Whiter Jerry Reinsdorf.  The Chairman isn't happy these days since Arizona lawmakers have proposed a surcharge on spring training tickets to help support the new facilities to be built by the Chicago Cubs.  The Chairman is annoyed that the building of the new Cubs ballpark will be on the backs of Sox ticket prices.  To a certain degree, he has a point.  But not the point you might think.

White Sox spring training tickets are among the most expensive in Arizona right now and the proposed "Cub tax" only makes it worse.  Sox fans aren't like Cub fans either in number or in income, so there is a limit as to how much one will spend to go to Arizona in the spring.  The Cubs, on the other hand, have a huge, built in fan base of retired fans who love to go to the ballpark in the spring.  So, he's already losing the battle of Chicago teams.

And, as the Mayor of Mesa so adeptly and surgically points out, The Chairman is the last guy who should complain about anything.  In 1986, he stomped his feet and threatened to move to Tampa unless a stadium was built with public funding.  After thirty-seven  years in Sarasota, the Sox took off for Tuscon for spring training in a publicly built facility there.  Then, realizing that Tucson was to the rest of Arizona as Carbondale is to Illinois, the Sox bolted to yet another publicly funded facility in Glendale, just outside of Phoenix.

That's right, taxpayers, you have been paying the freight for The Chairman for almost twenty-five years. 

The Chairman's real agenda?  The first, to appear like a hero to Sox fans by wanting the "Cub Tax" struck down.  After all, if you can't or won't stand up to the Cubs, fans won't love you.  Second, from all the reports I've read, the prices at the Sox facility in Glendale are sky high.  Paying extra for tickets doesn't help, as noted earlier. So, The Chairman is trying to protect his product.  After all, the Sox aren't paying the tax, the fans are.

The bottom line is after years of doing it to taxpayers, The Chairman is about to have it done to him.  And he seems to enjoy it as much as taxpayers do.