Belle Signing Makes It a Brand New Gallgame

Jerry Reinsdorf should have been a ventriloquist. This guy can talk out of both sides of his mouth better than anybody since Edgar Bergen.

Owner of the Chicago White Sox, who have played in one World Series in 77 years, Reinsdorf is giving Albert Belle, the uncouth outfielder, $11 million a year, making ding-dong Belle the best-paid baseball player of all time.

This is the same Reinsdorf who cajoled his fellow owners into maintaining a hard line on spending, which led to their rejecting a labor contract with the players that the owners’ own negotiator had negotiated.

“I would imagine there will be owners who are critical of this,” Reinsdorf says, with gall that can only be described as colossal. “All I can say is, [Belle] was going to get this much from somebody. Somebody was going to pay him the money. So, I don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong there.

“Our being able to afford this is just another example of the problems in baseball. We are not being fiscally irresponsible, because we’re one of the teams that can afford it. But it doesn’t mean I have to like the system.”

In other words, Reinsdorf’s position is: Don’t do what I do, do what I say.

Belle is a bargain to Reinsdorf, at roughly one-third the money Michael Jordan is making. Reinsdorf owns both the White Sox, who don’t draw well at the box office, and the Bulls, who do.

“It’s not about money, it’s about winning,” the mealy mouthed owner added after Belle’s news conference Tuesday morning in Chicago, where not since Dave Kingman has anyone so unpleasant been welcomed so warmly.

Frank Thomas, the Sox slugger, called Belle’s arrival “an early Christmas present for me.”

Or a late Halloween present, depending how you look at it.

Belle said of himself, “I’ll continue to be Albert Belle,” which means that he intends to play the way he always plays, act the way he always acts. No word yet as to whether Chicago fans and media will be issued protective gear.

Thomas, “the Big Hurt,” will bat third, ahead of Belle, “the Bigger Hurt.” (The difference being, Thomas hurts baseballs, whereas Belle hurts people with baseballs.)

Because the Florida Marlins’ owner was just as willing to pay whatever was necessary, Reinsdorf felt no guilt over giving Belle the kitchen sink.

“I could have shopped around more,” said Belle, the one player most of America’s fans wish would go to Japan.

Attendance was terrible last season on the South Side of Chicago, despite a winning team.

“We got the message,” Reinsdorf said. “We’re not deaf.”

He was asked, “Would you have come out to watch last year’s team, as a fan?”

“No,” Reinsdorf replied. “I went last year because it was my job. I’ll go this year because I want to.”

In his mind, this justifies any amount of money spent on one player, no matter what trickle-down effect it has on baseball itself.

Paying $55 million to Belle is all right, Reinsdorf had the audacity to say, because, “We’ll generate enough revenue to pay for it.”

It suddenly didn’t matter to him that players coast to coast will be demanding comparable salaries, equating their worth with Belle’s.

A similar situation occurred with the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, whose owner paid Larry Johnson so much money that teammate Alonzo Mourning felt shortchanged. Neither player is still with the team.

Reinsdorf is willing to take that chance. He still blames baseball’s labor problems on player negotiator Donald Fehr, saying again Tuesday that “this madman is trying to ruin our game.”

Madmen took over this asylum long ago.

Baseball’s most untrustworthy owner now employs baseball’s most reprehensible player. It’s a match made in heaven, or heaven’s South Side.

* THE BILL: $55 MILLION: Albert Belle strikes it rich with Chicago White Sox. C10