“It just wasn’t our night.”
That’s what the White Sox interim manager said on Tuesday, not the Washington Generals coach.
Just to be clear.
This time it was a loss to the Giants, a team with a .500 record, although there is no qualifier required. 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 had been late September, you’d say, “Man, that’s a lot.” But there’s still more than a week until the end of the season, and when the season is over, 97 losses will seem like child’s play.
The Sox are on pace to break the modern record for losses in a season (120), set by the Mets in 1962. That’s one reason they announced last week that they will cut ticket prices by an average of 10% next season. Another reason for the price cut is that they were bad last year, too, losing 101 games. Even the greediest person in the world would have had a hard time keeping prices the same for 2025 without blushing.
The Sox’s outlook for next season is not good. Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf is expected to cut payroll again. As far as sustained badness goes, this is a rare, toxic atmosphere. I might have applauded the Sox for giving their fans a discount on tickets next season if it felt like things were going in the right direction. But there’s no sign of that.
Whether the price cut is a sincere apology to fans (oh, please) or a PR stunt to appease an angry fan base (ding!), it doesn’t really 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 this won’t leave Reinsdorf penniless. He would argue he has an incentive to win because the better the team, the more people will come to Guaranteed Rate Field to watch. Nearly 200 losses over the past two seasons, and there’s more than a month left in this season – does Reinsdorf look like a guy who’s on fire?
In a better world – admittedly a fantasy world – there would 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 don’t. But it’s all part of the same fabric, the fabric that too often looks like a shroud for Sox fans.
Reinsdorf is known for being loyal to some of his staff, a fact we were reminded of recently when Sox commentator Steve Stone stood by the chairman in an interview with Daryl Van Schouwen of the Sun-Times.
“This is a guy who doesn’t ask anyone to defend him, but when someone does something for you, you can’t repay it in a day or a month,” Stone said. “He may be overly loyal, but loyalty is something I never lose sight of, which is why I’ll 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 their anger out on one person. And the easiest way is to take it out on the man who owns the team.”
I guess Jerry had tears in his eyes. He wants to be loved, just like everyone else.
But this is where Reinsdorf always got it wrong. His loyalty should be to Sox (and Bulls) fans, which means his loyalty should be to winning. Loyalty to employees is nice, but it’s not the point of professional sports. You buy a certain brand of chocolate chip cookies at the store because they taste good, not because the employees who made them feel valued in the workplace.
Reinsdorf’s supporters insist that he wants to win more than anything, but their claim is not consistent with the results or his bland reaction to all the losses. Say what you will about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but you can’t accuse him of staying out of it or withholding money that could benefit the franchise.
It took an American League record-breaking 21-game losing streak before Reinsdorf fired manager Pedro Grifol earlier this month and made Grady Sizemore interim coach. Given Reinsdorf’s aversion to change, the biggest surprise wasn’t that he fired his captain. The biggest surprise was that he didn’t let Grifol stay on as manager until October… 2027.
Speaking of 2027, what happens first: a Sox record of .500 or significantly higher ticket prices?
