Kenny Williams delivers farewell address atop White Sox wreckage

Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams released statements to the Chicago media after their dismissals from the White Sox on Tuesday evening.

Hahn's was something akin to a five-paragraph essay about what he did over his last 23 summers, thanking every group of people except the players. Williams actually seemed to relish the assignment, because it reads like an acceptance speech. He even opened with a joke:

"I'm not really a 'Statement' kind of guy and had no intention of releasing one. That said, the volume of messages I have received in the wake of the news compels me to say something. First, I never knew so many people had my number."

There are some paragraphs that merit eye-rolls, like saying Pedro Grifol and the White Sox will "rebound and give the baseball world a great 2024 campaign." About Hahn, he said, "if given the chance, I will see him reach the pinnacle of success," as if 11 years wasn't enough of an opportunity.

But such indulgences can be forgiven for a day, because the only general manager to build a World Series-winner on the South Side over the last 105 years deserves a send-off of some sort. I'm sure many fans will respond to the wall of text with "i ain't reading all that," but I appreciated the reminder of how he was once an engaging, take-charge type who didn't duck from the public discourse.

The problem is that this farewell came seven years too late, making such a reminder necessary.

PODCAST: Goodbye, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams

Williams should've been fired in 2016. Actually, he probably should've been fired in 2011, because both he and Ozzie Guillen lost control of the chain of command and everybody should've been embarrassed. But the Sox rebounded respectably enough in 2012, and then he handed off the day-to-day work to Hahn, who was a bona fide GM candidate himself. If he wanted to hang out in the front office and contemplate his next move while Hahn embarked on a five-year plan of his own, go for it.

But when that five-year plan imploded in an even more embarrassing fashion -- L'Affaire LaRoche early, Chris Sale's jersey-slashing later -- that should've been the cue for everybody to leave. Instead, Williams and Hahn stayed for ANOTHER SEVEN YEARS, which was long enough to bury one rebuild, then watch another one die on the vine due to the same exact reasons -- an unwillingness to invest in marquee players up top, and an inability to generate in-house talent from below. The only difference is that the pitcher did his clubhouse ripping and tearing after he left this time around.

And now that Williams is gone, the real truth and what actually happened are starting to come out. David Kaplan and Ryan McGuffey told the same story about Williams from their own perspectives, with Williams cursing out McGuffey for daring to say Hahn was in charge during an NBC Sports Chicago program. (McGuffey shared his side of it in the White Sox Talk podcast).

And Kaplan said on his morning show on ESPN 1000 that Hahn tried to resign multiple times because he was tired of being saddled with the results without the autonomy, but Reinsdorf wouldn't let him out of his contract.

We'll see what else comes out, although it doesn't really matter. Palace intrigue usually fascinates and this is no different, but performing a postmortem will be either impossible or pointless. Jerry Reinsdorf organizations are designed to obscure responsibility, and even if you untangle everything that went wrong between him, Williams and Hahn, it's not like he's going to learn from his mistakes. It's easy to believe Bob Nightengale's reporting because there's nothing more Reinsdorf than "a search for a single decision maker" being 1) not a search that 2) results in installing two people.

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It shouldn't be a cause for celebration when somebody loses their job, especially when somebody like Williams accomplished something so great. But Jerry Reinsdorf's brand of loyalty inflicts so much damage that you can't suppress the relief when it finally loosens its grip. He's not loyal to a fault. He's loyal to a perverse degree.

We saw it when Reinsdorf made Robin Ventura fire himself at the end of a five-year managerial career that could've been cut off after three, and we saw it as Hahn went from an affable fan favorite to one who sneered at public opinion from a post-SoxFest distance. White Sox fans should've been afforded the ability to say, "Kenny had a good run," or, "It's a shame Rick didn't work out." Instead, Reinsdorf force-fed fans familiarity, and it bred so much mutual contempt.