Jerry Reinsdorf reportedly ‘in active discussions’ to sell White Sox after worst season in franchise history
CHICAGO — Chicago White Sox fans who chanted “Sell the team” at Guaranteed Rate Field this summer might get their wish after all.
According to a report Wednesday in The Athletic, Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf has changed his stance about keeping the team he has owned since 1981 and is in “active discussions” with a group led by Dave Stewart, the former major league pitcher who starred under manager Tony La Russa in Oakland.
Stewart’s group has been active in trying to get an expansion team for Nashville, Tenn., the city the Sox have been linked to as a possible destination if they decided to move.
A Sox spokesman told the Chicago Tribune’s LaMond Pope “we don’t comment on rumors and speculation.”
Reinsdorf and the late Eddie Einhorn led a group that purchased the Sox from Bill Veeck for $20 million in January 1981, and he has been the longest-tenured owner in the game for years. The Sox recently were valued at $2.05 billion, according to a Forbes report in March. Reinsdorf has long insisted he wasn’t interested in selling the Sox, telling reporters in August 2023 that he’s often asked about it.
“Friends of mine have said: ‘Why don’t you sell? Why don’t you get out?’” Reinsdorf said. “My answer always has been: ‘I like what I’m doing, as bad as it is, and what else would I do?’
“I’m a boring guy. I don’t play golf. I don’t play bridge. And I want to make it better before I go.”
But the possibility of that happening in the next few years is unlikely.
What might have changed Reinsdorf’s mind in the last year is unclear.
But at age 88 and following what he called a “very painful” season in which the Sox set a modern-day MLB record with 121 losses, he simply could be tired of the aggravation and constant criticism over his decision-making.
Reinsdorf’s efforts to secure public funding for a proposed new ballpark on the site of The 78 in the South Loop have thus far failed to make inroads, leading to speculation he would move the team if he couldn’t get a stadium deal done.
Reinsdorf denied last year that he threatened to move the Sox but conceded the team needed to figure out where it would be when the stadium lease was up.
“I’ve been reading that I’ve been threatening to move to Nashville,” he said. “That article didn’t come from me. But it’s obvious, if we have six years left (on the lease). … We’ve got to decide what the future (of where the Sox play) is going to be.”
