FOR ONE BRIEF SHINING CORNER KICK, Joe Mansueto provided The Captive Sports City with the assertiveness that refreshes.
On Tuesday the billionaire owner of the Chicago Fire announced that he will bankroll a new $650M, soccer-specific stadium on the city's near South Side.
Shovels will be in the ground before the end of the year at “The 78” — the abandoned rail yard under West Roosevelt Road that has been teased as a possible site for a new playpen housing the Bears or the White Sox.
Mansueto's Fire is in line to begin play at the fresh 22,000-seat pitch in time for the 2028 Major League Soccer season.
No tin-cupping. No frenzied lobbying.
Not even any bewildering free kicks between the Chicago lakefront and the 326 acres that was once home to Arlington Park.
MANSUETO INTRODUCED AN OWNER'S CONCEPT that should be force-planted on to the smartphone noggins of every big-money, public-trough beggar from Jerry Reinsdorf to George McCaskey.
And that idea is: “self-reliance.”
It's the way the most committed capitalists once earned their money.
Mansueto's capacities for independent thought and bold, exchequer-first action are so commendable, so rare in the airy financial heights of Chicago sports that they're downright breathtaking.
NOW AGE 68, HE MADE HIS BILLIONS as founder of Morningstar, the financial information service that began on a coffee table at his home in 1984.
In 2005, when he took the company public, he reportedly netted $600M “overnight.”
In 2019 he took command of the Fire from transformational headman Andrew Hauptman.
THE TEAM HAS YET TO MATCH the fire of its chairman. In the five full MLS seasons on Mansueto's watch (2020-24), the Fire has never made the playoffs in the 15-team Eastern Conference.
This year, under the direction of new head coach and director of football Gregg Berhalter, the club is showing signs of intensified spark.
THE FIRE ENTERED THE WEEKEND 6-5-4 and in 11th place in the MLS East. They're averaging 26,226 for matches at roomy Soldier Field, a figure boosted by the 62,358 who came out to watch a 0-0 draw against the marquee-friendly Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in April.
Few knew all between the lines was merely preamble to Mansueto's web-shaking business and real estate strike in “The 78.”
He has long let it be known that as an undergrad at the University of Chicago, one of the most inspiring books he read was Thoreau's “On Walden Pond,” complete with its awakening final line:
“The sun is but a morning star.”
NOW HE'S TAKEN A POPULIST LEAD in Chicago's ongoing New Stadium Derby — thanks entirely to his own resolve and resources.
Joe Mansueto is proving to be so counter to so many of the entrenched anti-fan maneuvering in The Captive Sports City.
His is an accountability and assertiveness that refreshes.
STREET-BEATIN':
The end of the protracted impasse between Comcast and the TV collective of the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks doing business as CHSN came Friday with all the fury of drifting cottonweed. Subscribers will now pay close to an extra $20 per month to watch The Futile Three. The ruling Reinsdorf and Wirtz families lost a lot of eyeballs that it will take a while to get back, if ever. …
The NBA and Disney/ABC got the most beneficial ending possible in Game 1 of The Finals when Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton nailed a jumper with 0.3 seconds remaining for a 111-110 win at heavily favored Oklahoma City (-10). With 9:42 left and OKC up by 15, speculators could have gotten IND +1500 to win outright on an in-game wager. (Meaning that $100 would have returned $1600; Game 2 is Sunday night.) …
Possible new nugget showing signs at Bears minicamp: Rookie OT Ozzy Trapilo, a second-round pick from Ryan Poles' very own Boston College. Trapilo has size (6-foot-8, 320) and pedigree — his father, Steve Trapilo, was a starting tackle for the Saints during the Jim Finks/Jim Mora era in New Orleans. Both Braxton Jones and Darnell Wright should be feeling the hungry raw paws. …
Sam Corzine married Alaina McCaffrey near remote Port Angeles, Washington, last weekend. (The hikers paradise is just across a strait from British Columbia.) The newlyweds knew each other casually at Fremd High School and then lost contact before a fated Cupid's arrow three years ago. He's the only son of Dave Corzine and Elise Cullitan. …
And Jimmy Kimmel, on that NBA Finals battle featuring two TV regions way down the size list: “People don't realize that Indiana and Oklahoma are two of the biggest markets for soybean byproducts.”
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him atjimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.