A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Via Joe Kristan, we have this. Truth be told, I have nothing against lawyers--I even decided to be one--so I am not all too upset at Jerry Reinsdorf being a lawyer, not even being a lawyer for the IRS. Indeed, as this article makes clear, Reinsdorf's legal skills serve him well and from a business standpoint, they are to be admired:

His fast-talking routine began in law school at Northwestern University in 1957. While enrolled there, he was offered a full scholarship by the University of Chicago Law School. Playing them off against each other, he told a Northwestern dean he couldn't turn the Chicago offer down. A few days later, Reinsdorf had a Northwestern scholarship.

[. . .]

But Reinsdorf's sentimentality extends only so far. Business is still business. So in 1983, claiming the old Comiskey Park was "disintegrating," and "if we didn't get a new ballpark we'd go broke," Reinsdorf again played hardball. Threatening to move the Sox to St. Petersburg, Florida, if Illinois legislators didn't fund a new stadium, he now explained, "a savvy negotiator creates leverage. People had to think we were going to leave Chicago." Those machinations angered St. Petersburg city administrator Rick Dodge. Realizing Reinsdorf was simultaneously negotiating with him and Illinois officials, he told his attorneys, "He was playing us off against each other. I'm not going to sit here and get chewed up like this."

Chicagoans were equally annoyed with Reinsdorf's Florida flirtation. Eddie Einhorn remembers going to a Cubs game with Reinsdorf and a fan yelling, "I wouldn't get into that car after the game." Reinsdorf received so many death threats, with anti-Semitic slurs, that he was forced to hire bodyguards and 24-hour security agents to protect his Chicago home.

Known as a negotiator who "lets things linger until he gets what he wants," Reinsdorf did have one friend during the three-year imbroglio, Illinois Governor Jim Thompson. By June 1988, when it seemed certain that St. Pete would lure the Sox to its new Suncoast Dome, Big Jim twisted arms on the floor of the Illinois Senate, and the deal was done. Illinois funded a new stadium. As John Helyar writes, "Reinsdorf got the gold mine, and [St. Petersburg] got the shaft."

Illinois taxpayers also got the short end of the deal. While Reinsdorf innocently insists, "I didn't get into baseball to make money. Baseball is my religion. I'm happy to break even," the Comiskey deal gave him free rent for up to 1.2 million in attendance each year. The Sox pay the state $2.50 for every ticket from 1.2 to 2 million, yet the team also gets back $5 million a year for stadium repairs and maintenance. In addition, the state buys 300,000 tickets if attendance drops below 1.5 after the year 2001, so in actuality, Reinsdorf got public funds to build his stadium and subsidies to guarantee its profitability.

Of course, I don't blame Reinsdorf for having taken advantage of the sweet deal available to him. He did what any self-respecting businessperson would do. If we are upset about the policy in question, that is one thing, but we blame the policymakers for that, not the businesspeople who play by the rules (odious as the rules may be from a policy perspective) and who do what they have to do in order to be profitable.

I just wish that Reinsdorf would have used his powers for good and not for evil. And other respectable, civilized and cosmopolitan Chicagoans feel the exact same way.