These are not the happiest of times for aficionados of the Windy City's sports teams. The Chicago Bulls, having fallen upon hard times in the wake of Michael Jordan's retirement, are limping along with a 10-28 record, the worst in the NBA's Atlantic Division, while with the baseball season barely a week old, the White Sox seem destined to follow their basketball brethren into obscurity, having lost five of their first seven games.

The dual collapses are not exactly unrelated. When Jordan opted to bow out at the conclusion of the protracted lockout preceding this abbreviated season, owner Jerry Reinsdorf, acting on the advice of his sometimes-penurious general manager Jerry Krause, opted for a scorched-earth policy, allowing free agents Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and Steve Kerr to follow the money trail out of town, thus ensuring that while the Bulls will not retain their league championship this year, they may actually turn a profit.

To the best of our knowledge, Krause isn't controlling the purse strings of the White Sox, but he might as well be. Reinsdorf, who is also the chairman of the Chicago baseball team, has embarked on a fiscally-conservative programme that

has trimmed the team's payroll from its 1997 high of $58 million to $36 million last year to $24 million this season.

Even more remarkably, exactly half of that amount is being earned by just two players - designated hitter Frank Thomas, who will make $7 million this year, and pitcher Jaime Navarro ($5 million). The other $12 million will be divided up by the other 23 players on the Chicago roster, an anonymous collection of rookies, pretenders, and no-hopers masquerading as major league baseball players.

Having made a sizeable investment in the free agent market, Reinsdorf found himself saddled with a mediocre team and losing last year's attendance battle with another Chicago team, the Cubs of the National League.

More or less conceding the war for the fans to Sammy Sosa & Co, Reinsdorf disposed of two big contracts by dumping outfielder Albert Belle and third baseman Robin Ventura, leaving Thomas virtually the only nationally-recognised name still wearing a Chicago uniform.

Despite a sub-par year last season, Thomas remains at 30 one of the game's most feared sluggers. He won back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards earlier in this decade and in 1997 batted .347 to become the American League batting champion.

Relegated to the designated hitter role after seven seasons as the team's regular first baseman, he watched his average tumble 82 points to .265 last year and in the process went from MVP to MAP - - as in Most Available Player.

"This game is not as easy as people think it is, and last year was very humbling," reflected Thomas. "I've never struggled in this game. I've always hit for a very high average. But last year just wasn't in the cards for me."

The commonly accepted wisdom is that Reinsdorf will trade Thomas some time this season, and probably sooner rather than later. Given the White Sox's fiscal trend, the opportunity to dispose of $85 million worth of long-term liabilities must surely be tempting.

That the major leagues are rife with clubs (including the Boston Red Sox, whom the White Sox face this afternoon) which could move into instant contention with the acquisition of one legitimate power hitter only makes the proposition more attractive.

There's only one problem to this scenario. Thomas doesn't want to go anywhere.

Although he protested loudly when the White Sox vitiated his supporting cast by allowing Belle and Ventura to walk away (to, respectively, the Orioles and Mets), Thomas insisted once again this week: "I'm happy in Chicago. I've been here nine years and it's home for me now.

Indeed, the 6 ft 5 in, 270-pound Thomas, who for reasons entirely devoid of irony answers to the sobriquet "The Big Hurt", is something of a fixture in his adopted home town.

A former college football player at Auburn, Thomas operates a charitable foundation called Big Hurt Enterprises which has six full-time employees. He conducts a yearly winter drive for overcoats to clothe the homeless, and even fronts a record company geared to local talent. Yes, he is every bit as much a fixture in the Chicago community as Mo Vaughn was in Boston's - but that didn't stop Vaughn from jumping at a six-year, $82-million deal with the Anaheim Angels this winter, and when push comes to shove, it might not stop Thomas either.

It might also be pointed out here that a trade would also be in the best interests of Thomas's own bankbook. While his present contract runs through 2006, under its terms only $32 million is guaranteed, with the remainder tied up in club options. Were he sold to another team, the entire $85 million would become guaranteed money.

Now, a guy who cried when Belle and Ventura left because he wanted "to play for a winner" can't exactly be enthusiastic about playing on a team whose starting line-up includes (or it did in Boston this Tuesday) five players who came into this season without a single game's worth of major league experience between them.

The Chicago club's average age is 26.2, second-youngest in the majors behind the Florida Marlins (25.9). The White Sox have 20 players who make less than $300,000 a year - a comparative bargain in the contemporary baseball marketplace. "When you lose a Belle and a Ventura, the fourth and fifth hitters in the line-up, for 162 games, it makes it a little different for Frank," conceded Jerry Manuel, the man charged with managing this rag-tag lot, in Boston on Tuesday. "And when you replace them with a man (Jeff Liefer) who's coming out of Double-A ball and another who's not yet 22, it makes it doubly tough."

"We're a young club," sighed Thomas, who seems for the moment determined to stick it out. "You have to be patient.

"I can't stop people from talking," says Thomas of the rumours that he will be traded, which have already followed him for three stops along the road this spring.

He may not be demanding, or even encouraging, a trade, but in the end The Big Hurt may have no choice in the matter. "I'm happy right now, I really am," insists Thomas. "I never know what's going to happen in the future. That's the nature of the business, but right now I'm happy to be here and to help lead this team."