Sell, Please

The problem with Chicago sports is that owners own too long. The Wirtz family bought the Blackhawks in 1966 while Jerry Reinsdorf snagged the White Sox in 1981 and the Bulls four years later. Oh, and the McCaskey/Halas clan has controlled the Bears since right after The Flood. As long as there’s been an NFL, there’s been a Halas or descendant thereof to muck things up. Bill Wirtz nearly ran the Hawks into the ground. Bobby Hull? Bye-bye. Phil Esposito? Gone. Contraction in the NHL up to and including his franchise? Sounded good to Dollar Bill. Only Death stopped Wirtz from acting on such folly. Reinsdorf has screwed up not one but two franchises. The Bulls have yet to recover from their dismantling at the end of the Michael Jordan Era. Reinsdorf is the owner who picked Jerry Krause over Jordan and Phil Jackson. Enough said, only there’s more. Think the 1994 MLB strike and the “White Flag” trade three years after that. How many World Series does Reinsdorf owe Sox fans, given those two colossal bonehead moves? I’d start with five, minimum. As for the Cubs, they’re the exception that proves the rule. The Ricketts family bought the club in 2009 and turned the world upside down with a World Series championship seven years later. Alas, the family now seems headed in the direction of destructive idiosyncrasies a la Halas/McCaskey, Reindsorf and Wirtz. God, we deserve better.