NEWSLETTER
It’s a well-worn strategy – one employed by these very White Sox many years before! – so you’ll forgive my cynicism about teams’ threats to leave their long-standing city home. More often than not, they’re perfectly happy to stay if they can get some public monies to make their digs a little fancier.
Just as the Brewers have started to rattle cages about leaving Milwaukee, the Chicago White Sox are reportedly considering a move out of Guaranteed Rate Field. And maybe even a move out of Chicago entirely:
Though a full-on relocation out of state is the wildest possible outcome here, a move within the city of Chicago would seem more plausible. Either nearby in a brand new stadium, or to the Soldier Field campus if the Bears move to Arlington Heights.
While I don’t really believe that 87-year-old Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants to actually engage in the decade-long process of relocating the team, which has been in Chicago since 1900, I do think the possibility of a sale is notable. In the event Reinsdorf finally does contemplate selling the franchise, then you could see that sale taking place in concert with a new stadium plan. Either a refurbishment of Guaranteed Rate, which is publicly-owned, or the development of a new stadium on the south side of Chicago. A move to the suburbs is plausible – the Bears are likely to do it! – but a move to a new city outside of Illinois seems like a stretch.
Also of note here is that the White Sox’s lease runs only through 2029, which is not all that far off in terms of stadium development discussions. So if the White Sox are going to try to leverage these threats and extract some public money (either for a renovation, a new nearby stadium, or a new stadium in the suburbs), realistically, they have only a few years to do it.
Which, in turn, brings it back to the possibility of a sale, which I’m sure would be music to the ears of all White Sox fans. There are winks dropped throughout the report about the possibility of Reinsdorf selling, which seems like something of a line being cast out there in case any buyers want to start sniffing around. That’s not new, mind you – rumors to that end have circulated for a year.
We’ll see if this goes anywhere, either in terms of more public sparring about stadium funding – which is what has happened in Milwaukee – or in terms of a drawn out process that really does lead to attempts to relocate, as we’ve seen with the Oakland/Las Vegas A’s. My guess, though, is that the next set of rumors you see will be about the possibility of exploring a sale. That doesn’t mean I’m saying a sale WILL happen! Only that I bet that’s the next round of reporting we see.
