For the last ten or so years, the wizard at the wheel of Jerry Reinsdorf’s sporting empire has been a wiry and bespectacled lawyer named Howard Pizer.
By his own definition, Pizer was “a quiet boy, shy and reserved–a classic late bloomer–the kind of kid who blended in.” Born in 1941, he grew up in Hyde Park, one of three children. “I was a mediocre student,” he says. “I liked sports, but I wasn’t very athletic.” He was the equipment manager for the basketball team at Hyde Park High School. “I ran the clock and called in the scores to the City News Bureau. For fun? I’d go to the Museum of Science and Industry on Saturday, buy an orange drink, and have a hamburger. To me, that was a great way to spend a day.”
The job that changed Pizer’s life came in 1972, when he was 30 years old. He was restless with his place in his work, concerned that partnership might pass him by. So when an opportunity arose, he took a job with another law firm, Katten Muchin & Zavis, where he met Reinsdorf, then a 36-year-old tax specialist.
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It was at Balcor that Reinsdorf earned his reputation as a shrewd operator. His timing was perfect: he anticipated the real estate boom and unloaded the company before the bust. He also got out of the business before changes in the tax code made such investments a harder sell. At Balcor Reinsdorf and Pizer honed a working relationship that remains: Reinsdorf initiates the deals and Pizer takes it from there. “People don’t try to get to me by going over Howard’s head–it won’t work,” says Reinsdorf. “I don’t second-guess Howard. I let Howard be the bad guy–he’s the guy who says no for me. Don’t come to me if you have a problem with Howard–I’m afraid of him.”
The range of matters and minutiae Pizer attends to is remarkable for a man of his rank: in a matter of minutes he will, for instance, field calls from caterers, lawyers, political operatives, and security guards dealing with everything from lunches to leases to the Democratic convention. He will handle each matter with rapid-fire certainty, allowing the callers a moment of chitchat before zipping to the point, cutting them off if they start to wander. Within an hour he will have made decisions on a dozen little matters, none of which will ever cross Reinsdorf’s desk.
When the White Sox were taken over by a consortium of investors led by Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn, the team was tottering near bankruptcy. It didn’t have the money to pay star players. The new owners started strong. In their first few seasons they signed free agents, spruced up the park, rebuilt the lower deck, negotiated a more lucrative concession deal, ringed the outfield with revenue-raising billboards and ads, and (to bring in a new generation of fans) installed a video scoreboard and piped in rock music between innings. They also began aggressively hawking season-ticket packages. Much of the work, says Reinsdorf, was overseen by Pizer and a young assistant, Terry Savarise (now vice president of operations for the United Center and the White Sox). “Howard did it all for us,” says Reinsdorf. “I’d say, Howard, we need a new parking lot deal or a concession deal or whatever, and he did it. What he didn’t know, he learned.”
On the day the stadium opened in 1991, Reinsdorf’s private box was packed with power brokers and politicians from both parties, most of whom still toast Pizer as a consummate bargainer. “You can say that Howard helped save the White Sox for Chicago, that ballpark wouldn’t have been built without him,” says John Glennon, an investment banker who was Thompson’s chief adviser on the stadium project. “He was open-minded to our needs. He was pragmatic and he consistently told the truth–that’s a hallmark of the way he does business. I think the park was great for Chicago–it would have been awful had the White Sox left.”
