BITTER BATTLE OVER THE WHITE SOX : Owners’ Bid for New Stadium Induces Outside Offers and Burnings in Effigy

The hot weather has come, the All-Star game solstice has passed and Chicagoans are gearing up for their most gripping baseball race in years. For the last two weeks, baseball news has dominated the front pages of the local newspapers, the letters to the editor columns, the editorial pages, even the business sections.

Why all this excitement in a city where two teams are a combined 24 games under .500 and 34 1/2 games out of first place? Who said anything about a couple of subpar baseball teams? The real race is to see where the White Sox decide to make their next home.

At a July 7 press conference at Comiskey Park, White Sox owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn announced that the team will abandon its venerable South Side ballpark by the 1989 season. That came as no surprise. The two have been angling for a new stadium almost since they purchased the team from Bill Veeck in 1981.

But then they revealed that they had irrevocably broken off negotiations with the city of Chicago for a new, $120-million downtown stadium and would resettle either in west suburban Addison, a town of 30,000 located 25 miles from downtown, or out of state entirely, perhaps in Tampa, Fla., or Denver. This triggered one of the wildest local political donnybrooks in memory, even by Chicago standards.

From a box seat behind home plate, 76-year-old Comiskey Park remains breathtaking--richly green outfield lawns, a chocolate-colored infield, the calliope-like exploding scoreboard and the porticoes in the back wall of the upper deck through which one can view the city.

But the team’s engineering studies report another side--leaky plumbing, million-dollar annual maintenance bills, critical support beams and unrepairably cracked and rusted parts of the foundation. At their press conference, the two owners cited an engineering consultant’s report stating that the ballpark will be structurally unsound in five years.

Reinsdorf and Einhorn had trumpeted the park’s deteriorating condition loudly and often enough that most fans, however reluctantly, had acquiesced to the need for a new ballpark. The city had accepted this conclusion, too. A stadium committee was appointed, and in mid-June, after an earlier proposal for a multipurpose stadium housing both the White Sox and Chicago Bears had fizzled, the city proposed an open-air, natural turf, baseball-only stadium for $120 million, plus $60 million in public-works costs.

The White Sox approved the plan. Only one element was missing: No one had bothered to figure out the funding. Who would bear the brunt of the costs, the city or the state?

It took Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Harold Washington, and his longtime antagonist, Illinois Republican Gov. James R. Thompson, just two weeks to reach a compromise. Unfortunately, they came to agreement at 6 p.m. on July 1, just eight hours before the state legislature adjourned until November and before a stadium bill could be drafted and brought to a vote. It being an election year, Thompson blamed Washington, Washington blamed Thompson and each blamed the state legislature. On July 7, Reinsdorf and Einhorn announced they were fed up and had decided to rebuild outside the city.

Needless to say, the two owners suffered a public-relations slump. Einhorn complained that fans had spat on his car. From south suburban Oak Lawn, the two were shown on television being burned in effigy. Mayor Washington, when asked if the White Sox could move to Addison, where they have purchased a 140-acre tract of land, and still call themselves “Chicago,” snapped: “No way. If you go beyond the border, you can’t take nothing with you.” When asked if she would vote to help relocate the team in Addison, state Rep. Carol Mosely Braun of Chicago replied: “I wouldn’t give them (Reinsdorf and Einhorn) ice water in winter.”

The two owners, known during the White Sox’s 1983 division championship season as “the Sunshine Boys,” have been hurt by these attacks. Einhorn, a former television sports producer, told reporters: “When I used to be introduced as a TV executive, I was proud. Now that I’m introduced as a baseball owner, I’m not as proud, because people have the idea that we are men of greed and avarice. They think we take ballclubs out of markets to make money and that we are not to be trusted.”

The thoughts of many Chicagoans, precisely. This is not surprising. Reinsdorf and Einhorn purchased the team six years ago with a pledge to keep it here, after Ohio shopping mall developer Edward DeBartolo had attempted to buy the team from Veeck. But Einhorn, when asked recently if he felt guilty about moving the team out of Comiskey Park, replied: “Not at all. Newer is better.”

Fans are convinced that the two chief reasons the White Sox are eager to leave Chicago are: 1) the Addisons, Tampas and Denvers are offering lucrative financial inducements and tax benefits that Chicago is either unwilling or unable to match, and 2) the bulk of the White Sox ticket-holders, according to demographic studies, live in the predominantly white northwest and southwest suburbs, not on the black South Side.

Yet there is no clear assurance that the White Sox will settle in Addison, either. “It’s no better than 50-50,” Reinsdorf acknowledged. Not everyone in town is enthusiastic about the proposed 47,000-seat, open-air, natural-turf stadium.

“Addison has some major concerns that have to be addressed first,” said Anthony Russotto, Addison’s village president. “People are very concerned about traffic, noise and property values.” Many residents, he noted, moved to Addison from Chicago to escape those things. An environmental group pointed out that 20 acres of the White Sox’s proposed ballpark tract is a state-protected wetlands area and a habitat to birds rare to Illinois. It has already mounted a campaign to prevent the team from building on the land.

The White Sox, who insist it is urgent that they act quickly, have given the community until Dec. 31 to approve construction of their planned ballpark. Failure to do so, warn Reinsdorf and Einhorn, will force them to relocate the team out of state.