White Sox 121-loss debacle disgusts even this Cubs fan

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

As an oft-frustrated Bears fan (excuse the redundancy), I found a surefire way to recover from even the most excruciating loss to where it won’t ruin the rest of my Sunday … or the rest of my Monday night or Thursday night on occasion.

I just remind myself that I’m not the only Bears fan suffering, and nearly half of my fellow suffering Bear fans are also White Sox fans.

That always beckons a beam of heaven-sent sunlight no matter how dreary the cloud cover … or how dark the ink-black-and-blue Monday and Thursday nights can get.

With that personal revelation, one might think in wake of the Southsiders’ “historic season” I must be walking around with a permanent smirk seemingly Botoxed to my face.

Actually, I’m disgusted.

And you should be, too, no matter if you’re a Cubs fan like myself … or especially if you’re a Bulls fan like myself as this reeks of déjà phew!

To recap for those who prefer not to gape in passing at the wreckage alongside the Dan Ryan Expressway, the Sox set a modern day Major League Baseball record with 121 losses in a regular season.

The Cleveland Spiders lost 134 out of just 154 games in 1899 two seasons before the emergence of the American League to accompany the already-established National League to commence what is referred to as the modern era of the MLB. The modern record the Sox eclipsed was that of the 120-loss 1962 New York Mets — in a Cub-like fashion, the Sox almost blew it by “hitting .400” (10-15 record) during the month of September while going “.500” (5-5) in the last 10 games.

The ’99 Spiders, ’62 Mets and ’24 White Sox all deserve prominently displayed booths at the Baseball Hall of Shame, but they’re distinct in their own ways.

Before the 1899 season, the Spiders’ owner bought the St. Louis Browns while maintaining ownership of two teams in the same league. Several weeks before the season-opener, the dual-team owner transferred most of the better Spider players, including ace pitcher and future Hall of Famer Cy Young, to the St. Louis team, leaving the former team as bare as the Arctic Archipelago.

The 1962 Mets were an expansion team. Before their inaugural season, the Mets engaged in a two-team draft with another expansion team — the Houston Colt 45s … later the Houston Astros — picking in alternating order from a pool of players left unprotected by the other MLB teams. Casey Stengel, the legendary NY Yankees manager who agreed to take reins of the Mets in a doomed mission of validation, sarcastically “thanked” the other teams for generously if not carefully providing such a fine group of players to choose from.

The White Sox, as old as the aforementioned American League itself, weren’t faced with the type of extenuating circumstances that hampered the Spiders and Mets. Their dismal season came about in a more internal and inexcusable manner.

So why should I, as someone who invests no emotional stock in the WS other than leaning on their fans for solace after Bear losses, be so distressed by this? Or why should I be distressed by anything in sports? There are always going to be winners and losers … even 121-game losers.

It’s because the White Sox and their owner/chairman, Jerry Reinsdorf, have wholeheartedly embraced as well as exemplify what plagues the world today — including realms outside of sports — in increasing alacrity: Profit-Margin over Product and The Art of the Con.

A multi-team owner himself, Reinsdorf and company made/saved a lot of money when he broke up the Chicago Bulls dynasty after its sixth NBA championship in eight seasons. He figured rightly that they would still sell out home game after home game for years to come with the championship banners hanging prominently from the rafters at the United Center serving as a semi-effective veil to conceal the trainwreck of the Bulls going on one of the worst four-season runs ever (1999 through 2003) for a professional sports team, compiling a winning percentage of .223 (66-230) more putrid — believe it or not — of that of the 2024 White Sox (.253)

Reinsdorf is a multi-billionaire for several reasons. One of which is his uncanny ability to make the person he is negotiating with believe he or she is getting the better of the deal when in reality they’re getting clowned. (Business Dynamics 101 as some may define)

He nearly “Bozoed” Horace Grant when trying to get him to sign a contract extension with the Bulls. Reinsdorf said he was going to make Grant the highest paid power forward in the NBA. “You should have seen Horace’s eyes widen,” Reinsdorf related to reporters of Grant’s reaction to the offer before Grant reneged the deal after talking to his pesky agent, who informed his client that his status as highest-paid PF would be short-lived due a forthcoming national and worldwide TV deal the NBA was about to make, forecasting a windfall of added revenue and an increase in salary cap. Grant would have been locked into a contract having him getting paid as much as the seventh or eighth guy off a middling team’s bench in a matter of a few seasons.

Reinsdorf also tried to pull a fast one on Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, whom he “magnanimously” advised to test the free-agent market during the 1985-86 offseason to maximize his worth while secretly colluding with other owners to “freeze out” all free agents in efforts to (illegally) bring salaries down.

There is a reason why Reinsdorf and his acolytes don’t like negotiating with players, coaches and managers with their agents in the room or on the line. It makes it harder for an astute confidence man like Reinsdorf to take advantage of someone if there is another party hired to call out any sleight-of-hand chicanery upon it being laid on the table.

But such a policy is why Reinsdorf and his teams never are able to attract top-notch talent whenever there are other bidders equally determined to reel in the catch.

Perhaps the best example of this is the butchered courtship of Mike D’Antoni, who was one of most sought-after NBA head coaches at the time (2008). Not wanting to interface with D’Antoni’s agent, Reinsdorf and the Bulls engaged in a series of meandering phone calls with D’Antoni, who would call his agent after hanging up with the Bulls, then call the Bulls back, then call his agent back … back and forth. At some point between these back and forth phone calls, D’Antoni and his agent struck a deal with the New York Knicks, all during a single phone call.

With ESPN and other outlets already reporting details of the deal, a spurned Reinsdorf groused at a why-things-didn’t-go-down press conference “And I’m still waiting for (D’Antoni) to call me back.”

Reinsdorf recently penned a letter to White Sox fans — somehow I came across it. He wanted to thank “us” for our continued support, and despite his major league team dropping a “duces wildly inept” 222 games in two seasons, Reinsdorf cited “reasons for optimism about our future” while referencing one of their farm teams, the Class AA Birmingham Barons, winning the Southern League.

Maybe it’s too easy to cast this off as yet another con job to hoodwink Sox fans, many of whom don’t have agents watching their backs. But even with the acknowledgement that “our on-field performance this season was a failure” and that there are “no excuses”, and closing the letter with a vow “to put in the work this offseason to do better”, Reinsdorf makes no mention of their reported plans to cut payroll from this historic team after fleecing $60 million from the 101-loss team the season before.

I guess even after hitting rock bottom, there’s still no bottom limit when it comes to the bottom line.