HOUSTON - Jerry Reinsdorf arrived at Minute Maid Park on Wednesday prepared for a potential World Series champagne celebration, and his Chicago White Sox didn't let him down.

And he brought a Partagas No. 4 cigar for bench coach Harold Baines, whose White Sox jersey was retired in 1989 when he was still an active player.

The private ceremony ended 88 years of frustration for the franchise, and landed Reinsdorf in one of sport's most elite ownership clubs as only the third owner to have teams win championships in two of the four major professional leagues - baseball, basketball, football and hockey.

Bill Davidson's 2003-04 NBA Detroit Pistons and NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning won titles. And Jack Kent Cooke owned the Los Angeles Lakers when they won the NBA title in 1972 and the Washington Redskins when they won NFL titles in 1992, 1988 and 1983.

"It's different. This is bigger. Basketball and Jordan were as big as basketball could get. I don't think the NBA Finals are huge normally, but with Jordan they were. But this is bigger. This gets more attention, more excitement. This is baseball."

Reinsdorf grew up in Brooklyn a Dodgers fan and remembers running out of his college fraternity as a 19-year-old in 1955, screaming and yelling and giving out cigars to celebrate the team's breakthrough World Series triumph against the New York Yankees.

"In basketball, the best team usually wins the championship," he says. "In baseball, it's not necessarily that. There are so many variables that go into baseball that don't go into basketball. That maybe makes this more exciting because it's more of a shock."

"What the Bulls meant to Chicago was very satisfying. People sent me pictures taken literally in Outer Mongolia and Tibet with people wearing Bulls paraphernalia. Worldwide, a World Series championship is not going to be as big as the Bulls. But in Chicago, we haven't won in 88 years. It's got to be huge."

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