Jerry Reinsdorf won't evolve, which is why White Sox can't

Jerry Reinsdorf is probably the last person who should appear on a panel titled "The New Business of Sports," but there he was, reiterating decades-old stances during the Milkin Institute's Global Conference seminar on Monday.

Blake Schuster did the service of transcribing a lot of Reinsdorf's comments in a Twitter thread and a follow-up post on FTW, and a few of them sound awfully familiar to those who have been trapped into following what he's said and done. Like a Lite-FM station, he played the hits of the ’80s and ’90s, but not today.

For instance, when Reinsdorf says this …

"Particularly in baseball. If you have somebody who decides he wants to spend $42 million on a second baseman who hits .202, and one comes along for you, you’re going to probably have to spend the same money. The whole thing is irrational."

… it brings to mind his appearances in the 1995 book Lords of the Realm, in which he's quoted as saying:

"Baseball is the only industry where I have to pay someone what my dumbest competitor pays."

And then there's this quote …

"I think the important thing to fans is, while they want you to win championships, they want to know that when they get down to the last month of the season you still have a shot. You’re still playing meaningful games. If you can do that consistently you’ll make your fans happy."

… which captures the same spirit of what former Marlins president David Samson said Reinsdorf told him 18 years earlier during a podcast back in 2019:

"I was 32 years old, in baseball for my first of 18 years and [Reinsdorf] said, ‘You know what, here's my best advice to you: finish in second place every single year because your fans will say ‘Wow, we’ve got a shot, we’re in it,’ but there's always the carrot left. There's always one more step to take.’"

The one wrinkle here is that when Samson's comments started making their way around Chicago media, the White Sox issued a denial:

"Jerry said he has absolutely no recollection of ever having said that," a White Sox spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. "That it is certainly not his philosophy for how to run a major league baseball team and that he has always considered the second-place team to be the first losers."

That statement stuck with me, because that last sentence felt workshopped, inauthentic, a ham-fisted attempt to imitate what somebody who cared about winning might say. I called it a ‘"No Fear" t-shirt of a statement’ at the time, and now that I look it up, holy crap, it actually was a No Fear t-shirt.

And sure enough, Reinsdorf showed his ass — or the ass of his spokesperson — by going out and reiterating the stance that second place actually can be the place to be, and third or fourth isn't that bad, either. You don't have to make it if you can fake it.

The business of baseball has changed dramatically since Reinsdorf took a controlling interest in the White Sox in 1981, specifically the amount of money a team makes independent of attendance and interest, and Reinsdorf even said "we were getting away with murder" with the valuations of regional sports network deals. Nevertheless, Reinsdorf assumes the same stances, and refuses to accept market rates. The line from a 1995 profile in Cigar Aficionado is just as true today as it was 28 years ago:

Throughout the fall and winter, he was still driven by the dream: to create a World Series winner in a business climate that made sense to him.

He hasn't changed and he won't change, and when it surfaces in unflattering ways, those who are loyal to him appear to have no recourse but to contort reality. We saw it in that statement. We see it every time Rick Hahn makes a reference to Reinsdorf being unhappier than anybody about the on-field product. We heard it when Hawk Harrelson used his "Hawk Day" address to present an the 1994 strike as a War of Union Aggression. Reinsdorf is indulging in a little gaslighting himself by pretending he knows what fans want the year the White Sox canceled SoxFest without any specific reasons.

Silence is always an option. Given all the advantages Reinsdorf maintains and the insulation he's created for himself, the only recourse customers have is pointing out how he's a poor public steward, and the mature approach would be to accept the mildest of inconveniences. In terms of finances, power and comfort, Reinsdorf is in first place, even if he wants to be anything but.