Jerry Reinsdorf, The Worst Owner In Sports, Once Agian Proves He Can't Do Anything Right

For those of you who live outside of Chicago, you may not know who Jerry Reinsdorf is. That is because for the past 20 years (or more), Reinsdorf has done everything in his power to make the teams he owns absolutely insignificant in the world of sports. Want proof? Well he owns The Chicago Whitesox and the Chicago Bulls. When is the last time you thought about either of those teams? I'll wait.

This is an actual graphic from 2016 when the Cubs were playing the Indians. ESPN (whose job is sports) even forgot that the White Sox won the World Series in 2005. So it is not your fault if you didn't remember

For most of the sports world, the answer to when they last thought about either of those teams was probably the summer of 1998. That is when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls won their last of six championships. And then Reinsdorf started Reinsdorfing. He decided to back Jerry Krause, the GM of the Chicago Bulls , instead of keeping the greatest player in the history of the NBA. It is no secret that Jordan would have stayed and played longer had the Bulls fired Krause and kept Phil Jackson. But Reinsdorf was way to smart to fall for that. He brilliantly backed a guy whose main accomplishment was saying "yes" when offered the job to be the GM of the team whose roster included the greatest player in the history of the NBA.

Honestly that alone should be enough to convince the world that Reinsdorf is the worst owner ever. But wait there's more. In the 41 years he has owned the Whitesox, they have made the playoffs 7 times (with one of those during the bizarre Covid mini-season) and aside from the one year they won the World Series, they have 6 playoff wins. Yep 6 wins in 40 years. Ok. But they did win that one World Series. Hurray! Well during Reinsdorf's reign they have as many World Series seasons as they do record setting seasons for the most losses in a year (they lost 121 games last year).

And then there are the Bulls. They are hardly even worth writing about. They had a brief flash when they got insanely lucky and cashed in a 1.7% lottery chance to draft Derrick Rose. But for most of the 27 years since 1998, they have been unable to attract a single high level free agent. It seems no one wants to play for a team that was dumb enough to turn their backs on Michael Jordan. I wonder why?

Anyway, that is all in the past. What is the new stupid thing Reinsdorf has done? Well any White Sox fans that still exist have been dreaming of the day when they hear the words "Reinsdorf is selling the team!". Well that finally happened yesterday... but with a very Reinsdorfian twist. Any other owner would say "I bought the Sox for $19 million in 1981. Despite my efforts to completely destroy its value, the team is now worth $2 billion. I'm going to take my 10,500% gain and ride off into the sunset." But no. Reinsdorf even needs to screw this up for Sox fans. We couldn't even celebrate the sale. Why? Because of course there has to be some kind of catch to ruin it.

You see, Reinsdorf agreed to sell the Sox to the Ishbia family (who own and spend tons of money on the Phoenix Suns). That should be huge news! The Ishibias are fans who actually spend money on their teams becuase they want them to win. But Reinsdorf is not selling for 5 years. He gets to control (translation drive the team into the ground) for 5 more years. Why the Ishbia family would allow this idiot to continue to devalue the product they are promising to buy is beyond me. I guess Sox fans should be happy that there is at least an expiration date on Reinsdorf idiocy, but it's tough to chant "Ding dong, the moron's gone... starting in 2029 when he has to gradually sell his stake."

Wake me up when its 2029.