Harry Caray Book...

[Thad Bosley]

1 hour ago, NWINFan said:

The scum statement was one of Reinsdorf's worst moments. The White Sox had just won their first division title and had gone over 2,000,000 in attendance, a first for a Chicago baseball team. Instead of enjoying the moment, he spewed out bitterness. Whatever his differences with Caray, this was not the moment to air them publicly. At times, Reinsdorf blames the media for any bad image he has, but many times he does it to himself. This was surely one of those times, and it was another one of his quotes that stick in the memory of fans for the wrong reason. And then he named Hawk as GM. You have to explain that one to me.

This a good book, but over the years, I lost some of my admiration for Caray. To say the least, he could be insensitive at times.  You can't say a team is playing well when it isn't, but Caray just got full of himself.

At the time, it was speculated that the Sox hired Hawk to be GM as a response to the bigger-than-life personality known as Dallas Green operating as the GM of the Cubs.  From the moment Green hit the stage as GM in 1982, he commanded a lot of attention with his somewhat charismatic style, and in many ways represented the face of the franchise when the new ownership took over in '82.  

Meanwhile, the Sox had the mild-mannered yet baseball-savvy and very capable Roland Hemond as GM.  The speculation was the Sox put Harrelson, and with him his Hawk persona, in the GM seat to sort of compete for the newspaper headlines with Green.  And if you look at how the Sox tried to market Hawk that year, with the cartoon images of him on all of the marketing materials, wearing the big cowboy that he used to wear all of the time back then, and with the tagline "The Hawk Wants You!", it seems like that's exactly why they opted to appoint him GM.  Perfect plan, except for the requirement that he actually have to generally manage the organization part!