senior safety, he has been little more than a nowhere man — the six NBA championships belonging almost exclusively to Michael Jordan.
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM well-placed friends in Major League Baseball, he ran rings around Edward DeBartolo Sr. in the winter of 1980-81 to seize “chair of general partnership” with the White Sox.
Four years later, with influential chums like George Steinbrenner and Lester Crown greasing the endlines, he headed a group that assumed a 56.8% controlling interest in the Bulls for $9.2 million.
That quick change included 56.8% ownership interest of the rookie contract of young Mr. Jordan, all of 22 years old at the time of the exchange.
In the next decade, Reinsdorf flashed a sports business acumen that dazzled.
WITH PRECISE PRIVATE FUNDING, he got the United Center built. As early as 1985 — nine years before the magnificent building opened — The Chairman was telling all who would listen that the UC would be a logical landmark target for the first wave of West Loop gentrification.
And he proved to be 1,000% correct.
At the same time, he began to consult with old pal Jim Thompson, then deep into his 14-year run as the fast-shuffling governor of Illinois (1977-91), about a new play palace for the White Sox.
Together, they concocted a public financing device called the Illinois Sports Facility Authority (ISFA).
IN 1987, AT THE TIME OF ITS BIRTHING by a laydown majority in the Illinois General Assembly, the ISFA was seen as the last civic option standing between Reinsdorf’s White Sox and a move to St. Petersburg, Fla.
The vast majority of Chicago media back then — sports and otherwise — simply wasn’t equipped to reconcile all of the fine print of the ISFA’s enabling legislation to probable future fiscal realities.
All that could be conveniently reported was that the White Sox had been “saved” for Chicago.
IN 2002, THE BEARS HOPPED ABOARD the ISFA free-money train with a nine-figure tab for the renovation of Soldier Field.
Now, 22 years since that maneuver, the ISFA has yet to completely pay off either the Sox’s MLB park on West 35th St. or the flipped Mars orbiter doing business as “Soldier Field.”
(According to data provided by ISFA staff to media, $50 million is still owed on the 33-year-old Sox stadium. An additional $580 million remains on the books for the Soldier Field rehab.)
Annual debt service alone on the combined gross is projected at $60 million in 2025, $79 million in 2030 and $90.5 million in 2032 when a balloon payment is also supposed to drop from some heavenly body to retire all remaining principal.
(In the mighty governmental halls of Springfield, that’s known as a “scoop and toss.”)
FROM THE PUBLIC SIDE, all of that is reprehensible business. The idea that both sports organizations — the White Sox and the Bears — are back at that leaky taxpayer pipeline asking for even more free money leapfrogs into a babbling sea of absurdia.
But back to Chairman Reinsdorf and his ’24 White Sox.
Until the current MLB campaign, his greatest sports ops disgrace was the utterly gratuitous dismantling of Jordan and the defending NBA champion 1997-98 Bulls 6.0. They were merely a global joy, the most theatrical championship dynasty in the history of their game.
Now come his ’24 White Sox. Odds remain that they will lose at least 121 games and undercut the expansion 1962 New York Mets as the most pathetic team in the modern history of MLB.
“The Curse of the Breakup” will remain No. 1 on JR’s sorry hit list. But “Reinsdorf’s Brooklyn Baseball Revenge” will certainly complete the exacta.
A CRITICAL UNDERPINNING of Reinsdorf allowing a core business to devolve into such desolate straits is the existence of the ISFA. All of its built-in profit and cost guarantees take a huge chunk of the pressure off the White Sox to win games.
So, as appropriate tribute to all that his operational cynicism has brought about this year, get rid of the ISFA.
He, Thompson and cronies were quite creative in bringing it about.
Now, 37 weary years later, the toxin should just as creatively be removed from the battered bodies politic in Illinois and the city of Chicago.
All it takes is a few determined individuals of character, righteousness and influence.
The late James Earl Jones might intone, “Dismantle it and they will cheer.”
Because disrespected White Sox fans have deserved so very much more.
Today, even the Savannah Bananas would be a welcome upgrade.
Jim O’Donnell’s Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.