I ran into someone at the supermarket yesterday who I had not seen for about 20 years; he lived across the street from us “two houses ago”. He is a big Washington Commanders fan and was just as avid today as back then. In the course of our “catching up” he said that it was even more fun to root for the Commanders now that Daniel Snyder had sold the team and that Daniel Snyder “had to be the worst owner ever in sports”.
We said our farewells and I got to thinking about his assertion that Danny Boy Snyder was the worst owner ever in sports. So, of course, I started making a list. Here are the “less than wonderful” owners that came to my mind; I am sure if I started an AI bot on a search for more names that it would add to this list, but that is just not worth the time or trouble. My list will be alphabetical lest anyone think I am ranking these miscreants:
- James Dolan – NY Knicks: Notwithstanding the Knicks’ current status as NBA champs, Dolan has a long history of petty feuds with people who he has banished from his arena – – Madison Square Garden – – to include former Knicks’ star Charles Oakley. That feud and dueling lawsuits has been ongoing for about a decade now.
- Harry Frazee – — Boston Red Sox: He sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100K. In essence, Frazee poured the foundation for the “Curse of the Bambino”.
- Bob Irsay – – Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts: He’s the guy who had the moving vans pack up and move the team equipment in the dead of night leaving Baltimore without a football team.
- George Preston Marshall – – Washington Redskins: It took a demand by the Secretary of the Interior for Marshall to integrate the team; if he did not do so, he would not be allowed to play in the new stadium in DC – – RFK Stadium. [Aside: Daniel Snyder has competition here as the “worst owner” in the history of the Washington football franchise!]
- Art Modell – – Cleveland Browns/Baltimore Ravens: He had the audacity to pick up the Browns franchise and move it to Baltimore as a “replacement” for the Colts who sneaked out of town. Modell is hated in Cleveland but seems to have been a positive force for the league as a whole regarding broadcast rights deals, so maybe he does not belong on this list at all.
- Marge Schott – – Cincinnati Reds: She was forced to sell the Reds as an edict by the Commissioner. Her antics were strange but tolerable; her admiration of Adolf Hitler was clearly something she needed to keep to herself, and she was a malignant racist referring to outfielder Dave Parker as her “million-dollar N-word”.
- Daniel Snyder – – Washington Redskins/Football Team/Commanders: The events of his stewardship of the team are well chronicled here and in hundreds of other places. Little if any of that history is laudable to be sure. He compounded his boorish behaviors by meddling in team decisions that were clearly outside his sphere of competence leaving the players and coaches at a disadvantage on the field.
- Ted Stepien – – Cleveland Cavaliers: His management of the team was so outrageous in trading away draft picks that the league had to institute the so-called “Stepien Rule” making it impossible for a team to trade away its first-round pick in successive years.
- Donald Sterling – -SD/LA Clippers: The NBA banned him for life and fined him about $2M for his racist remarks and comments. His comments were so demeaning that even the President of the United States – – Barrack Obama – – took a moment to denounce them. Sterling owned the Clippers for 33 seasons and their record in that time was – – if I have calculated correctly – – 987-1671 which is a win percentage of .371.
That is my list of bad owners after about 24 hours of rumination; I am sure there are others who may be added to this list, but my point is that Danny Boy Snyder is not a runaway favorite even on this short list to be the “worst owner ever in sports”. And note that I do not have any representation here for NHL owners or owners of teams in leagues outside the US; surely there must be a candidate for the list somewhere in that area.
Finally, these words by Mark Twain were probably never part of the standard operating procedure of any of the folks listed above:
“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………