Jerry Reinsdorf, Chairman of the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls
This conversation is part of The CEO Series by Executive House. Watch the full interview on YouTube.
What is your leadership style?
My leadership style is very simple. I try to hire good people and let them do their work.
If you had to give someone starting a business a short piece of advice, what would it be?
The most important thing I believe in starting a business is to be properly capitalized. Most people underestimate the amount of money they’re going to need until they get to a break-even point.
How has your training as a lawyer helped you in running and owning businesses?
My training as a lawyer was probably the biggest hindrance to my success in business, because you have to learn to stop thinking like a lawyer and start thinking like a businessman.
Why is Chicago a great place to do business?
Chicago is a really terrific place to do business because it’s a friendly city. People welcome outsiders. People in Chicago like to see other people succeed. When I look at New York, I find it so hard for people to get settled, to move in there, to start businesses, whereas Chicago is just open to everybody.
Why is it a difficult place to run a business?
Chicago is difficult because you have to navigate the political arena here. We have so many different units of government, and you’ve got to get along with all of them.
What trends in Chicago business are you seeing that you like?
What I’m seeing in Chicago now that I really like is the fact that businesses are moving in from the suburbs. Companies like McDonald’s and Google are locating downtown. Young people want to be in the city of Chicago. People no longer really want to be in the suburbs, and so the Chicago Central Business District has really become very vibrant.
If you could work in any other industry or job, what would you choose?
I’ve always been fascinated by politics. I think we don’t have good people running for office as frequently as we should, and I’ve often thought I wouldn’t mind being an office holder, but I would never want to go through what you have to go through to be in office. And then, if I couldn’t do that, I think I’d like to be a stand-up comedian.
How do you think you’d do there?
I think I’d be a pretty good comedian, because I’m actually funny. But I’d have to have writers.
What do you look for when you’re looking to acquire a business?
When looking to acquire a business, first you have to decide whether you’re going to leave management in place or not. In most cases when acquiring a business, you want to leave the management in place, or you have to be sold on the management. And of course you have to be sold on the product that the business is delivering.
What do you look for when hiring a new employee you’ll be working with directly?
When hiring a new employee, the most important thing I want to know about him or her is what’s the spouse like? Is the person married to somebody who’s going to understand that the most important thing in this person’s life becomes his job?
What do you think about hiring friends?
Hiring friends is dangerous. My mother told me that you should never hire anybody that you can’t fire, and so therefore I really like to stay away from hiring friends. Not that I like to fire people, but it’s really hard to fire a friend, so you should stay away from that.
What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I’ve ever received was just to do my job. No matter what job I was involved in, try to be the best that I could be. When I was selling hot dogs at a fast food stand in New York, my goal was to be the best dispenser of hot dogs. And wherever I was, I never thought about what’s the next job. Think about the current job that you’re in, and you want to be better than anybody else could be at that job.
What’s your proudest non-sports moment in business?
I guess my proudest non-sports moment would be when I sold my real estate business to American Express, because it gave me financial independence for the first time in my life.
What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learned in business?
The hardest thing to learn in business is to self-evaluate and to understand when you’ve made a mistake. And when you’ve made a mistake, you have to correct that mistake as soon as you possibly can.
What three CEOs would you want to meet and have dinner with?
I would love to have met Dr. Armand Hammer, who was essentially the guy that drove Occidental Petroleum to where it went. I’d love to meet Lee Iacocca. And I would like to meet Thomas Watson, who was one of the founders of IBM.
When you were first starting out in business, did you ever think you’d reach this level of financial success?
I never at any time in my life thought that I was going to be a huge monetary success. When I was growing up, I just wanted to be able to own a car.
Who are you most thankful for in reaching your business goals?
I would have to give the most credit of anybody to my wife, because she put up with the long hours and the hard work and me ducking all sorts of responsibilities when it came to raising a family. She was incredibly supportive.
What do you enjoy most about the business of sports?
I can’t answer that question, because what I enjoy the most about sports is not politically correct.
What was your biggest concern when you first became a sports franchise owner?
My biggest concern when I first got into sports was that I didn’t know anything about the business. I was a fan, but I really didn’t know anything about the business of sports, and it was important for me to take time to learn.
What’s your biggest takeaway from when you started in sports to now?
The biggest takeaway, I guess, from the beginning to the end would be that in the beginning, I thought it was very important to always be open and honest, always answer every question that was ever asked of you. I now understand that you can’t do that. The things that we do, the decisions that we make, cannot be totally explained to the media or to the public, and we just have to make our decisions and hope to God that they work out.
What’s the biggest revenue driver for the White Sox and the Bulls?
The biggest revenue driver for any sports team in any of the major sports, aside from tickets, is television revenue. We’re basically in a world where more people watch on television than come to the ballparks.
What are the biggest operational challenges in running these teams?
The operational challenges of running sports teams are not very different than the operational challenges of running any team. You’ve got to make sure that you’ve identified the jobs that have to be filled, and make sure that you put people in those jobs that do those particular jobs better than you could if you were in those jobs.
How have television and digital media changed the business since you started?
When I started in sports, the most important thing was to sell tickets. That was by far the largest revenue source. But over time, that’s evolved to cable television, satellite television, digital media, streaming. It’s just constantly changing. As the world is getting younger, we have fewer people that like to watch full ballgames. We have to be able to deliver games to them on their phone. We have to be able to deliver snippets. So I guess I would say the biggest challenge is keeping up with the changing needs and desires of our population as it becomes younger.
What are your thoughts on the rise of esports?
I just do not understand esports. I cannot imagine paying to watch somebody play an electronic game. In fact, I can’t imagine watching somebody play an electronic game for free. It just makes no sense to me. But I’m a dinosaur. Obviously, there are people who like to do that. 25,000 people have sat in Madison Square Garden and watched people playing esports games. I just do not understand it. And at my age, I don’t choose to try to understand it.
How will the MLB fan experience change over the next 10 years?
I think over the next 10 years we’re going to see a better connection between the players and the fans. I think the NBA has taught a lot of people that the sport is all about the players. In the NBA, the players get so close to the fans, and they’re so popular. In baseball, we have not done a good job of popularizing our players and showing them as human beings and connecting them to the fans. I think you’re going to see more and more of that over the next 10 years.
How about the NBA?
The NBA is just going to get better and better. It’s an international sport. We’ll probably have teams in Europe, possibly in Mexico. The growth internationally is just going to continue indefinitely.
Did the Bulls championships and the White Sox 2005 championship feel different?
There’s no question that there’s a difference between basketball and baseball, or baseball and any other sport. When the Bulls won their championships, we had five, six hundred thousand people come to Grant Park for a rally. Everybody was super happy, and then we went home. Baseball is a generational thing. It ties families together. When the White Sox won the World Series, we had 2 million people on a parade route. There wasn’t one incident. I had one man come up to me the following spring and say, “My father died 15 minutes after the last out, and he knew, and he died happy.” You can’t say that about any other sport. Baseball is the favorite sport of people who don’t even realize it’s their favorite sport.
Is baseball your favorite sport?
Baseball is my favorite sport.
What comes with owning two sports teams in one city?
Well, when you own two sports teams in the same city, you have the ability to lose two games in one day.
How does it feel having two baseball teams in one city?
Having two teams in one city is obviously a problem, because you’re dividing the market. The Bulls are the only team in Chicago, and we’re able to market to everybody. Virtually everybody in Chicago who follows basketball is a Bulls fan. In the case of baseball, we obviously have to divide the people up between the two teams, so it’s a more difficult operation.
What does the game of baseball mean to you?
Well, baseball to me is America. It is the one sport that ties generations together. It’s the one sport where a grandfather and a grandson can come together and have a common understanding. It’s the one sport that you could sit and talk about for hours and hours. Have you ever heard anybody sitting around with a friend talking about soccer trivia? No, I don’t think so. Or even football trivia. But baseball is just something you talk about over and over again, even after the game is over.
What three retired players you’ve worked with would you want to have dinner with?
I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of really sensational athletes in both sports, and I could probably name a dozen of them that I really like. But of course, my two favorite players are Harold Baines and Jim Thome, and I’d certainly like to spend time with them and have dinner with them. And then there was another guy who played baseball and basketball. I can’t remember his name. Oh yeah, Jordan, I think, was his name. I always enjoyed having dinner with him.
What’s your favorite non-championship baseball memory?
My favorite non-championship baseball memory was Bo Jackson coming back from having hip surgery, when people said he probably would never play again, and hitting a home run on opening day. And then, I believe later the same year, hitting a home run to clinch a playoff position for us.
Who’s the best Chicago athlete besides Michael Jordan?
Probably the best Chicago athlete besides Michael Jordan was Bobby Hull. He was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, player of his generation.
Favorite Chicagoan of all time?
My favorite Chicagoan of all time was Richard J. Daley. From the day I got here, I was a tremendous fan of his, and I only wish I had met him.
Top three Chicago restaurants?
I’ve got to pass on that one.
Thin crust or deep dish?
Thin crust. Deep dish is just cheese. It’s just a cheese pie.
Cubs or Sox?
You have got to be kidding about that one.
Favorite sports movie of all time?
Field of Dreams.
If someone asked what they should do in Chicago, where would you send them?
The Chicago River cruise.
Do you have a daily routine?
I have no daily routine, other than not to get up early. The one rule I have is I will not leave home before 9:00 in the morning. After that, events just control what I do all day. There’s no routine that repeats itself.
Were you interviewed for ESPN’s Michael Jordan documentary? How was that?
I’ll let you know after I see what they used.
Do you keep in touch with Jordan?
Not on a regular basis. On an irregular basis, if there’s some reason to talk to him.
Can you show us some of your favorite photos and memorabilia?
I have no idea where anything comes from. Honest to God, I’m not a collector. Everything, I think without exception, that you’ll see in my office, somebody gave me. Most of it isn’t really worth anything. It’s just stuff.
What’s your favorite on this wall?
That was some game. One-nothing. Game two was an incredible game too, in the rain and the sleet. So that’s got to be my favorite picture.
This is the greatest coaching staff ever assembled. There’ll never be another one as good as that staff. Charlie Lau was the hitting coach, Tony La Russa the manager, Dave Duncan the pitching coach, Dave Nelson at first base, Eddie Brinkman was infield coach, Jim Leyland, a great manager, was our third base coach, and Art Kusnyer was our bullpen coach. So you’ve got Lau, Duncan, Leyland, three of the greatest baseball people of all time, on one staff.
This is my favorite player, Pee Wee Reese. And this might be my favorite picture of all time, though. That’s Don Zimmer, who was managing the Cubs, and Jerome Holtzman, the dean of Chicago sportswriters. They’re sitting there next to each other, totally oblivious to the other guy.
Can you tell us about this jersey?
This is every player who has hit 500 home runs, with the exception of Ruth, Ott, and Foxx, who were not alive when whoever started this jersey started it. When I got it, it was down about here, and then as other people did it, I got them to add their names to it. There are a couple of signatures that have faded, like Aaron and Harmon Killebrew. Harmon’s not around anymore. We haven’t taken it down lately, because nobody’s hit 500 home runs for a while.
Notice anything interesting about this picture from the World Series trophy presentation?
Well, John Wayne was dead about 30 years before we won a World Series. He was Photoshopped in, obviously. There’s a long, long story behind that. Somebody took Bud Selig out and put him in.
Any baseballs of note in here?
Lots of them. There are a lot of Hall of Famers here. There’s Barack Obama. There’s Henry Aaron. Larry Doby, the first Black \[player\] in the American League. Thome, Frank Thomas is here. And this is a historical ball. I didn’t even remember I had it: Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca. Bobby Thomson hit a home run off of Ralph Branca in 1951. It was actually the second time there was a tie for the pennant in the National League. The Dodgers were ahead four to one going into the bottom of the ninth inning, and Thomson hit a three-run home run off of Branca to win the game. Years later, it came out that the Giants were stealing signs.
So you stopped being a Dodgers fan when they moved?
I hated them the day they moved. I loved them the day before they moved.
That’s a lot of history on these walls.
It’s just a lot of pictures, but mostly of dead people. I was sitting this morning looking at it, and I said, “One dead, two dead, three dead, five dead.” People come and go.