"Historic Partnership"

The White Sox stadium story has, if nothing else, filled a baseball void that comes with January. On Thursday, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson issued a press release about the “historic partnership between the team and Chicago and the team’s ideas for remaining competitive in Chicago in perpetuity.” Oh, that’s rich. Johnson is a progressive Democrat whose politics should make him shy away from subsidies for stadiums. But he also doesn’t want to be known as the mayor who lost the White Sox, a fear that led then-mayor Harold Washington to jump aboard the “let’s build the Sox a stadium before they move out of state” train back in 1988. So, I sympathize with Johnson for having to walk the political high wire here. Allow me a few suggestions to guide him safely across to the other end. Start with the whole notion of partnership; the mayor needs to define the term precisely. If any sizable amount of public money goes into a stadium—making voters and taxpayers partners of the White Sox, if you will—then there better be full transparency, as in public access to the White Sox books. That’s what partners in the business world get. What makes a stadium any different? Second, Johnson has made it clear his administration is all about diversity, equity and inclusion. Alright, then, apply that concept to the White Sox, who announced a series of organizational moves yesterday. By my count, there are 62 positions not related to the team academy in the Dominican Republic. Of that number, I count four positions being filled by women, or 6.5 percent. The number goes down to zero when counting player personnel and coaching positions. In other words, same old same old. Why would the mayor of Chicago want to aid an organization that shows little if any sympathy for his beliefs? Curious minds want to know.