Jerry Reinsdorf is one of the longest-tenured owners in Major League Baseball and the NBA, giving the chairman of the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls broad perspective.
Throughout his four decades in the business, he has experienced the highs of six NBA titles and one World Series championship, and the lows of labor battles and lockouts. He knows that praise and criticism come with the territory.
“The biggest challenge is to do what you think and not worry about what people are thinking and have the confidence in your decisions,” he said. “I try to run my teams the way I ran my real estate business and that is to identify the jobs that have to be filled and make sure they are filled with people who can do them better than I could.”
These days, Reinsdorf mostly leaves the Bulls in the hands of his son Michael, who is president of the team, while White Sox executive vice president Kenny Williams oversees the baseball team. Both get a wide berth in running their teams.
“I give guidance but I delegate a lot of authority,” Reinsdorf said. “My biggest thing is the vision.”
But the delegation of duties doesn’t distance Reinsdorf from getting involved in critical matters. Consider the recent
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flap over the sudden retirement of Adam LaRoche of the White Sox after he disagreed with management over his teenage son’s presence with the team.
“We got it resolved and it is behind us,” Reinsdorf said of the LaRoche controversy.
One of the lessons Reinsdorf has learned throughout his years in sports ownership is to make deliberate decisions.
“If I have a difficult decision, I don’t make it until I have to make it,” he said. “There comes a time when you have to decide, but why decide early?”
Not all those decisions will be perfect. Reinsdorf said his biggest mistakes were allowing former White Sox general manager Ken Harrelson to fire manager Tony La Russa in 1986 and then failing to rehire La Russa after he left the Oakland A’s for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1996.
“I should have insisted we hire Tony before he went to St. Louis,” he said. “I have always regretted those decisions.
Those two things cost us a pennant and a World Series.”
After having seen a new generation of owners come into sports, Reinsdorf has some advice.
“Just take a year or two to learn the business and spend time identifying other owners that you respect and spend time with them,” he said. “Learn from other people. I got into baseball and then basketball because I loved sports. I was a fan first. When I first got into baseball, franchise values weren’t that high and everyone was in the game because they loved baseball. I always come back to that we don’t own the team, the fans do. I’m just a guy temporarily in charge.”
