Playoff baseball adds a glow to Reinsdorf

[greasywheels121]

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sp...tesox-headlines

 

Playoff baseball adds a glow to Reinsdorf

By Melissa Isaacson

Tribune staff reporter

 

It's not hard to tap into Jerry Reinsdorf's heart. On a summer night in October, it's on the skirt of the batting circle, watching his baseball team warm up and talking about the game he loves.

 

"The fact is, baseball is baseball," the White Sox's chairman said Wednesday, before Game 2 of the division series between his White Sox and the Boston Red Sox. "It's bigger than all the other sports. If you said nobody can bet on football, half the people wouldn't watch it anymore.

 

"I've had conversations with people who say 'I like football better than baseball' and I say, 'What was the first football game you ever went to?' and they say 'I don't remember.'

 

"But they all remember their first baseball game, who they went with, who was playing. Baseball is part of the fabric of America. As somebody once said, if you want to understand Americans, you have to understand baseball and that's true."

 

Reinsdorf, who grew up pulling for his hometown Brooklyn Dodgers, is reminded he once said he would trade any of the Bulls' NBA titles for one World Series championship for the White Sox.

 

"The story behind that is that I was getting a lot of criticism from White Sox fans that I was paying too much attention to the Bulls, so I tried to diffuse it," Reinsdorf said. "But it was a silly thing to say. You can't trade one for the other and they're just different. That was a phenomenal experience being associated with six world championships and with the greatest player ever to play the game. It was just different."

 

Also arguably less stressful. Like all Sox fans, Reinsdorf said he did not weather the strain of the final weeks of the regular season particularly well.

 

"I felt like, as the lead was dwindling from 15 games to 1½, that somebody had tied me to the railroad tracks and there was a train coming and he was trying to stop and all I could do was pray that he would stop before he ran over me, but there was nothing I could do about it," Reinsdorf said. "So once that happened, once the train stopped, it was nothing but relief.

 

"It's been a great year. No matter what happens, it has been a successful year and everything from here on in is great."

 

Tough as it was on him, his family members and the entire fan base of the White Sox, Reinsdorf said he tried to keep things in perspective.

 

"Ninety-nine point nine percent of the people in this world wish that their biggest problem was whether their team is getting into the playoffs," he said. "But baseball brings a city together."

 

And what of his earlier quip to the Tribune, echoing manager Ozzie Guillen's comments that he might retire if the White Sox won the World Series?

 

"No," Reinsdorf said. "I'll just win another one."

[southsider2k5]

I love his statement about the love of the game of baseball. There is nothing quite like it in sports.