The Sunshine Boys: 39 years ago, this pair took over the Chicago White Sox.
1981
Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn gained control of the White Sox after American League owners turned down Bill Veeck’s attempt to sell to Eddie DeBartolo. Reinsdorf’s original partner was William Farley, but Farley dropped out in part because the Sox went out and signed free agents Ron LeFlore and Jim Essian. Farley didn’t approve of the team spending $3 million on free agents — even though Veeck got the money for the signings from DeBartolo!
Reinsdorf originally was part of a group trying to buy the New York Mets. Einhorn originally was part of a group trying to get the San Diego Padres.
Published by Brett Ballantini
Actor (final credit: murdered by Albert Einstein in "Carnage Hall"), musician (Ethnocentric Republicans), and Nerf hoops champion, Wiffleball aficionado and onetime bilingual kindergarten teacher, Brett Ballantini also writes about baseball, basketball and sometimes hockey, publishing at the NBA, MLB, NHL, and for Slam, Hoop, Sporting News, the Athletic, and others. He was CSN Chicago’s Blackhawks beat writer for their first Stanley Cup season of 2009-10, and took over the White Sox beat after that. He currently is the editor-in-chief of South Side Hit Pen and managing editor of SB Nation's South Side Sox. He also wrote a book about Ozzie Guillén but is running out of space, so follow him on Twitter @BrettBallantini and he'll probably tell you even more about himself than you ever wanted to know.
View all posts by Brett Ballantini
South Side Hit Pen 
It has been a long run.
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While many (with good reasons) vilify Reinsdorf for running a large market team like a small market team, I actually believe you can trace a great deal of responsibilty for this problem back to Einhorn’s role in the early days of the organization. In short, the Sox became a small market team in a large market due to Einhorn’s short-sighted, Bill Wirtz-esque strangulation of TV access to our beloved Sox.
As a child of the late 70’s and early 80’s, I got my White Sox baseball on channel 44. When Reinsdorf’s ownership group acquired the Sox, my father was pretty excited. My dad always felt the poverty of Sox ownership killed his team (’59 Sox) and some great 50’s & 60’s teams could have been better with wealthier ownership. In short, we were stoked to see deeper pockets at the helm.
When the Sox shifted to OnTV(?), we just couldn’t pay up. Almost all of my pals on the northwest side were actually Sox fans. I attributed this to our fathers, who all came of age in the Sox golden age of the 50-60s. We inherited our dad’s teams, even as “northsiders”. When the lights went out on free TV, lots of my friends just turned on WGN afterschool. For folks in the early days of subscription TV that couldn’t afford it, we lost easy access to our team. I truly believe the generation lost to Einhorn’s short sightedness contributed greatly to cementing the Sox as a small market team in a large market.
Of course, there are many other factors that contribute to the Sox second-class status and Reinsdorf CERTAINLY deserves mucho blame, let’s not forget Eddie’s essential role (may he rest in peace) in damaging the White Sox fan base.
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FYI (I don’t know if you still are interested), but the main page said 3 comments, but I only see WIN05’s and wilburwoodwastheman’s.
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So there’s seems a pervasive one-less comment issue for some (or all) of you. Hmm. Will keep investigating. In Ozzie parlance, “in the meanwhile” everyone will continue to be tormented by that one elusive comment …
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It’s not always one. There was one a week ago that said 5 comments, but the only comment that I could see was my own.
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Other than the fact that JR has made nothing but money with the White Sox, I don’t see how anybody can view his ownership as a successful one.
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Right now it says eight comments here but I only see six posted. (Not counting this just added one)
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Front page of the site says this has 15 comments. I only see seven (not counting this one that I’m just typing.)
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Is the page haunted?
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I wonder if maybe the “comments” we can’t see are automated spam?
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I’m just going to assume that it’s people making fun of me and I don’t want to see it anyway.
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