White Sox lobby for $2B stadium subsidy by inviting legislators to play catch with former players

With Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s demands for $2 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium going nowhere fast, what’s a poor little rich boy to do? How about inviting local elected officials to take fielding practice with former White Sox players on a pop-up baseball field laid out on the proposed stadium site:

Attendees then got to “round the bases and shag ground balls* on The Diamond with White Sox Greats and Hall of Famers,” according to an invitation for the event, which was closed to press and billed to “celebrate the spirit of America’s pastime, and embrace the future of Chicago’s legacy.”

That’s right: Like all good lobbying efforts, the state legislator fantasy camp was closed to the public, meaning we don’t know which elected officials attended, or which former players. (One can only hope it included White Sox Great Steve Lyons.) We do, though, have one comment on the event from a non-attendee, courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times:

One suburban state representative told the Sun-Times they passed on the invite “because I don’t need a tour to know it would be awesome with that outfield skyline.”

“Everyone knows this would be awesome. That doesn’t mean taxpayers should put up a dime for it,” the representative said, asking not to be named.

That’s a reasonable enough quote, but what are you doing, Sun-Times, letting this state rep spew his opinions, on both the awesomeness of a downtown stadium and the non-awesomeness of taxpayers paying for it, behind shelter of anonymity? Don’t you even read your own parent company’s ethics policy?

While we may consider protecting a source or information with anonymity, we avoid doing it frequently because it poses editorial hazards, and because anonymity can be abused and harm public trust. When we do take the exceptional step to grant anonymity, we grant it on the basis of danger and threats to the source, and ultimately, on the basis of serving the public good. Anonymous sources must be approved by a senior manager.

(Senior manager mutters: “Public good, danger to source, editorial hazards, I dunno, it’s a good quote, let’s go with it. Surely no elected official would ever use this power to speak anonymously to manipulate the media for their own reasons, that would be mean.”)

*No, you can’t shag groundballs, only flyballs. Shh, don’t tell the elected officials.