Take This With a Grain Of Salt, But Jerry Reinsdorf Is Rumored To Be Considering Moving Away From Sox Park Or Selling The Team Altogether
While the Chicago Bears’ search for a new stadium has dominated headlines for months, the White Sox have begun quietly reviewing their options, too.
Knowledgeable sources say Jerry Reinsdorf, the team's majority owner and chairman, is considering moving the organization from Guaranteed Rate Field in Bridgeport when the team’s lease expires just six years from now.No decision has been made or appears imminent. But among the possibilities are moving to a new stadium in the city or suburbs, or even relocating to Nashville, a subject of recurring gossip on and off for years.
There also is some chatter among team insiders that, at age 87, Reinsdorf may seek to sell the Sox, while keeping ownership of the Chicago Bulls. Reinsdorf’s longtime business partner at the United Center, Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz, recently died.
There's a shit ton to unpack here. This is a paid article and I don't know the rules about how much I can link, so I'll leave it the teaser above, but there's a whoooooole lot that will be circulated over the next few days in White Sox land because of it. Key word circulated, which we'll get to later. Here are the cliff notes:
- They're thinking about a new stadium at a location TBD or as far as Nashville when their lease expires in 2030
- Jerry is thinking about selling
- The "Jerry held the team hostage by demanding a tax payer funded stadium or else he'd move the team to Tampa before striking a deal with the city at 11:59pm on the day the bill was do or die" story was rehashed
I'd like to start by saying one thing: this is a subscriber article and meant to generate clicks on clicks. This is the exact type of article that will get shared and paid for a gazillion times over because sports fans go nuts about this shit. Take their last two tweets (at the time I started this blog) for instance...
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Two articles that were retweeted a grand total of 1 time between them right now. Scroll down through their timeline and most articles are hardly shared at all. The first time this tweet was shared was at about 5pm tonight and has been shared hundred of times on Twitter alone and EVERYONE in White Sox land is talking about it.
All 43 of us Sox fans amirite!!!
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That's why I'm taking a lot of it with a grain of salt. Lots of anonymous quotes and shit. That, and it's about something that's 6 years away. That might as well be 100 years from now. But at the same time, here are two knee jerk reactions:
1. If/when Jerry Reinsdorf sells the team, it will be the best day of my life. I imagine that is the same for other Sox fans. We hate what the organization has become under his ownership. It ain't good. I've expressed my thoughts on that plenty and don't need to go into some mega rant right now. Thanks for 2005, though, seriously.
2. Plenty of people will be up in arms about the part where they are now "considering a move to Nashville." If that happens and Reinsdorf has his fingerprints on the move, he will go down as the most hated man in Chicago history. I don't buy it though. Like I said, the article talked about how he held the team hostage and threatened to move them to Tampa in the 1980s. City caved. You think they city is gonna lose two pro sport orgs in the same 5ish year span?
I don't. Losing one team is bad, losing two would be a BRUTAL look on the City. Unfortunately Reinsdorf has all the leverage here, at least in my opinion. I wish the leadership in this city told him to fuck off and pay for his own stadium, but I don't see that happening.
Soooo yeah. Sounds like a leverage play to me. A leverage play by the dude who blames everything on fans instead of accepting that he's largely to blame for the mess he's created in two (2) organizations. FUUUUUUCK THIS GUY.
SOP. Just sell the team, collect your billions and gtfo. Oh and the We'll talk about it more tomorrow on the show