Walter O'Malley
Responsible for moving baseball’s Dodgers from Brooklyn to the more lucrative pastures of Los Angeles. Some say the New York borough never recovered.
Harry Frazee
Boston Red Sox fans will never forgive Frazee for selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, which touched off the 86-year long Curse of the Bambino.
Peter Pocklington Established himself as one of hockey's greatest villains when he shipped Wayne Gretzky, Canada's most beloved hockey player, to Hollywood for a couple players, some draft picks, and a pile of cash.
TOP 1010 newsmaking sports team ownersCBC Sports Online | June
1, 2005
There's an old sports adage that nobody ever bought a ticket or tuned in to see an owner.
That's mostly true, but the history of sports isn't completely devoid of owners whose antics are more than worth the price of admission. The recent announcement that the Gliebermans are back in charge of Ottawa's CFL team is a case in point: in the early 1990s there were almost as many stories written about the infamous father-and-son combo as the Rough Riders they owned.
While most of us still pay to see the superstars ply their trade, we've assembled a list of 10 owners who have grabbed their fair share of headlines.
Some are notorious, others celebrated, most are still the subject of debate. None of them, though, can be ignored.
Abramovich bought Chelsea the English Premiership title
Russia's Roman Abramovich has deep pockets, Very deep pockets.
Ranked 25th on the 2004 Forbes list of the world's richest people, Abramovich boats a net worth of $10.6 billion US and he's used his wealth to turn English soccer club Chelsea into a global power.
The 38-year-old Abramovich, the main shareholder in Russian oil firm Sibneft, wiped out Chelsea's 80-million-pound debt after buying the team for 60 million pounds in 2003. In less than two years, he has spent a mind-boggling 200 million pounds on new players (the largest such expenditure in sports history) and, according to a BBC report, Chelsea's player payroll for this past season was a staggering 115 million pounds.
Abramovich is not cut from the same cloth as outspoken sports owners such as Mark Cuban and George Steinbrenner. Instead, he remains an unreachable recluse: he has not given a single interview to any member of the English media since he bought Chelsea two years ago.
Harold Ballard watched the Leafs from his bunker at Maple Leaf Gardens.
Harold Ballard may be the most hated man ever to grace Toronto's sports scene. Fans universally blamed the cantankerous curmudgeon for the ruination of their beloved Maple Leafs.
Like most autocratic leaders, the controversial Leafs owner made a host of bad decisions during his reign of mediocrity. Often, it seemed, those moves were made with spite and the bottom line – not winning – in mind.
Ballard constantly feuded with media, he impulsively fired coaches, humiliated employees and traded players on a whim regardless of talent or popularity.
A prime example of Ballard's irrational decision making came in 1979. With the Leafs struggling to earn a playoff spot Ballard, and against the will of his team, fired popular coach Roger Neilson. Two days later, Ballard reversed course and asked Neilson back, but he demanded the coach wear a paper bag over his head on the bench to hide his identity. Neilson did return, sans bag.
The Leafs weren't the only sports franchise to crumble in Ballard's care. In 1978, he bought the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He sold the team 11 years later after losing $20 million.
Aside from his
duties as owner of defending Italian league soccer champions AC Milan,
Silvio Berlusconi occupies himself with another day job, running Italy.
In 1993, the billionaire media tycoon founded his own political party,
Forza Italia (Go Italy, a common slogan chanted by Italian soccer
fans) and was elected the country's prime minister the following year.
Berlusconi was ousted after an indictment for tax fraud by a Milan
court led to the collapse of the government just seven months later,
but he was back in power after winning the 2001 election thanks in
large part to the Forza Italia mantra.
Never content to sit quietly on the sidelines, the 68-year-old Berlusconi
is famous for publicly questioning his coach's tactics in Italy's
sports dailies and for jet-setting all over Italy and Europe to watch
his roster of all-stars in person.
There are super fans, and
there are superfans, and then there is Dallas Mavericks owner Mark
Cuban. The charismatic 46-year-old has been a breath of fresh air
in the NBA ever since taking over the club in 2000.
Cuban defies the image of the stodgy, pencil-pushing, front-office
owner. Instead, he wears his heart on his sleeve: he travels with
the club everywhere and always sits courtside wearing a Mavericks
jersey, where he’s famous for berating referees, high-fiving his all-star
players and thumping his chest while jumping up and down after a key
Dallas score.
Cuban isn't afraid to put his money where his mouth is; his public
statements on officiating, free agency and the state of the league
has cost him $1 million US in fines from the NBA.
Cuban has also ushered in an era of unparalleled accountability in
pro sports, becoming the first owner to encourage and personally answer
e-mails sent to his home computer from Maverick fans.
Cuban has been called a lot of things (overbearing, obnoxious, over-the-top),
but boring he ain't.
It takes a special
person to knock George Steinbrenner down a rung from the top of New
York's most-hated list. James Dolan is that special person.
Dolan – a billionaire entrepreneur whose company owns Madison Square Garden, the NBA's Knicks and the NHL's Rangers – was recently described by a New York newspaper "the most hated man" in the Big Apple.
The Rangers and Knicks are perennial losers despite their multi-million-dollar payrolls. Both teams have burned through a multitude of coaches, GMs and players without so much as a whiff of a championship.
He's also infuriated the fans of other teams during his tumultuous tenure. Dolan's cable company has blacked out Mets and Nets coverage, leaving half of New York without T.V. access to games. He's also undermined plans for a new home for the Jets, fearful that a new stadium would take business away from the Garden.
Charlie Finley's tenure of as owner of the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics franchise was definitely a tumultuous one.
The tight-fisted former insurance salesman was constantly butting heads with players, rival owners, civic leaders and the head of Major League Baseball.
Ken Harrelson, one of Kansas City's best players, once reportedly described Finley as "a menace to baseball."
Harrelson was just one of Finley's many targets. He once threatened to send star slugger Reggie Jackson to the minors and called MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn an idiot. The situation got so tense in Oakland that media dubbed the team the "the Feudin' A's."
That said, Finley was an innovator. He advocated playing night games at the World Series, he was one of the first owners to embrace free agency, and was a driving force behind the American League's adoption of the designated hitter.
Finley also outfitted his A's squads in colourful uniforms and demanded they grow out their facial hair. He put a sheep pasture on a hill overlooking the outfield and had baseballs delivered to the umpire behind home plate by a mechanical rabbit that popped out of the ground.
Maybe more than anything,
Charles Howard's greatest talent was spotting potential.
In the 1903, Howard took 21 cents and parlayed it into a successful
bicycle repair business. A few years later he predicted that cars
would become an important part of society. He made millions off Americans’
love affair with the automobile.
But Howard's biggest success was seeing the hidden greatness in an
ill-tempered, undersized colt named Seabiscuit.
Howard and his team – a washed-up jockey and an unconventional
trainer – transformed the also-ran nag into one of the greatest
horses in thoroughbred racing history.
The shining moment for Seabiscuit and Howard came on Nov 1, 1938.
Dubbed the "The Race of the Century," the underdog Seabiscuit bested
the legendary War Admiral in a head-to-head grudge race to determine
which horse was the fastest on the continent.
The race never would have happened if Howard hadn’t stirred up a massive
media story about Seabiscuit’s quest to challenge War Admiral, an
effort that dominated headlines for most of 1938.
Almost everyone in Cincinnati loved Marge
Schott. Almost everyone else hated her.
People who knew Schott best described her as tough but fair, generous
and loving. She lavished her fortune on children and animals and,
during her tenure as owner, the Cincinnati Reds where among the most
successful teams in baseball.
But to everyone else she was a chain-smoking, dog-obsessed curmudgeon
with a penchant for outrageous remarks.
Over the years, Schott, who died in 2004, sparked controversies that
earned her repeated suspensions by Major League Baseball for her offensive
language and racial remarks.
Once she publicly praised Adolf Hitler. She also used a derogatory
term to describe black players Eric Davis and Dave Parker. Although
she knew little about baseball, Schott involved herself in every aspect
of the team, settling one contract dispute by flipping a coin. She
decreed that all purchases of $50 or more required her personal approval
and gave her St. Bernard dogs, led by Schottzie, the run of the ballpark.
If the New York Yankees
are baseball's Evil Empire, George Steinbrenner is Darth Vader. Just
like Star Wars' dark lord, the controversial owner is apt to choke
any underling who fails to do his bidding.
Over the years, Steinbrenner has fired managers, publicly berated
slumping players and forced trades when his quest to dominate baseball
doesn't go as planned.
According to long-time Yankee manager Joe Torre, Steinbrenner's antics
are "part of the package" that comes with working one of sport's biggest
spenders and meddlers.
Steinbrenner has always shown a willingness to open his pocketbook,
spending millions of dollars to pluck the top players from other teams'
rosters to beef up his Yankees. But if the success isn't immediate,
The Boss is sure to voice his displeasure.
Over the years, Steinbrenner has been the subject of countless news
stories, magazine articles and television spoofs, including an ongoing
role on Seinfeld.
Legendary sports writer Red Smith described
him as “an independent thinker, imaginative, uninhibited, innovative.
He is a promoter at heart but a baseball man at bottom."
No gimmick was too crazy, no strategy was too risky for Veeck, baseball's
showman extraordinaire. Veeck, who owned the Cleveland Indians, St.
Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox during his 40 years in baseball,
seemed willing to try almost anything to get fans' butts into the
seats.
It was Veeck who came up with the idea to put player names on backs
of uniforms. He also introduced the now-ubiquitous electronic scoreboard
and fireworks displays to the game.
But Veeck's biggest stunt was inserting a dwarf into the St. Louis
Browns' lineup. Eddie Gaedel, who stood 3-feet-7-inches tall and wore
uniform number 1/8, walked on four straight pitches in his only at-bat
on Aug. 19, 1951. More than 18,000 fans turned up to watch Gaedel
take on the Detroit Tigers – it was the largest Browns home crowd
in four seasons.
Not only did Veeck's innovative spirit get fans into the ballpark,
it also proved to be a positive force for equality. Just months after
the Brooklyn Dodgers broke baseball's colour barrier by putting Jackie
Robinson into their lineup, Veeck signed the American League's first
black player – Larry Doby.
