On Deaf Ears

The Thursday night broadcast of the Bears’ game caught it, the chants of “Sell the team!”, and now everybody’s commenting on it. Misery loves company, which must be why Bears’ fans have borrowed a page from the White Sox faithful. If only heartfelt wishes came true. But to quote Mark Potash in today’s Sun-Times, “The fact of the matter is that the McCaskeys feel more pride in owning the franchise than they feel shame in destroying it. To them, it’s a family heirloom.” Never mind the team owns the fourth-worst won-loss record over the fourteen years George McCaskey has run the team. With Jerry Reinsdorf, pride in ownership matters less than being able to stick to his critics, legion though they may be. Reinsdorf has been doubling down on his “my way or the highway” decisions since the time he and other baseball owners were found guilty of collusion trying to depress free-agent contracts back in the mid-1980s. You think he’s ever stopped wanting a hard salary cap? You think he’s ever going to pay a pitcher what he’s worth? So, two out of the five major sports’ franchises in Chicago are laughingstocks. I didn’t hear Al Michaels say Santa was handing out White Sox season’s tickets in place of coal, but I saw something along the same lines on the internet. Chicago sports is definitely not for the weak of heart.