Overstaying a Welcome

White Sox manager Mickey Mouse had dinner with Jerry Reinsdorf and henchman Tony La Russa Wednesday after a rare Sox win, 5-4 over the Mariners. Mouse wouldn’t go into specifics with reporters about it yesterday, other than to say Reinsdorf is committed to winning over the long haul. But if that were true, Mouse would’ve left the dinner as the ex-manager of the White Sox. Consider that the Sox lost last night 8-5 to the worst team in baseball, their “pitchers” unable to hold two leads while giving up—count ’em—five longballs to an Oakland team seventh from the bottom in the homerun department. Oh, and Sox “hitters” couldn’t solve an A’s staff with the worst ERA in all of baseball. But am I worried? Not entirely. Why? Because initiating change is not the same as controlling change. Reinsdorf started something that may very well go in directions he neither anticipated nor wanted. Put another way, his team may be so out of it mentally that they keep losing until they close in on one hundred losses. It could happen. At the very least, the Mouseketeers look headed for a minimum of ninety-five losses come October, when their crosstown rivals could very well be in the postseason. Try and sell a losing product with a losing manager to this extremely disaffected fan base. My guess is that the drop in season-tickets sales for 2024 will be a closely guarded secret. The Chairman doesn’t like embarrassment, sometimes.