Other articles by Greg Hansen:

Opinion by Greg Hansen : Sad day, sad ending for UA volleyball team Opinion by Greg Hansen : In this month of giving, Wildcats need a gift: support of fans Opinion by Greg Hansen : Big Game Week, always, vs. ASU Opinion by Greg Hansen : Giving thanks for Vern Friedli, ESPN and rain in desert Opinion by Greg Hansen : New club for Match Play has major 'wow factor' Opinion by Greg Hansen : Tucson schools should leave AIA Greg Hansen: Practice made perfectOpinion by Greg Hansen : It's the same old heartbreak as UA fails to win big one Opinion by Greg Hansen : Beavers, armed with Pac-10's top player, will fire 'best shot' Opinion by Greg Hansen : Cats' success fails to fill seats, no butts about it

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About eight months ago, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf summoned his senior vice president for administration, Tim Buzard, and instructed him to take care of the Tucson problem.

You can almost imagine the conversation.

"Make Tucson go away, Timmy,'' the boss said. Just like the movies.

Buzard is obviously very good at what he does. He has worked for the White Sox for 26 years in every conceivable capacity: He has been vice president of finance, he implemented a risk-management program, educated the organization in use of computers, developed a human resources department and reshaped the club's communications department.

It is Buzard's job to execute the White Sox's exit strategy; get them out of their Tucson spring training commitment with a minimum of public relations damage and, preferably, leave us thinking we got a good deal.

Tuesday night at the Tucson Convention Center, the amiable University of Illinois alumnus presented the White Sox departure plan to a disappointingly small gathering of about 70 adults and 100 Little Leaguers.

So much for community outrage/action at the possible loss of spring training, huh?

Buzard acknowledged that the White Sox will be moving their spring training headquarters to Glendale and said, "Our departure is not about anything lacking in our experience here.''

He cited some fuzzy statistics about "one in every six'' people living in the greater Phoenix area having roots to Chicago, thus making the move from Tucson to Glendale sort of a homecoming.

In exchange, if we permit the White Sox to break their lease, one that extends through the spring of 2012, they promise to spend about $3 million to convert their training facility at Tucson Electric Park into eight ballfields to be used by barnstorming youth teams, organized by out-of-town, for-profit organizations.

Some guy from a Scottsdale accounting firm — does it bother you that county officials did not hire a Tucson firm to study the economic impact of this whole mess? — said that by allowing the White Sox to bolt Tucson four years early, replaced by the traveling all-stars, the economic impact in our remote city would jump from $10.3 million to $46 million per year.

Right. And Willie Tuitama is going to win the Heisman Trophy, too.

So far, the proposals to replace the White Sox have been exceedingly hopeless.

First, the Mexican League Monterrey Sultans were fronted as a real team that would actually draw fans, create excitement and provide competition to big-league teams at TEP.

Now it is the promise of 47 youth-league tournaments, per year, played on eight retro-fitted ballparks at the Kino Sports Complex. The White Sox would pay for upkeep and maintenance through 2012.

After that it would be nuclear winter for Tucson's spring training industry.

Once the county officials accept this deal, spring training in Tucson is kaput. There would be no third facility for a big-league team; both the Rockies and D-backs can escape their contracts if Tucson does not have three teams.

Here is the deal: Reinsdorf and the White Sox will pay $3million to leave town now. Do they really think we are the kind of suckers who would take that deal? Is the cost of blowing up spring training baseball in Tucson a mere $3 million?

Isn't the aura of having big-league baseball in our town worth 10 or 100 times that much?

The flaw in the Youth Tournament proposal is that it mostly ignores about 22,000 Little League ballplayers who live and play ball in Tucson. It does not give them better facilities or allow them greater opportunity to play.

At Tuesday's meeting, Steve Leffler, a Little League coach in northwest Tucson for more than 20 years, implored the Tucson Sports Authority to think Tucson-first and to give priority to "local kids and not the travel teams."

Well, yes. Certainly.

If Tucson has any leverage in this deal it is that it can demand from the White Sox two or three times the $3 million hush money. It can develop more than just eight fancy ball fields for elite-level travel teams; it can use this opportunity to make the White Sox pay for a baseball facility, or several, in which Tucson ballplayers from 6 to 16 can celebrate the game they currently play year-round at often crowded and substandard facilities.

The White Sox are gone. Long gone. It would be a colossal upset if they do anything more than bus split-squad players from Glendale to TEP for their 15-game commitment this spring.

It now becomes a matter of who blinks first.

Does Pima County accept their low-ball proposal of $3 million and go out with a whimper? Or do our public servants have the savvy to battle the Big City Boys and come away with more than eight fields built for kids in Colorado, Illinois and Nevada?

Ten years ago, our politicians built a $35 million spring training facility in an undesirable location, which has blown up in their faces. Let's see if they can think of a beneficial way to get us out of this mess.