Worst Owners in Sports (past and present)

Didn't Yankees ownership also flat out refuse to sign black players until the late 1950s too?

 

Oh, no question about that. He's lying low right now, because it's still bad form to shake down a city that still has areas that look like Hiroshima after the A-bomb. But you and I both know he's still got designs on a new publicly-funded stadium, and he won't be shy about hightailin' it to San Antone if he doesn't eventually get what he wants.

 

They were signing black players in the early '50s, but none suited up in the pinstripes until Elston Howard in 1955.

Vic Power probably should have been the first black Yankee - he won the IL batting championship in 1953 - but I read in Hank Aaron's autobiography that the Yankees allegedly believed Power was too colourful (no pun intended), so they unloaded him to the Athletics and promoted Howard instead.

As for the Red Sox, I've always found it interesting that the Boston Bruins had a black player (Willie O'Ree, 1958) before the Sox did.

 

All true. Power really got the shaft from New York, mostly because of his flashiness off the field (especially his tendency to date white women). He had long before earned his shot at the majors -- then became a four-time All-Star and a seven-time Gold Glove first baseman for other teams.

The Yanks plugged in Moose Skowron at first instead, who turned out to be a better hitter in the bigs. So they didn't lose much (except their integrity.)

 

Please. The Sox were far worse in the 1920s and early '30s before Yawkey took over. Which decades, exactly, could he have set them back to? They lost 100 games in 1925-27, 1930, 1932. Last-place finishes in 9 of 11 years from 1922-32. Their BEST record in that span was 67-87 in 1924.

The only years they lost 90+ games in Yawkey's tenure were the three (1964-66) before the Impossible Dream.

 

And eight straight losing seasons before the Impossible Dream. Last team to integrate despite literally having Robinson and Mays land in his lap. He was an absentee owner whose friends didn't do a bang-up job running the team for the better part of his reign.

Maybe he didn't literally set the Sox back decades, but it took them decades to make up for his latent racism.

 

Fascinating that teams like the Red Sox and the Phillies were so horrible for such long stretches back in those days, and yet they survived in their hometowns while the Braves and the A's did not.

 

And if the Sox weren't as bad prior to the Impossible Dream season as they were in the '20s and '30s, they were irrelevant, which is almost as bad. Dave Morehead's no-hitter occurred in front of less than 1,000 people and the Kid Bid Adieu in front of less than 11,000 people.

 

How so? They won the pennant in '67 and '75 under Yawkey, and finished with no fewer than 83 wins from 1967-76, when he died in midseason.

Sounds to me like he left them in pretty damn good hands.

(And, of course, his wife presided over the team as they won another pennant in '86, plus two more division crowns in '88 and '90, before she died in 1992 and relinquished control to her trust.)

It took them eight decades to win the damn World Series, sure, and their record on race relations was appalling -- but that franchise was in no way set back by Tom Yawkey or his family.

 

And the Yankees drew 14,000 for their freakin' home opener in '67 and 6,318 two weeks later for a game against the White Sox. They averaged 8,000 for an entire series against Detroit in September.

Weak sauce, man.

 

Perhaps if he'd been a bit more inclusive in building a roster, and not hired latent racists to run the team, the Red Sox would have won the World Series a lot sooner than they did. Multiple World Series, even.

 

1) The Gunds (North Stars version: "Remember, people don't kill hockey teams, Gunds do.")
B) Bruce Norris.