Billionaire Governor JB Pritzker Refuses To Buy The White Sox A New Stadium
ABC 7 Chicago -- Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has come out against a proposal for a new Chicago White Sox stadium in the South Loop, as well as the use of taxpayer money for the project.
"A billion dollar investment in a private business- for a private business, rather, that's owned by wealthy people and is a highly-valued enterprise, it seems like the taxpayers, rightly, should say, 'Don't we have other uses for that capital?'" the governor said.
The Sox are also once again the subject of rumors involving the possibility of selling or relocating the baseball team.
The White Sox are a professional baseball team in Chicago and they are not very good. In fact, they recently finished the worst regular season in the sport's history - a history that goes back nearly 150 years and represents almost 3,000 individual club seasons. And amongst all those seasons, the 2024 White Sox rank dead last.
The other important piece here is JB Pritzker. He's the very fat governor of Illinois and closely resembles an entry level video game underboss. Like the 1st or 2nd boss you'd encounter in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stand up arcade machine.
Nancy Kaszerman. Shutterstock Images.
Big story now is that JB won't back a new stadium for the Chicago White Sox. He said it would take about a billion dollars of taxpayer money and the White Sox are a private business. Something like that and it all sounds good.
Small Caveat: most of MLB new development is made with public financing. Not 100% of course but there's a good chunk - like how the A's are getting almost $400M to build a park in Las Vegas. So while common sense says there should be none/minimal public funding, precedent suggests otherwise, which allows for this kinda conversation.
Now take that and also consider the White Sox are desperate for a new stadium. Whether a necessity or not, Guaranteed Rate does in fact suck hard. And now it seems like Jerry is leaning on the need for a new stadium so he can publicly show that the state of Illinois will not support him.
Thus gives Jerry the perfect out. He's going to act like he wants to build a new stadium for fans. He's going to make it seem like there's just ONE THING LEFT and that one thing is public funding. Then JB says it won't happen, and they'll dance to the music until it's time to say: It just doesn't make sense to stay in Chicago.
The White Sox refused to comment this week on the possibility of selling or relocating, but there are interested ownership groups who would like to buy the team and possibly move it to Nashville.
It's so obvious that you'd have to be a complete moron to draw any other conclusions from these offseason soundbites.
Making matters worse - Rob Manfred recently encouraged fans that there'd always be two teams in Chicago. He said it just the other day to Chicago's own Danny Parkins on that Fox show with Craig and Stink.
It sounded nice, but the reality is we're way smarter and closer to the situation. And the facts are clear that Jerry's time is running out, his kids don't want anything to do with the Sox and there's no financial path forward to keep the Sox competitive in Chicago. The fanbase is rapidly eroding and it's only getting worse.
So considering all of this, it's actually very straightforward.
If you're a White Sox fan, prepare to get fucked.