Thad Bosley

It never gets said (with the lone exception by you) because it’s utter nonsense. Blaming the continued futility of guys in the front office, who get paid the big bucks to produce a quality product on the field but don’t, on the fans defies reason. It ain’t our fault, pal. Your decades-long grudge against the fans really skews your thinking on this matter. To even merely suggest our fan base, who has only seen our Sox go to the playoffs a scant five times since the 1959 World Series, is somehow “impatient” is absolute crazy talk. It’s the exact opposite. We are arguably THE most patient fan base around, what with so little we’ve had to cheer on during October our entire lives.

What the White Sox accomplished in the 22 year carve out of the current owner's 38 year history of owning the team, the Cubs under their current owner have accomplished in the last four years.

“Winning” White Sox baseball is not important to you. We get it.

Well, that last part is a bit of a diversion into psychobabble that doesn't make any sense, so we'll just set that to the side and properly ignore it. In the meantime, what you can't seem to separate is the difference between being a fan of the game of baseball, which means appreciating it in all of Abner Doubleday's intended glory, and being a fan of a team. When you actually select a team to follow and support, it seems very odd that the team's success evidenced through winning wouldn't be at the top of your priority list. Otherwise, why bother being a fan of a team? Just put on random baseball games and enjoy watching two teams play with no interest in the outcome.

Am I reading this right? Are you saying White Sox fans have picked the wrong team if winning is important to them?

If you don't need winning, you are a casual fan, which you have proven yourself to be over and over and over again with comments like these. If you are a die-hard fan, which most posters at this board are, then winning is your number one goal. Period.

The Sox have lost more games in the last six years than any other team in baseball. The last two years the losses were "expected" due to this rebuild business. However, the four years preceding these last two were not intended to be losing affairs, yet they were, and quite badly. The Sox have three coaches in Cooper, McEwing, and Boston who have presided over all six years, including the four that forced the rebuild decision upon the organization. And you have Steverson who has been in on the last four years of action, including his first two years when the team was expected to contend. So the question is, how long of a leash do these fellas get with this team? Do they get life long passes courtesy of the owner's infamous loyalty program, similar to what the chaps in the front office enjoy? Or would it be better for the development of these new, young players arriving at the Major League level to receive a new and fresh perspective from different coaches.

That is actually unnecessarily insulting to one of the more kinder and thoughtful posters on this board.

As always, and as it relates to our White Sox, it comes down to just WINNING. WIN, and that will take care of all that ails the franchise, meaning those bottom barrel attendance and TV/radio ratings. But the solution isn’t just about winning one season, and then taking off 24 years between the next time the WINNING happens again (i.e., 1959-1983), or taking off a full decade (1983-1993, or 2008-2018) between playoff appearances. WIN, dammit, and they will come! In the meantime, for the first time EVER in this franchise’s history, we should be encouraging the current owner to maximize the subsidized profits he received the year prior on a run of postseason appearances. And in the process, build up interest in the team that will generate the kind of loyalty in the team that other successful organizations enjoy.

The trolling comes in the form of the ridiculous and irrelevant responses you routinely come up with to deflect any criticism of Sox ownership and management. Just because you are the board administrator doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of your own brand of trolling.

Frank Thomas was drafted 7th; Carlos Rodon, 3rd.

And your point...is?

A sentiment certainly underscored and accentuated now on the heels of a 100 loss season, no doubt.

Stop with your nonsense already. Bad things happened for quite a long time with Reinsdorf’s equally sh*tty predecessor owners. Most here probably didn’t live through the Allyn/Veeck eras, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to research and become familiar with their records of futility as Sox owners. However, the one difference that separates all prior owners to that of Reinsdorf is the existence of the “sweetheart lease deal” that Reinsdorf has gleefully enjoyed for the past nearly 30 years. The deal that through some arguably unscrupulous negotiating tactics he inflicted on Illinois state politicians at the time, he managed to get the state to guarantee and pay him very generous profits EACH AND EVERY YEAR, NO MATTER HOW BAD THE TEAM PLAYED. Neither Veeck nor the Allyn family operated under such an advantage. But Reinsdorf has, ever since 1991. Yet with all of those years of handsomely subsidized profits - 28 years now in the running - hardly a sniff of the postseason. Profits guaranteed and taken to the bank, results on the field, eh, not so much. That’s what we the fans have gotten under Uncle JR.

Thank you for reminding us all of the horrible built-in disadvantage the Sox have of playing in Chicago. It’s utterly amazing how they manage to even survive sometimes.

20/20 vision for 2020: Machado at third, Madrigal at second, joining Anderson in the infield, with Moncada in right alongside Robert in center and Eloy in left. The return of Kopech, joined by Cease, with Rodon as the ace. Could be formidable, so go get Machado.

That's because you are just a casual fan, versus being a die-hard fan, like the poster who you berated. As the casual fan you are, you've made it very clear over the years that you are completely content with the Sox as long as they are playing the grand, 'ol game of baseball while wearing jerseys that say "SOX" on them. That checks off on all of the boxes that are meaningful to you. Meanwhile, the diehard Sox fans, just like diehard fans of any team of any sport, will often get emotional, particularly if they are faced with the kind of chronic losing our fans have been faced with, which will spill over into anger from time to time. That's the nature of a diehard fan, always has been, always will be. You as a mere casual fan really should try a little harder to realize and acknowledge that.

I think people can support this point of view 100%, provided they are willing to overlook the fact that the ownership is currently presiding over: A team with the third worst record in all of baseball this year, on the heals of having the fourth worst team last year A team that has lost more games in the last six years than any other team in all of baseball during that time A team that has extended it's playoff drought to a full decade now, continuing on with the fourth such longest drought in all of baseball (despite the existence of two wild card spots) A team that has only made it to the postseason five times in nearly four decades under said ownership If you can get past those inconvenient truths, then yes, you can conclude "there is no reason to believe ownership is the problem".

You can be so tedious at times. Always trying to deflect any and all criticism from the current owner. I guess we’ve come to know and expect this from you at this point, so weak comebacks like this are no surprise. Nonetheless, let’s get back on track and back to the original discussion point The poster to whom I was replying observed that the two owners prior to the current one didn’t enjoy the profits that the current one has for the past 28 years. The simple reason is due to the sweetheart lease deal the current owner strong-armed his way into receiving from the state in the late ‘80s, due solely to the owner’s threats to move the team to Florida if those demands weren’t met. Those threats and demands were widely criticized in the press at the time as “blackmail”. That’s open to interpretation, but you can see why many members of the press concluded as such. Compare that to the purported moves to either Milwaukee or Seattle posed by Allyn, neither of which resulted in Allyn similarly demanding of either the city or state “Give me $$$, or we are out of here.” In other words, there weren’t state-subsidized bailout that prevented those moves. HUGE difference.

The difference is the previous two owners didn’t threaten to move the team to Florida if, among other material concessions, the state of Illinois did not agree to a “sweetheart”, subsidized lease agreement, which guarantees the current owner massive profits every year, no matter what the product on the field. This lease deal has hurt the fanbase more than anything else, because it has removed the natural incentive to improve the product on the field due to the decreased revenues resulting from the failed results of the ball club. If these yearly state-subsidized profits were not in place as they are today, we would not be hearing one word about the owner’s so-called “loyalty” program. He’d be operating just like he did in his profitable real estate business prior to becoming owner of the Sox, which operated on accountability for performance far before this silliness of loyalty.

Another “Three Year Plan”.

Jim Crane became the new owner of the Astros in 2011. And before he embarked at the time he took over on what he deemed a much-needed “rebuild”, he first got rid of the retreads (Tal Smith and Ed Wade) who were responsible for the need for the rebuild in the first place. He wasn’t dumb enough to let them continue their record of futility on his watch, unlike another owner we know. No, as any competent owner would do, he threw those two to the curb and then got onto the business of performing proper due diligence to identify appropriate replacements for those guys who had proved they couldn’t get the job done, which resulted in the hiring of Jeff Luhnow. And now just seven years later, Crane & Luhnow are presiding over a very impressive and “sustainable winning” ballclub, and one that is on pace to be a perennial powerhouse for several years to come. When have you ever heard that kind of description made of the organization of which we are fans, the one run, no less, by baseball’s current longest tenured owner from over the past FOUR decades?

The fundamental difference between the rebuilds that the Cubs and Astros underwent vs. the one the White Sox are currently slogging through is that the other two teams replaced incompetent owners with competent ones, and those new owners immediately replaced the incompetent front offices they inherited with new, competent ones, and are each now presiding over powerhouse organizations as a result. Meanwhile, the status quo remains in place over on the South Side.

Things getting a tad bit interesting at the ‘ol ballpark right now...

Nice high fastball by Minaya for the K, quick release & strong throw to third by Castillo, and a nifty tag put on by Rondon.