Lip Man 1

This season is already DOA, the best course of action in my opinion is to deal whatever good assets there are for prospects and hope those kids will be successful. The team will start to be improved when new ownership comes into play and brings in competent baseball front office folks. Until then the options are very limited.

Excellent story. Wonder what JR thought of Getz's honesty in the story.

When you have new ownership in place. I'm not being facetious. This organization right now is so dysfunctional, inept and incompetent from top to bottom the only "hope" the way things are now is to catch lightening in a bottle. You know ownership is not going to change their attitude towards salaries, the players union, or investing money in player development. That is off the table. Right now all you can do is hope to get lucky. Hope is not a successful winning strategy over the long term. So trade any good player, get a bunch of prospects and hope they all succeed. That's all you've got right now.

Did the Marlins throw in a lot of money in the deal? I thought they wound up doing so.

An except from my history of SportsVision which will be included in Dr. Fletcher's next book on the White Sox which comes out next year: One Man Remembers Mike Leiderman came to Chicago in the late 1970’s working at WMAQ-TV doing sports, then went on to host “PM Magazine.” But his heart was still in sports and when the opportunity came to go to SportsVision as the main anchor (Duane Dow, formerly of WLS-TV sports, worked weekends) he jumped at it. “I was talking with a station in Cleveland about hosting a morning show along the lines of what Phil Donahue was doing when SportsVision became an option,” he said when I spoke with him. “Merle Harmon, who did the Milwaukee Brewers for years, was the first anchor but he left and they wanted a replacement. They were paying real money and offered me a good deal so I signed up with them. I was contracted to work 200 days a year for them so that left me opportunities to do play by play and other things. My family and I loved Chicago and we wanted to stay here. It also gave me an opportunity to keep doing what I loved, which was sports. Even though it was new we just didn’t think about not making it. Everyone who worked there realized it was going to be a slow growth process.” But ownership apparently did not and on December 31,1983 the plug was pulled on it. It was a group decision to sell back the rights among the owners of SportsVision which included Einhorn, Reinsdorf, Chicago Sting owner Lee Stern and Bill and Arthur Wirtz of the Blackhawks. Leiderman was asked when employees began to suspect something wasn’t right and issues were developing. “It was about the time we starting seeing ads in newspapers for decoder boxes!” he said laughingly. “Instead of paying for the converter box and the hook-up fees people were just buying those boxes for like 10 dollars and watching at home. It was problematic for us.” The fact that people were buying those boxes did provide perhaps the most memorable line in the entire SportsVision experience. It came on December 31, 1983 during the final show. Leiderman was hosting with Eddie Einhorn as his guest. Mike looked into the camera and said, “Those who are watching us in the piracy of their homes…” as Einhorn started to laugh. Asked if he had any regrets Leiderman said, “No, I don’t regret it. We were the first station in the country devoted totally to our teams, we weren’t at the mercy of anything else, we were different, unique and you look around today and you realize all the regional sports channels started with us. I enjoyed it, worked with great people and it enabled me to stay in Chicago. I’m thankful for that.” Over time both Eddie Einhorn and Jerry Reinsdorf commented on SportsVision, the idea, the execution and the aftermath; Einhorn in particular defended the decision telling Logan, “If you want people to come, you can’t give the product away. That’s the way it’s been done everywhere else except Chicago for years. The best organizations, the ones that draw the most people at the gate, don’t go that way. They have limited TV.” Reinsdorf though understood the reality of the situation when in 2004 at a luncheon promoting the start of the new Comcast Sports Network-Chicago regional channel he said, "Unfortunately, Chicago wasn't ready for us. There wasn't cable of any consequence, and we were on subscription pay-TV. I don't remember how many subscribers there were, but I know that more than that number went to Radio Shack and bought the parts for their own boxes." How to sum up the experiment known as SportsVision? Well you could do a lot worse than to say, ‘A brilliant idea that simply was ahead of its time, limited by historical factors as well as technological shortcomings.’ ------------------------------- And one item about the cost: "At the time of launching, it cost most fans $50 just to get it installed as it required a special descrambler, not counting the monthly fee which varied from system to system."

"And it’s hard to win when you don’t have the right guys to go out and compete, you know what I mean? [Guys] that want to win it. Asked to elaborate on the “right guys” part of that comment — and on what the Sox clubhouse was really like — Anderson declined. https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2024/04/18/tim-anderson-miami-marlins-chicago-white-sox-mlb

Good story on what JR is trying to do and the issues surrounding it: https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports-media/2024/04/18/stadium-jerry-reinsdorf-eddie-einhorn-chicago-white-sox-bulls-blackhawks-nbc-sports-chicago-sportsvision-sportschannel

Holcomb had little to do with this, it was all Roland. All Holcomb did was destroy it a few years later: July 27, 1973 - Sox vice president Stu Holcomb ‘retired’ under pressure after his hard-line approach on salaries destroyed the 1973 White Sox. When players wouldn’t come to terms with his initial offer, Holcomb ordered, then player personnel director Roland Hemond, to release them. Not try to compromise with them or try to trade them to get something back... but release them. The Sox gave away Jay Johnstone, Ed Spiezio, Mike Andrews and Rick Reichardt. When Holcomb ordered Hemond to release 21-game winner Stan Bahnsen, Hemond and manager Chuck Tanner went to owner John Allyn. Hemond and Tanner threatened to quit if something wasn’t done. Allyn sided with the duo and Holcomb was history bringing some stability to the front office although the damage was already done. When the Sox suffered injury after injury that year, using the disabled list 38 times, there was little depth to try to fill the gaping holes. They’d end the season in fifth place at 77-85 after leading the division in late May.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2024/04/18/you-can-put-it-on-the-board-no-numbers-dont-look-so-good-for-white-sox

https://awfulannouncing.com/sinclair/diamond-sports-nba-nhl-concerns-reorganization.html

https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports-media/2024/04/17/jerry-reinsdorf-stadium-nbc-sports-chicago-rsn-white-sox-bulls-blackhawks-marc-ganis-sportscorp

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/batting-around-whats-the-worst-team-in-mlb-less-than-one-month-in-several-clubs-already-breaking-records/

Anything is about all you are going to get for this stiff. But that's better than nothing given the circumstances and his production.

Just saw the highlights of the games today. Place was deserted, I've seen more life in a morgue. 😄 1-16 RISP 4 runs 11 total hits Another blown game after the 7th inning. Total complete garbage. They were fortunate to win a game.

I'm telling you they have a shot to break the 62 Mets record of 120 losses.