Bud Selig has made some pretty big mistakes in his long tenure as Commissioner, several of which have had a great deal to do with Selig’s propensity for hand-picking owners whenever a team goes up for sale.
We all know how poorly his decision to hand the Dodgers to Frank McCourt has been. The people of Florida know full well that Jeffrey Loria has spent more time scamming the city of Miami out of millions of dollars than he has trying to make the Marlins a consistently competitive team. And now, Selig may have just helped orchestrate the sale of the Astros to Jim Crane, an alleged racist, sexist war profiteer.
As his track record clearly shows, Selig has no problem handing franchises over to owners who are riddled with debt, don’t care about fielding a winning team and/or are repugnantly immoral. But you know where Selig does draw the line? At owners who have big mouths and deep pockets.
Why else would Selig have twice stymied purchase efforts by Mark Cuban. All Cuban has done since buying the Dallas Mavericks is take a perpetually moribund franchise and turned it into a consistently competitive and likable team. Oh, and the Mavericks just won NBA Championship.
Phew! Bullet dodged, Bud. Who would want an owner like that?
Rather than embracing a guy like Cuban, Selig seems to live in fear of him. Afraid that Cuban’s history of being a free spender will create another powerhouse big market club that snatches up all the big-ticket free agents, thus making the league even more top heavy. Afraid that Cuban’s history of speaking out whenever he sees a problem in the way the league operates, championing change, change for the betterment of the sport.
Well, fear no more, Mr. Selig. Mark Cuban, by way of winning an NBA title, has seen the light and could finally pass Bud’s “rigorous” ownership criteria.
Perhaps it was a sign of maturity or perhaps his renegade owner act got old for even himself, the Mark Cuban that just won a championship is a kinder, mellower Mark Cuban. He didn’t buy his way to the title, in fact, this was one of the few years that Dallas remained essentially quiet at the trade deadline. Nor did they spend wildly the preceding off-season. They made one big trade to acquire Tyson Chandler, a significant move, but one that was actually financially savvy since Chandler was in the final year of his contract. Cuban may have made rash, money-flashing moves in years past, but this last year, George Steinbrenner reincarnate he was not.
Nor was Cuban a loudmouth disruptor of the league’s business and much-maligned officiating. Heck, the team’s head coach even joked about how Cuban had been under a self-imposed gag order all post-season long.
No more wild spending + No more shooting his mouth off = Championship
You don’t need to be a brilliant business man, like Cuban, to understant how that formula works. So why would Cuban suddenly revert back to being an anarchist?
That isn’t to say that Cuban won’t make a few waves should he finally get his hands on an MLB team, but at least now he knows to make only little ankleslappers rather than tsunamis.
There is one thing the Cuban hasn’t changed though and that is be immensely popular, an owner for the people. That’s the kind of owner Major League Baseball could really use right now, especially for one team that has an ownership hanging in the balance.
As you might have surmised, I’m talking about the LA Dodgers, a team that fans have literally been begging Cuban to buy. The once proud Dodger franchise has had its good name dragged through the mud because of the personal drama and generally poor ownership ability of the embattled McCourts. With the team on the verge of being wrested from the financially strapped Frank and his ex-wife, Selig practically owes it to Dodger fans to hand the franchise over to Cuban, the very antithesis of McCourt.
Who else could immediately breath new life into the Dodgers? Who else would energize the fanbase? Who else would be able to pull the team out of the financial hole that McCourt continues to dig?
All Cuban has to do is promise to make sure Selig knows that his new, more reserved style of ownership isn’t just a one-year aberration.
If that doesn’t work, Cuban can always just cheat on his wife, disenfranchise some minorities, lose half his fortune in a Ponzi scheme and demand a publicly funded stadium that he doesn’t deserve. That seemed to work pretty well for everyone else who bought a team in the last few years.
