Chicago White Sox fans who chanted “Sell the team” at Guaranteed Rate Field this summer might get their wish after all.
According to a report Wednesday in The Athletic, Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf has changed his stance about keeping the team he has owned since 1981 and is in “active discussions” with a group led by Dave Stewart, the former major-league pitcher who starred under manager Tony La Russa in Oakland.
Stewart’s group has been active in trying to get an expansion team for Nashville, Tenn., the city the Sox have been linked to as a possible destination if they decided to move.
A Sox spokesman told the Tribune’s LaMond Pope “we don’t comment on rumors and speculation.”
Reinsdorf and the late Eddie Einhorn led a group that purchased the Sox from Bill Veeck for $20 million in January 1981, and he has been the longest-tenured owner in the game for years. The Sox recently were valued at $2.05 billion, according to a Forbes report in March. Reinsdorf has long insisted he wasn’t interested in selling the Sox, telling reporters in August 2023 that he’s often asked about it.
“Friends of mine have said: ‘Why don’t you sell? Why don’t you get out?’ ” Reinsdorf said. “My answer always has been: ‘I like what I’m doing, as bad as it is, and what else would I do?’
“I’m a boring guy. I don’t play golf. I don’t play bridge. And I want to make it better before I go.”
But the possibility of that happening in the next few years is unlikely.
What might have changed Reinsdorf’s mind in the last year is unclear.
But at age 88 and following what he called a “very painful” season in which the Sox set a modern-day MLB record with 121 losses, he simply could be tired of the aggravation and constant criticism over his decision-making.
Reinsdorf’s efforts to secure public funding for a proposed new ballpark on the site of The 78 in the South Loop have thus far failed to make inroads, leading to speculation he would move the team if he couldn’t get a stadium deal done.
Reinsdorf denied last year that he threatened to move the Sox but conceded the team needed to figure out where it would be when the stadium lease was up.
“I’ve been reading that I’ve been threatening to move to Nashville,” he said. “That article didn’t come from me. But it’s obvious, if we have six years left (on the lease). … We’ve got to decide what the future (of where the Sox play) is going to be.”
While he also is chairman of the Chicago Bulls, his son, Michael Reinsdorf, took over responsibilities for running the organization in 2010, when he was named president and chief operating officer. Michael Reinsdorf told the Tribune in 2004 he had never strived to be a part of the Sox or Bulls organizations.
“I’ve never asked him to hire me for the teams,” Michael said of his father. “I love sports. But what I didn’t want to have was the situation, for example, when Carroll Rosenbloom was the owner of the Rams and his son was the president of the team. He passed away and next thing you know, his son was out of a job.
“I remember it happening and I didn’t want to be working for a team and have my dad sell the teams and now, ‘OK, now what do I do?’”
In 2013, Jerry Reinsdorf told the Sports Business Journal he suggested to his sons that they sell the Sox and keep the Bulls after he’s gone.
“I recommended it to the boys, but it’s up to them when the time comes,” Reinsdorf told ESPN.
The Sox then released a statement saying “the succession of the White Sox is fluid at this point and ultimately will depend on timing and other circumstances. Certainly, nothing is definitive, and right now the plan is to address succession after the 2033 All-Star Game.”
The reference to 2033 relates to the 100th anniversary of the All-Star Game, which was first played at old Comiskey Park.
Reinsdorf, who co-founded Balcor Co., a real estate investment company, was able to assume control of the Sox in 1981 after MLB owners and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn rejected the agreed-upon sale by Veeck to Eddie DeBartolo, a real estate magnate they felt had ties to organized crime.
Reinsdorf and several partners put up $19 million, with a minimum investment of $250,000 — a 1.32% stake. He was the majority shareholder in the team’s general partner, which is the controlling entity, and made all the decisions. Reinsdorf reportedly owned only 4-5% of the team when they bought it. He owns a 19% share now, according to Forbes.
The Sox have won one championship in his 44 years of ownership and been to the postseason seven times. The Bulls, whom Reinsdorf bought a controlling stake in in 1985, won six NBA titles but have not been to the NBA Finals since Michael Jordan left the team after the second three-peat in 1998.
Reinsdorf always has been a lightning rod in the Chicago sports world, and fans have been clamoring for him to sell the Sox for years. The criticism picked up after he rehired his longtime friend La Russa to manage the team before the 2021 season. Reinsdorf denied the decision had anything to do with their friendship, but it led to an icy relationship with his top executives, Ken Williams and Rick Hahn, both of whom were overruled by the move.
Reinsdorf fired the two in August 2023. He never replaced Williams and hired Chris Getz as Hahn’s replacement as general manager, making La Russa an adviser.
Some of Reinsdorf’s associates have said privately that the Sox have lost hundreds of millions of dollars the last two seasons with a team that lost 101 and 121 games, respectively, and failed to draw at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Reinsdorf, who grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, has said he never was in it for the money.
“I’ve said this over the years publicly — this is not a lucrative business,” Reinsdorf said in 2013. “My goal every year is to break even with the White Sox.”
After a long and difficult season of watching the Sox make history, the news of Reinsdorf’s apparent change of heart was heartening to many Sox fans while also making the team’s future uncertain. MLB owners voted unanimously last year to allow the Oakland A’s to move from their longtime home to Las Vegas.
Anyone buying the White Sox probably can expect the same level of support from MLB if the potential new owners decide to uproot the Sox from Chicago.
Stand up, South Side?
It’s about to get real.
