The Nashville White Sox?
That would be Reinsdorf's worst and final betrayal of the fans.
Chicago is flooded with gossip and speculation about White Sox majority owner Jerry Reinsdorf selling the team.
That’s something the fans have been clamoring for, considering the team’s dreadful performance during his multi-decade ownership, most especially this year when it set a record of 121 losses.
But, the cliche’, “You better be careful what you wish for” applies. A sale could mean the team moves away, to Nashville or Oakland, for example.
Skeptics in Bridgeport and elsewhere who have watched in dismay since 1981 when he bought the team think it just might be another bluff to squeeze the public treasury for millions to build a new stadium on the Near South Side. He once did it before when he threatened to move the Sox to Saint Petersburg, Florida unless the state bought him a new stadium to replace the iconic Comiskey Park. St. Pete had already started building a ballpark, so if it was a bluff, it worked. And it sure pissed off some Floridians who were led astray. Or more accurately used and abused.
For years some White Sox fans have put up with Reinsdorf’s maneuvering while he has been at the helm. His reputation for being cheap, the undeserved loyalty to an incompetent front office, questionable trades and more.
I’ve been a fan for more than 70 years, going back to the 1959 “Go go Sox.” Back then, the Sox were the town’s best team by far and grateful fans set attendance records. The Cubs were the cellar-dwellers, unable to attract enough fans to bother opening the upper deck.
After Reinsdorf bought the team, it has declined and crashed under his management. Contrary to popular opinion, I think Reinsdorf loves the game and thought (mistakenly) he was acting in best interest of the team and the fans.
The record speaks for itself. The best option now would be to sell the team to local investors who would keep the Sox here. But there are no plans, not even a peep of a rumor, that a local investor group was forming to do just that. Have the Sox sunk so low that no one in Chicago is interested? Where the hell are the people who still love the city and who are willing to buy and revitalize the Sox?
Has the decline of the city that once worked become so steep that it will lose a venerable institution, a founding team of the American League to the South? Like so many people and businesses that are leaving?
Yes, as I said about you, you know where the bodies are buried.
I too have been a fan since the late ‘50’s when I went to games with my father; then with friends for years, and then with my 3 boys, who all became die hard fans. Oh, and I married into a Southside family of Sox fans.
There has to be local people who would buy this team and spend the money to build a winner. Some reporter should ask JR how he felt when the Dodgers left Brooklyn. I know he was crushed, I heard him say it. And I have seen the seat from Ebbet’s Field in his office. And now?