Steve Stone sounds like he's coming back to the White Sox broadcast booth, as he told Daryl Van Schouwen earlier this week, "I feel like I can still do it on a high level. I want to do this for a while longer."
Stone cited Jerry Reinsdorf as a driving reason, as the White Sox gave Stone the opportunity to return to Chicago airwaves 15 years ago after he and the Cubs split unamicably. In return, Stone will stand up for Reinsdorf whenever given the chance:
“This is a guy who asks for nobody to defend him, but when somebody does something for you, you can’t repay it in a day or month,” Stone said. “He may be loyal to a fault, but loyalty is something I never lose track of, which is why I will be loyal to Jerry as long as I’m around. He helped me get back to Chicago.
“The fans are so unhappy that they want to take it out on one person, and the easiest way is to take it out on the man who owns the team.”
That quote came to mind when reading Dayn Perry's vivisection of Reinsdorf's ownership of the White Sox on CBSSports.com Wednesday. None of it will be unfamiliar to White Sox fans, but its value is putting it all in one place for everybody to see with a cohesive underlying thesis:
Reinsdorf is of course not being subjected to any of that aforementioned accountability. That's how it goes with owners. Yes, the buck stops with them but so do the consequences. That's especially the case these days. Teams have so many guaranteed income streams that they enjoy just by virtue of existing that they can still achieve profitability even if the turnstiles aren't clicking and the parking passes and concessions aren't being purchased. All of it breeds a state of indolence and assumption on the part of the ownership class – a demographic already predisposed toward such flaws. That's evident in Reinsdorf.
While Reinsdorf's legacy as a controlling owner is not yet engraved in permanence, it's close to being so, which means assessments of his tenure are not premature. Survey his more than four decades helming the White Sox and you find failure, a foundational lie, and cynicism as a guiding principle.
It's worth absorbing these two stories in stereo, because while the perspectives are wildly disparate, they're both looking at the same thing, and have been for decades. The anecdotes about Reinsdorf being loyal and generous to people he personally knows are legion. The anecdotes about Reinsdorf doing anything for White Sox fans en masse dried up long ago.
It makes sense that Stone is grateful for Reinsdorf's generosity, but if he could imagine a version of Reinsdorf that stopped returning his calls or blocked his number and showed no remorse when asked -- and then had to hear from others what a great guy he is, and how he never turns his back on a friend -- it probably wouldn't be so hard for him to understand the complaints. Unless, as one-time South Sider Upton Sinclair said, his salary depends on not understanding them.
Spare Parts
We're coming up on the anniversary of two fans being shot in the bleachers at Guaranteed Rate Field, and there's no further information on the investigation, but we do have a lawsuit filed by one of the women who suffered a gunshot injury, according to a press release by her representation. We do not yet have a full copy of the lawsuit.
Michael Kopech has allowed only a hit and a walk over 9⅓ since joining the Dodgers. It's not so much that the Dodgers can take credit for fixing him, but they can take credit for buying into Kopech's late improvement with the White Sox and finding a way to wedge themselves into a discussions between the Sox and Cardinals.
Just as Steven Goldman and Rob Mains concluded their series ranking the most dominated teams of all times -- teams that not only lost, but lost hard -- here come the White Sox challenging for the top spot, earning bonus points for how early they were eliminated and how they haven't yet won a game they were trailing after six innings.
After first squandering a 10-game lead over the Astros and then falling all the way back to .500, the Mariners fired manager Scott Servais, but in a very sloppy fashion, with Dipoto and the Mariners leaking the news in such a fashion that Servais found out about it on a breaking-news alert on a sports crawl.
This chaotic rollout illuminates some of the logic behind the White Sox firing out an announcement of Pedro Grifol's ouster before 9:00am on an off day, but taking another few hours to announce Grady Sizemore as the interim manager. The both present as disorganized, but one is more humane.
- Angels sign GM Perry Minasian to two-year extension -- ESPN
- Perry Minasian gets 2-year extension, now it's time for him to shop smarter -- The Athletic
The Angels are on track to lock in their ninth consecutive losing season. Perry Minasian had been in charge for the last four years, and when reading about his body of work, it's hard not to see parallels to the White Sox.
The built-in caveats to explain Minasian’s inability to win thus far are endless. He is the only GM in baseball who doesn’t have an assistant GM. He’s been given the sport’s worst spring training facilities and a low budget to fill one of the smallest organizational infrastructures.
There is no question Minasian has one of the most frustrating bosses in the entire sport. Moreno is ineffectively micro-managing him at every turn. It is a very tough job.
Joey Votto announced his retirement from baseball from the parking lot of the Toronto Blue Jays' Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo. He has a borderline case for the Hall of Fame on merit, but when you consider how many people would show up to see it -- and the stories that could come out of it -- that makes him an easy "yes" for me.
