“Just wasn’t our night.’’
That was the interim White Sox manager, not the Washington Generals coach, speaking Tuesday.
Just to be clear.
This time it was a loss to the Giants, a .500 team, though there really doesn’t need to be a qualifier. The Sox lose to all kinds of teams – good, bad, mediocre. They don’t discriminate, they lose. This loss was their 97th, and if it was late September, you’d say, “Man, that’s a lot.’’ But there’s still more than a week left in August, and by the time the season is over, 97 losses is going to seem like child’s play.
The Sox are on pace to break the modern-era record for losses in a season, 120, set by the 1962 Mets. It’s one of the reasons they announced last week that they’ll lower ticket prices next season by an average of 10%. Another reason for the price decrease is that they were awful last year, too, losing 101 games. The greediest person in the world might have had a hard time keeping prices the same for 2025 without blushing.
The Sox’ prospects for next season are not good. Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf is expected to take a paring knife to the payroll again. In terms of extended badness, this is rare, toxic air. I might have applauded the Sox for giving fans a break on tickets next season if there was any sense that things were headed in the right direction. But there’s no hint of that.
And so, whether the price reduction is a heartfelt apology to fans (oh, please) or a public-relations move meant to soothe a savaged fan base (ding!), it really doesn’t matter. The team loses, the fans lose and the owner doesn't make as much money as he’d like. Oh, well. Something tells me it won’t leave Reinsdorf destitute. He’d argue that there’s incentive for him to win because the better the team is, the more people will come to Guaranteed Rate Field to watch. Almost 200 losses over the past two seasons, with more than a month left in this one – does Reinsdorf look like a guy who’s had a fire lit under him?
In a better world – granted, a fantasy world – there’d be a sliding scale for ticket prices. The better you are, the more you can raise ticket prices. The worse you are, the more you have to lower prices. That would be a ticket policy with some courage.
OK, file that under Things That Should Happen But Won’t. But it’s all a part of the same cloth, the cloth that too often looks like a funeral shroud on Sox fans.
Reinsdorf is famously loyal to some of his employees. We were reminded of that the other day when Sox broadcaster Steve Stone stood by the chairman in an interview with the Sun-Times’ Daryl Van Schouwen.
“This is a guy who asks for nobody to defend him, but when somebody does something for you, you can’t repay it in a day or month,” Stone said. “He may be loyal to a fault, but loyalty is something I never lose track of, which is why I will be loyal to Jerry as long as I’m around. He helped me get back to Chicago.
“The fans are so unhappy that they want to take it out on one person, and the easiest way is to take it out on the man who owns the team.”
I’m guessing that brought a tear to Jerry’s eye. He wants to be loved, like anybody else.
But this is where Reinsdorf has always gotten it wrong. His loyalty should be to Sox (and Bulls) fans, which is to say that his loyalty should be to winning. Loyalty to employees is nice but not the point of professional sports. You buy a particular brand of chocolate chip cookie at the store because it tastes good, not because the employees who made it feel valued in the workplace.
Reinsdorf’s supporters insist he wants to win more than anything, but their insistence doesn’t square with the results or with his dead-pan reaction to all the losing. Say what you want about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but you can’t argue that he’s hands off or that he’s holding back money that might improve the franchise.
It took an American League record-tying 21-game losing streak before Reinsdorf fired manager Pedro Grifol earlier this month and made Grady Sizemore the interim. Given Reinsdorf’s aversion to change, the biggest surprise wasn’t that he fired his skipper. The biggest surprise was that he didn’t let Grifol keep managing until October … of 2027.
Speaking of 2027, which happens first: a .500 Sox record or significantly raised ticket prices?
