Morrissey on JR...

[Texsox]

14 hours ago, baseballgalaly said:

I wonder how many championships Jerry wins if he didn't inherit Michael Jordan. 

I wonder how many championships any NBA team wins without a superstar. 

The Mariners can make a claim as the worst franchise ever, let's see how many ways the Sox are worst. 

 

[A-Train to 35th]

15 hours ago, The Kids Can Play said:

I love the first paragraph. It’s hard to picture an owner wanting the unraveling of a professional sports franchise to be part of his permanent record. But what if an owner doesn’t see it as an unraveling but as a few loose strings being yanked by a hyperventilating media and a genetically cranky fan base? 

Actually it's not hard at all, once you know what a loser Jerry really is. This is the most arrogant, delusional and loser owner in sports. Jerry loves to walk around with his bravado and arrogance, but deep inside, he is one spineless weasel that is scared and intimidated to face the Sox fans, knowing they will embarrass him with hard questions he won't be able to answer without some BS rationalizations and nonsense from him, which would shame his huge ego.

I've had to deal with this losing for too many years as a Sox fan, so as much as I hate to wish more bad things on this team...but as long as Jerry is the owner, I sincerely hope his team keeps losing and sets a new Sox record for losses, as well as less and less fans showing up to the home games. I only wish all loyal Sox fans still wasting their money going to the games, truly knew how little Jerry cares about them. Like Morrisey said, he probably sees them as genetically cranky fans. 

It's already part of his legacy when he unraveled the Bulls dynasty.

[TaylorStSox]

15 hours ago, baseballgalaly said:

I wonder how many championships Jerry wins if he didn't inherit Michael Jordan. 

You could say the same for every sports dynasty. 

[FloydBannister1983]

1 hour ago, Texsox said:

I wonder how many championships any NBA team wins without a superstar. 

The Mariners can make a claim as the worst franchise ever, let's see how many ways the Sox are worst. 

 

The Pistons had a couple iterations where they won.  They are the outlier though.

[35thstreetswarm]

15 hours ago, The Grinder said:

Maybe this has come up on some other thread but is there a chinamans chance the Wirtz family would be in a position to buy the team when the time is right?

Seriously?  What are you, 150?

[ron883]

4 hours ago, Kyyle23 said:

No you can’t make any of these arguments because this is what happened 

Honestly, drafting was a GarPax strong point. They just never committed to the tank properly and couldn't land great stars. 

[Texsox]

1 hour ago, FloydBannister1983 said:

The Pistons had a couple iterations where they won.  They are the outlier though.

Didn't they have Isaiah Thomas and Joe Dumars? Both Hall of Fame and top 50 types. 

Here's the crazy part. If we liked JR we would applaud his financial savvy to buy the Bulls right after they drafted MJ. Instead we chalk it up to luck and assume they would have screwed up the draft and picked someone else. 

[The Kids Can Play]

3 hours ago, A-Train to 35th said:

It's already part of his legacy when he unraveled the Bulls dynasty.

Absolutely it's on hos legacy. What JR did to unravel the Bulls dynasty is a travesty and yet he loves to take credit for the 6 titles, which he had nothing to do with.

[The Kids Can Play]

17 hours ago, Lip Man 1 said:

Ed Herrmann told me the story at being at Sox Fantasy Camp in 2004. JR was there have a discussion with the campers. Let's just say those campers were so angry at him that things started to get heated and physical. Ed said Bill Melton had to get between them and cool things down. 

Wow, thanks for sharing this. Weren't those camps really expensive like close to $2000-$2500 for die-hard loyal men wanting their baseball fantasy played out? How dare this POS loser for getting into arguments with these guys who spent a ton of their hard earned money. The more I hear about stories like this, the more I loathe him.

[FloydBannister1983]

2 hours ago, Texsox said:

Didn't they have Isaiah Thomas and Joe Dumars? Both Hall of Fame and top 50 types. 

Here's the crazy part. If we liked JR we would applaud his financial savvy to buy the Bulls right after they drafted MJ. Instead we chalk it up to luck and assume they would have screwed up the draft and picked someone else. 

I think it’s a stretch to call them superstars but I guess it’s possible in that iteration.

No superstars on the Ben Wallace team.  Nice players but no superstars.

Come to think of it Ben Wallace is another Reinsdorf free agent that came here and just sucked.

Also he did basically run Jordan out of town when he already knew what he had so it’s not a reach to think he would have screwed up the draft.

Edited August 10, 2023 by FloydBannister1983

[thedoctor]

it's a very good piece and does an excellent job of underscoring the hopelessness of it all. being bad is one thing, but being bad and unwilling or able to change makes it substantially worse. their solution seems to be to turn more inward and double down on strategies that have proven to be unsuccessful. it's maddening.

[Jake]

To me, the main thing that makes Jerry different from other owners (and each owner is going to have their unique qualities) is how infrequently he has changed front office leadership.

He hired Krause shortly after buying the Bulls and left him in that position for 18 years. In fairness, his initial patience with Krause paid off massively and he didn't give Krause a ridiculously long leash post-MJ. Then the GarPax era begins which most of us feel lasted at least a little and perhaps a lot too long. It did end at a point where it seemed impossible that it could keep going, though. So he's really just on his third front office for the Bulls after almost 40 years of ownership. Again, hard to complain about keeping Krause for a long time given the team's success. His patience with GarPax didn't really pay off although there was a period in which the Bulls had good, likable, and fun teams that came after a long rebuild period. I suspect this colored Reinsdorf's view of what you need to do in order to get a successful team built.

He buys the Sox in 1981 with Roland Hemond as the longtime GM. He leaves Hemond who finishes building the highly success 1983 squad. The next two years are basically an unmitigated disaster so Jerry decides to hire his own man. So far so good. Well, his own man is Hawk Harrelson. Oops. At least that mistake wasn't allowed to go on for too long (I've never found it too clear whether Hawk really left on his own accord as he said publicly or was just allowed to say that to save face). Then Larry Himes takes over for 4-5 years and does a quite good job but Jerry doesn't keep him due to unclear reasons, some mixture of Himes being too involved in day-to-day running of the clubhouse and Jerry being too involved in the duties of the GM. Himes has a not-very-successful run as Cubs GM afterwards. Then, Ron Schueler takes over and builds some decent teams around core players largely acquired by Himes, culminating in the 2000 playoff season. Schueler steps down due to his age as best as I can tell, thus starting the 22+ year KW/Hahn era. Jerry surely feels validated that he gets a World Series in KW's 5th year on the job, validating a bit of patience as well as hiring from within when you're happy with the outgoing GM.

There was some turnover early with the Sox, but I think Jerry must have seen that as tumultuous and something to be avoided in the future. I think he would have happily retained Schueler if Schueler wanted to keep the job — and why not, considering Schueler had just assembled a young team that won its division.

As a member of the group of owners, JR has earned his rep for being tight. But as an owner, I don't really see him as a huge tightass anymore. The Sox spend in a way that seems consistent with where they stack up to other teams as far as market and potential revenue. Sox have avoided big contracts in the Kenny+Hahn era, but I can't help but wonder how much of that is driven by Jerry vs. Hahn in recent years. The payrolls have certainly been high enough to carry the contracts of some of the high-profile players we struck out on so it's not as if JR is unwilling to get near $200M in payroll. Sox used to not spend much in international free agency or the draft, but AFAIK since those categories of spending got standardized we have been spending basically every cent we are allowed to.

In his older years it has seemed to me that JR has embraced the idea of the owner's role being someone that hires a GM and hands over a budget; great, but now there's even more scrutiny on who that GM is. I strongly suspect Hahn is headed out the door, and I'd be surprised if Kenny doesn't do whatever Hahn does. Will it be a firing? Probably won't be described as such but I don't know. Highly unlikely that JR lives long enough for us to know whether he would give the next GM too long of a leash.

 

 

[Lip Man 1]

42 minutes ago, Jake said:

To me, the main thing that makes Jerry different from other owners (and each owner is going to have their unique qualities) is how infrequently he has changed front office leadership.

He hired Krause shortly after buying the Bulls and left him in that position for 18 years. In fairness, his initial patience with Krause paid off massively and he didn't give Krause a ridiculously long leash post-MJ. Then the GarPax era begins which most of us feel lasted at least a little and perhaps a lot too long. It did end at a point where it seemed impossible that it could keep going, though. So he's really just on his third front office for the Bulls after almost 40 years of ownership. Again, hard to complain about keeping Krause for a long time given the team's success. His patience with GarPax didn't really pay off although there was a period in which the Bulls had good, likable, and fun teams that came after a long rebuild period. I suspect this colored Reinsdorf's view of what you need to do in order to get a successful team built.

He buys the Sox in 1981 with Roland Hemond as the longtime GM. He leaves Hemond who finishes building the highly success 1983 squad. The next two years are basically an unmitigated disaster so Jerry decides to hire his own man. So far so good. Well, his own man is Hawk Harrelson. Oops. At least that mistake wasn't allowed to go on for too long (I've never found it too clear whether Hawk really left on his own accord as he said publicly or was just allowed to say that to save face). Then Larry Himes takes over for 4-5 years and does a quite good job but Jerry doesn't keep him due to unclear reasons, some mixture of Himes being too involved in day-to-day running of the clubhouse and Jerry being too involved in the duties of the GM. Himes has a not-very-successful run as Cubs GM afterwards. Then, Ron Schueler takes over and builds some decent teams around core players largely acquired by Himes, culminating in the 2000 playoff season. Schueler steps down due to his age as best as I can tell, thus starting the 22+ year KW/Hahn era. Jerry surely feels validated that he gets a World Series in KW's 5th year on the job, validating a bit of patience as well as hiring from within when you're happy with the outgoing GM.

There was some turnover early with the Sox, but I think Jerry must have seen that as tumultuous and something to be avoided in the future. I think he would have happily retained Schueler if Schueler wanted to keep the job — and why not, considering Schueler had just assembled a young team that won its division.

As a member of the group of owners, JR has earned his rep for being tight. But as an owner, I don't really see him as a huge tightass anymore. The Sox spend in a way that seems consistent with where they stack up to other teams as far as market and potential revenue. Sox have avoided big contracts in the Kenny+Hahn era, but I can't help but wonder how much of that is driven by Jerry vs. Hahn in recent years. The payrolls have certainly been high enough to carry the contracts of some of the high-profile players we struck out on so it's not as if JR is unwilling to get near $200M in payroll. Sox used to not spend much in international free agency or the draft, but AFAIK since those categories of spending got standardized we have been spending basically every cent we are allowed to.

In his older years it has seemed to me that JR has embraced the idea of the owner's role being someone that hires a GM and hands over a budget; great, but now there's even more scrutiny on who that GM is. I strongly suspect Hahn is headed out the door, and I'd be surprised if Kenny doesn't do whatever Hahn does. Will it be a firing? Probably won't be described as such but I don't know. Highly unlikely that JR lives long enough for us to know whether he would give the next GM too long of a leash.

 

 

I recently completed a chapter on Hawk's tenure for Dr. Fletcher. His next book on the team comes out next year. To answer your question:

"Finally in late September, the 26^th to be exact, with the Sox 20 games under .500 and twenty-two and a half games out of first place, Harrelson resigned because the backlash from the media was impacting his family in a negative way.

In his book he closed his White Sox front office tenure this way, “I believe I did a good job. I made some good trades, getting rid of some dead wood. I will go to my grave with my head held high.”

The White Sox ended the 1986 season 72-90 in fifth place in the division, 20 games out of first place. It was a 13-game decrease in the win column from 1985. 

On May 28, 2004 Melissa Issacson of the Chicago Tribune got a rare interview with Jerry Reinsdorf. One of the questions she asked was about Harrelson’s hiring to run the front office.

"Eddie and I would talk to Hawk and (Don) Drysdale at length, and Hawk more so, to identify problems in the organization, we were still neophytes in this business and we were impressed with the way Hawk pointed out our problems. [GM] wasn't something he really wanted to do, but we urged him to help us out. The mistake was that when you go to a doctor who diagnoses open-heart surgery, you don't have him do the surgery because he diagnosed the problem, you get a heart surgeon. Just because Hawk was able to diagnose our problems did not mean he could solve them. It was a terrible position to put him in, and a year later, he said he wanted out."

[The Grinder]

6 hours ago, 35thstreetswarm said:

Seriously?  What are you, 150?

You know Adam & Eve? Im Adam

 

[Texsox]

2 hours ago, The Grinder said:

You know Adam & Eve? Im Adam

 

You were pre internet? 😲

[The Grinder]

2 hours ago, Texsox said:

You were pre internet? 😲

I was pre everything 

[Texsox]

11 minutes ago, The Grinder said:

I was pre everything 

Me too

[The Grinder]

33 minutes ago, Texsox said:

Me too

I remember the Big Bang

And not the porn movie either