77 Hitmen

The White Sox franchise is valued at around $1.9 billion. How could a MLB team not be purchased by a billionaire these days? And while Veeck was very fan-friendly, do fans really want the next Sox owner to be short on cash and run the team on a shoe-string budget again? If so, this fan base must really be a glutton for punishment. Trading away Goose Gossage and Bucky Dent in rent-a-player moves worked out great for that magical 1977 season (though they did finish 3rd in the end), but then what? After that, the team was a laughingstock for the rest of his ownership. And, while before my time, in his first go-around as Sox owner he traded away a lot of talent after the '59 pennant win and that cost the Sox dearly during their competitive years in the 1960s. The problem with Reinsdorf isn't that he's a billionaire. The problem is that he's been a PR disaster pretty much from the get-go and over the last 20 years: has run this team like we're the Pittsburgh Pirates, has simply refused to invest properly in this team, and has filled the organization with incompetent sycophants.

IMO, we've moved past this. At this point, it'll all be about whether the team is eventually sold to Ishbia and whether the Ishbia brothers will make a privately-funded stadium at The 78 happen. I think JR knows that his publicly funded stadium fantasy is DOA, too. That's why he approached Ishbia about increasing his stake in the franchise.

NOT.....GOING....TO......HAPPEN. Just because the AH mayor-elect dreams about it doesn't mean the Sox will ever move to Arlington Heights.....not in a million years.

JR certainly has a sweetheart deal with the current lease. Even if the team stays at the current ballpark, I don't expect ISFA to just rubber stamp the same lease terms going forward with the way things have gone the last few years with the team's performance and with attendance. They'd just be incentivizing more mediocrity and fan apathy. Of course the huge wildcard there is Jerry's age (he'll be 93 when the lease is up) and whether Ishbia is indeed being lined up to be the next team owner. And at the risk of giving someone another case of the giggles, whether the Ishbia brothers are going make a new ballpark at the 78 a reality with private financing of the stadium. If that happens, I'm not sure what ISFA's role would be with a new stadium, it would have to be mostly (if not all) privately financed, but there would still be a lot of public investment in infrastructure at the site.

The Rays have withdrawn from the $1.3B stadium deal: https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/mlb/tampa-bay-rays-withdraw-planned-ballpark-rcna196280

I have wondered how a parallel universe in which Veeck got approval to sell to DeBartolo would have turned out for us Sox fans. I seem to remember that the other owners claimed that DeBartolo would move the Sox out of town.....which Jerry and Eddie nearly did to St. Pete a few years later.

.....nearly 45 years after MLB blocked the sale of the White Sox to Edward DeBartolo Sr., Manfred might pressure a sale of the Rays to (perhaps) Edward Jr?

Block 37 is a great example. As far as the 78 goes, I'll also add that perhaps one big obstacle to getting it developed so far is the alignment of the Rock Island Metra tracks. The current alignment makes the site inaccessible from Clark St. without an at-grade crossing. So, I'm guessing that a big project is needed to justify the cost of lowering the grade of the tracks to open up access from Clark.

I have mixed feelings about the idea of the Sox moving to the 78 - even if it's with the Ishbias' private money. The idea of a new park a short walk from the Loop and along an expanded riverwalk sounds exciting, but I have built a lot of memories at the current park over nearly 30 years (I haven't been to a game since 2018). I brought my kids there lots of times when they were growing up. I was at the AJ dropped 3rd strike game and other memorable games. Good times. And they did a good job improving the park in the early 2000s. But Rate Field is what it is - a nice, underrated, but unremarkable stadium in a part of town without much else to do. It's a short L ride from downtown, but most people don't bother unless they're really into White Sox baseball. Maybe that could change if they can develop the parking lots around the ballpark. I have my doubts about that, but we'll see what a new owner (whether or not it's the Ishbia brothers) decides for the future of this team. I doubt any new owner in their right minds will want to move the team to some suburban location. That would work for the Bears, but not for a MLB team with 81 home games a year. It's going to be the current stadium, a new stadium at the 78, or maybe even a new stadium at the site of Old Comiskey (a very longshot possibility). That's probably about it as viable options IMO.

Yeah, I think the state could very well agree to pay for the infrastructure costs if ownership paid for most, if not all, of the stadium itself. That infrastructure wouldn't be a small investment by the state and city, but it's probably something they could agree to if they're putting money into things like a new Red Line stop and an extended riverwalk instead of toward the new stadium itself for the use of billionaire owners.

IMO that "bad neighborhood" perception has faded quite a bit. Yeah, once in a while I still hear people remark that the current stadium is next to "the projects", but not so much any more. The real issue with the current location is the lack of much else to do around the ballpark. That may have been fine in the past, but more and more, teams are finding they need to surround their ballpark with things for fans to do before or after the game to put enough fans in the seats. We've seen the Cardinals and Braves do this in recent years. The Phillies and Mets are now planning to do the same. Is the answer to move the Sox to The 78? That'll be up to the Ishbia brothers, and their billions in fortune, to decide. Maybe they'll decide the current park and location is "just fine" as some die hard Sox fans have said. Even in that case, I can't imagine their plan is to sink all that money into buying the team only keep the team surrounded by acres of parking lots and not much else for the next 30-40 years. So, maybe their plan would be to keep the Sox at the current stadium but see about redeveloping much of the parking.

This seems like a moot argument for the Sox. State elected officials have been crystal clear that JR's request for something around $1B in public funding for a new stadium is a non-starter/DOA. ....and the discussion in this thread seems to be ignoring the huge news over the last couple of weeks that Justin Ishbia is reportedly setting himself up to buy the team from Reinsdorf in the not too distant future. That has the potential to upend the whole public funding for a new stadium request/debate.

If true, how does his bid to buy the Twins during this timeframe fit into that? Did he think negotiations weren't progressing and then turned to the Twins when they went up for sale?

I have some general questions about all of this: Since Jerry has full controlling interest in the team, what difference does it make that Ishbia is buying up a good chunk of the non-controlling interest in the team from other shareholders? Couldn't JR (or his sons after his death) hypothetically just decide to sell his controlling interest to someone else? Is Jerry's 20% or so stake in the team valued higher than the remaining non-controlling shares? If so, how much more? How does Ishbia buying out a majority of shareholders impact Reinsdorf's dream of a new ballpark in the South Loop? Maybe some of these questions have a "well, duh!" answer to them, but just wanted get all this sorted out in my mind.

Oh, I agree that there's no doubt why he'd choose the Sox over the Twins. But I was responding to the following suggestion: "Ishbia dropping out of the Twins race was less about him acquiring the Sox and more that maybe the Twins was a bad investment." If buying the Sox was not on the table for him, I was wondering why he would have decided that buying the Twins was a bad investment. IMO, if there wasn't a pathway to ownership of the Sox presented to him, he wouldn't have suddenly dropped his Twins bid.

What would make the Twins a bad investment? And why would this only occur to Ishbia very late in the process of purchasing the team? I know there was a comment earlier saying that Target Field and the area around the ballpark aren't exactly the best, but that's the first I have heard that there are problems with the ballpark and its location. I admittedly have never been there, so others can confirm if their stadium situation is rather lackluster. Being an MLB owner is a very exclusive club - there are only 30 teams and it's not every year that a franchise goes up for sale. I can think of a number of MLB teams that would be worse to own than the Minnesota Twins, who play in a mid-sized, relatively vibrant market and aren't plagued by stadium issues. I think their biggest problem with fan interest in recent years has been their owner (sounds familiar). I still think that Ishbia would rather own the Twins outright than have no pathway to ownership of the White Sox - even if that pathway is several years away.

Yeah I miss read what was posted. Thanks for the clarification. Nonetheless, it's not unreasonable to think that, even though Jerry has been telling him no over the past 5-10 years, that things are different now. Perhaps he didn't want to lose Ishbia as a potential successor since he was about the buy the Twins. Or maybe he sees that he's reached a dead end with the state over funding for a new stadium and needs a deep-pocketed investor. Or maybe Jerry has finally decided it's time to start putting a succession plan in motion even if he wasn't ready for this a few years ago.

10 years ago, Reinsdorf was in his late 70s and I'm not surprised he had no interest in selling. Now, he just passed his 89th birthday and he's surely thinking about succession plans given that he's already said that he wants his family to sell the Sox after he dies. Though he's apparently healthy now, at his age a sudden decline in health can come quickly. So, him telling Ishbia no 5 or 10 years ago doesn't necessarily tell us much about the current situation IMO.

Target Field is 15 years old - it opened in 2010. And I agree on the 2nd part I bolded.

I'll take my chances with a multi-billionaire who is rooted in Chicagoland and who is apparently willing to spend big time on his teams as the next Sox owner any day of the week and twice on Sunday....even if he and his brother have made mistakes in their first couple of years owning the Suns. The idea that he might actually buy the Sox almost sounds too good to be true to me.

Agreed. Assuming this is all true and not some total pipe dream, I don't expect to hear any additional information about this for quite a while. If the eventual transfer of ownership to Ishbia is indeed going to happen, this is when I'd expect we'd get more information: 1. When Uncle Jerry is officially ready to announce a succession/sale plan - which could be at least a year from now if not longer. 2. If some tentative agreement is reached for a new South Loop ballpark that involves new ownership paying for most, if not all, of the stadium itself with the city/state agreeing to pay for infrastructure. 3. A sudden change in Reinsdorf's health that forces disclosure of this plan.

I get the concerns about what PE firms do to some companies, but I have serious doubts that, if Ishbia were to buy the Sox, it would be comparable to a PE firm buying (for example) Red Lobster.

Good question. If (and that's a massive *IF*) he were able to get ISFA to agree to another long-term sweetheart deal, perhaps that helps the value of the franchise. But other than that, I'd have to imagine that the team would be less valuable to potential buyers if they're locked into the current location for another couple of decades. At the end of the current lease, the stadium will be approaching 40. Add another couple of decades and a buyer would be locked into a ballpark until it's close to 60 years old and in a neighborhood that has no history of drawing visitors looking to spend entertainment dollars outside the park itself in any meaningful way. Probably moot as I don't see any new long-term lease coming while Jerry is still in charge.

For better or for worse, this is the trend in MLB ballparks. The proposed new A's stadium in Vegas will seat only 33k if I'm not mistaken. The proposed new Rays stadium in St. Pete would also seat in the low 30s. The Guardians renovated Progressive Field a few years ago and dropped seating capacity by quite a bit to about 35k or so.

If that means the Bears will privately finance a new AH stadium with the state paying for infrastructure, it probably sets in motion a similar deal for a Sox park in the South Loop (assuming the Ishbia rumor is true, and he commits to private financing of a new ballpark). I believe the Governor wanted stadium funding (infrastructure) for both teams to be covered in one package.