Worst Owner in Sports History?

[Colton]

Read "Veeck as in Wreck" and tell me Bill Veeck was a **** owner. Veeck was a damn good owner who could have been a damn great owner had he not had the the establishment trying to shut down every innovation he came up with.

Veeck realized before all the other owners the reserve clause was eventually going to be chucked out, and railed for years for it to be replaced with a system of standard 7-year contracts, which would have allowed most players a shot to become a free agent once in their careers.

But the owners thought they had the courts in the bag, so they bet all their chips on the RC being upheld in the Messersmith case, upon which the **** hit the fan when the arbitrator went the other way.

Instead of salaries gradually ramping up after a couple years of lead time, the lid was blown off overnight and bidding for players took off like the Starship Enterprise. Suddenly the private-investor debenture-grouping structure Veeck used to buy his teams was no good anymore -- you needed a corporation behind you.

"Veeck as in Wreck" is my favorite baseball book. Admittedly, it's because it has a ton of behind-the-scenes stuff about the team of which I am a fanboi. I reread it every few years.

 

[Bob Cook]

Re Finley moving the A's: I remember getting some baseball season preview/record book around 1979 that listed the "Denver A's." It wasn't a mistake. It seemed like such a sure thing Finley would move the team, the publisher wanted to make sure the book wasn't out of date, I guess.

 

[Quiet Man]

As an A's fan I was heartbroken when Finley broke up the A's, but I just don't think he belongs on this list...He advocated for night World Series games and pushed for the DH.

For me, that alone is reason enough to include him.

 

[printit]

Art Modell.

I second this one. And while I am at it, I will add Charlie Findley (First of the owners to start paying million dollar salaries leading to what we see now -- which has gotten out of hand and unable to be handled by a few players [not all, but just a few]).

Hunh? He started to pay players more, which was consistent with what they had been worth all along. How is this bad?

 

[Smasher_Sloan]

Speaking of Ted Stepien:

 

[Stoney]

Speaking of Ted Stepien:

"As god is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

Thank you for posting that. Folks, make sure you watch that clip long enough to catch Stepien's interview at the end---"umm, yeah, the Cleveland Indian players refused to participate, so I decided to 'do them a favor' by tossing softballs from atop a SKYSCRAPER in the direction of random pedestrians, who'd have imagined that going awry?" Arthur Carlson was real.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Comiskey's cheapskate label was not a bad rap. Everybody on the Black Sox was playing for dirt-poor wages except for Eddie Collins, who Comiskey had gotten in a trade with a long-term contract.

The low salaries of the Black Sox is a myth.

Yep. IIRC, Collins drew a $15K/year deal from Mack before he was sent on to Chi. Given their respective talents, the rest of the White Sox stars were playing for lowball wages.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Charles Commiskey gets an unfair rap for being a cheapskate. Connie Mack was a real cheapskate. He skirted the law screwing over a couple of returning veterans in 1945 and 1946 which, in my opinion, is tough to reconcile with his saintly image.

Connie Mack built championship-level teams in both the early 1910s and the late 1920s and sold them both off as soon as the players started asking for more money.

Mack sold off his 1914-era stars because of the bidding war with the Federal League. He couldn't afford to match the salaries. And in the 1930s, the Depression hit. Attendance dropped by more than 1/3 from 1931 to 1932 when the A's went from being AL champion to finishing in second place. And even with that attendance drop, they went from second to third in the league in total attendance.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

>>>Attendance was lousy because he was a giant asshole who gave fans of his teams no confidence he'd be in for the long haul.<<<

So fans stay away when a team is having a five-year championship run because they're not sure the owner is in it for the long haul?

Baffling.

The early to mid-70s were a very weird time in Bay Area baseball. Horace Stoneham had sold or trades all the Giants' stars from the 60s and was hanging on by his fingernails at that dump known as Candlestick. The National League ended up running the team for a few months and had one foot in Canuckistan before new ownership stepped in. The Bay Area was there for the taking, but Finley couldn't close deal. He was not liked at all by the players (a Steinbrenner starter kit), and remember **** Williams resigned after beating the Mets in '74 rather than put up with Finley for another year.

They beat the Mets in '73 and the Mike Andrews incident was the last straw for Williams. He felt that he wouldn't have any credibility with the players if Finley was making the roster decisions.

 

[Smasher_Sloan]

Yeah, and they missed Williams so much that they won the '74 WS with Alvin Dark managing. Then in '75 they won 98 games.

 

[buckweaver]

Comiskey's cheapskate label was not a bad rap. Everybody on the Black Sox was playing for dirt-poor wages except for Eddie Collins, who Comiskey had gotten in a trade with a long-term contract.

The low salaries of the Black Sox is a myth.

Yep. IIRC, Collins drew a $15K/year deal from Mack before he was sent on to Chi. Given their respective talents, the rest of the White Sox stars were playing for lowball wages.

See my post on the previous page. None of the White Sox players could have changed teams and made any more than they were already making under Comiskey. Their salaries were no worse than the Red Sox, Yankees or Tigers, and far better than the second-division teams.

 

[Drip]

Yeah, and they missed Williams so much that they won the '74 WS with Alvin Dark managing. Then in '75 they won 98 games.

Very dysfunctional group but damn they could play.

 

[HanSenSE]

Yeah, and they missed Williams so much that they won the '74 WS with Alvin Dark managing. Then in '75 they won 98 games.

Very dysfunctional group but damn they could play.

And from every account, all unified by a dislike for Finley.

 

[Liut]

If memory serves, the last Sixers championship team was pretty much assembled prior to Harold Katz purchasing the franchise from Fitz Dixon. Can't remember what year the Bobby Jones trade took place (Drip?).

Traded Moses, traded Barkley, traded the No. 1 in 1986, hired Moe, drafted Bradley No. 1.

Bob Ford once wrote a line I haven't forgotten: "Moe's not much of a company man and the Sixers aren't much of a company."

 

[Drip]

If memory serves, the last Sixers championship team was pretty much assembled prior to Harold Katz purchasing the franchise from Fitz Dixon. Can't remember what year the Bobby Jones trade took place (Drip?).

Traded Moses, traded Barkley, traded the No. 1 in 1986, hired Moe, drafted Bradley No. 1.

Bob Ford once wrote a line I haven't forgotten: "Moe's not much of a company man and the Sixers aren't much of a company."

After the 1977–78 campaign Bobby Jones was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers with Ralph Simpson for forward George McGinnis.
You are right, Fitz had a great team. I remember when they told him about Dr. J. he didn't know how he was. But Harold was an idiot. The best thing he did was obtain Moses Malone. The worst, and there were many worst events, may have been trading him away for Jeff Ruland.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Comiskey's cheapskate label was not a bad rap. Everybody on the Black Sox was playing for dirt-poor wages except for Eddie Collins, who Comiskey had gotten in a trade with a long-term contract.

The low salaries of the Black Sox is a myth.

Yep. IIRC, Collins drew a $15K/year deal from Mack before he was sent on to Chi. Given their respective talents, the rest of the White Sox stars were playing for lowball wages.

See my post on the previous page. None of the White Sox players could have changed teams and made any more than they were already making under Comiskey. Their salaries were no worse than the Red Sox, Yankees or Tigers, and far better than the second-division teams.

We're putting the scrubs aside, of course. God knows, Gandil and Risberg couldn't. Hard to believe Jackson couldn't have made more, somewhere, even with the Federal League club no longer available for use.

 

[Drip]

If memory serves, the last Sixers championship team was pretty much assembled prior to Harold Katz purchasing the franchise from Fitz Dixon. Can't remember what year the Bobby Jones trade took place (Drip?).

Traded Moses, traded Barkley, traded the No. 1 in 1986, hired Moe, drafted Bradley No. 1.

Bob Ford once wrote a line I haven't forgotten: "Moe's not much of a company man and the Sixers aren't much of a company."

After the 1977–78 campaign Bobby Jones was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers with Ralph Simpson for forward George McGinnis.
You are right, Fitz had a great team. I remember when they told him about Dr. J. he didn't know how he was. But Harold was an idiot. The best thing he did was obtain Moses Malone. The worst, and there were many worst events, may have been trading him away for Jeff Ruland.

The funny thing is, Ruland was one of the better PF/Cs in the NBA for a few seasons in the early '80s.

Katz, of course, waited to make the Moses trade until AFTER the season Ruland broke down physically, played only a few dozen games, and got benched for Manute Bol. :

Jeff Ruland was a good player in high school and at Iona. He had some nice years for the Bullets, now known as the Wizards.

 

[Beef03]

Could we throw the collective that has been the Chicago Cubs' ownership over the last 104 years as the worst in pro sports?