Chicago White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf introduces Chris Getz as senior vice president/general … [+] manager of the White Sox during a baseball news conference Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, in Chicago. Getz, a former player and front office executive with the Kansas City Royals and the White Sox, is in his seventh season with the Sox baseball operations department, including the last three as assistant general manager. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reservedHis franchise is at one of its lowest points in his long tenure as owner but Jerry Reinsdorf isn’t crying uncle. Instead the 87-year-old vows to upgrade both the Chicago White Sox’s roster and its stadium situation before putting the team up for sale.
“I’m going to couch this so nobody writes that I thought of selling,” Reinsdorf said at a news conference after naming Chris Getz the team’s new vice president and general manager. “Friends of mine have (asked), ‘Why don’t you sell? Why don’t you get out?’ 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.”
Reinsdorf surely knows this position won’t be popular with many of his fans. Since a team carrying high expectations stumbled through a .500 season in 2022, fans have been noisily urging him to sell the franchise. But Reinsdorf has rarely yielded to public opinion.
He headed a group that purchased the team for about $20 million in 1981 and has seen that investment grow into a valuation of more than $2 billion, according to Forbes. He and his original partner, the late Eddie Einhorn, were highly visible in their early years of ownership but Reinsdorf stepped back after being criticized for the so-called White Flag trade in 1997. He has generally spoken to fans through team statements since then, making his interview session at Guaranteed Rate Field notable.
Reinsdorf acknowledged he has begun studying a range of stadium options as the team’s lease at Guaranteed Rate Field heads toward its 2029 expiration date. However, he denied a recent report by Crain’s Chicago Business that he has floated a move to Nashville among the possibilities.
“Ever since the article came out, I’ve been reading that I’ve been threatening to move to Nashville,” Reinsdorf said. “That article didn’t come from me. But it’s obvious, if we have six years left … we’ve got to decide what’s the future going to be? We’ll get to it, but I never threatened to move out. We haven’t even begun to have discussions with the (Illinois) Sports Authority, which we’ll have to do soon.”
USA Today’s Bob Nightengale has reported that the White Sox’s options for a possible move include Arlington Heights (where the Bears have purchased land with the intent of building a stadium to replace Soldier Field), Soldier Field and land adjacent to the United Center.
The realdeal.com, a real estate website, reports that an LLC with ties to Reinsdorf recently purchased property near the United Center for $17.2 million. The group behind the purchase includes Howard Pizer, a long-time White Sox partner, and Sox senior vice president of stadium operations Terry Savarise.
Reinsdorf also owns the NBA’s Bulls, who play in the United Center. He and NHL’s Blackhawks own the United Center. Reinsdorf’s digital and media subsidiary Silver Chalice is a founding partner in the sports network Stadium, which is headquartered at the United Center.
Reinsdorf is known for unusual loyalty as an owner. It surprised analysts and Chicago media when he first his top two baseball executives, Ken Williams and Rick Hahn, in August.
Rather than bringing in a fresh face to run the baseball operation, he promoted Getz, a former White Sox infielder who has spent seven seasons heading the team’s minor-league operation. While the team traded seven veteran players before the mid-season deadline, Reinsdorf says he isn’t looking to thoroughly stripe the roster, as he did after trading pitchers Chris Sale and Jose Quintana in 2016.
Reinsdorf said he believes Getz provides the quickest path to getting the Sox back into contention in the AL Central, which currently features no powerhouses.
“One of the things I owe the fans is to get better as fast as we can possibly get better,” Reinsdorf said. “… When I started thinking about the speed that I owe the fans, I realized that if you bring in somebody from the outside, it’s going to take him a year. He’s going to have to evaluate everybody in the organization. I could bring Branch Rickey in, if he was available, and he’d have to evaluate everybody.
“So you lose a year. And here I had somebody inside who was very, very competitive. So I came to the conclusion that if I’ve got a guy inside who can do the job, why not? Why not do it inside and save a year? And that’s basically how I got to Chris.”