At the most basic level we own things because we want to do whatever we please with them. Kids can play with toys in nursery school, but they have to take turns using them. So they beg their parents for ownership rights. TVs can be viewed at bars and restaurants and every office place and library in America has a computer, but we want to be able to switch channels during commercials and watch that "Not Suitable for Work" YouTube video. The same principle applies for property, and just about any non-perishable, non-investment, ownership opportunity.
Except when it comes to sports. Rich men around the world pay millions of dollars so that they can call a professional sports franchise their own. They presumably crave the perks: the opportunity to befriend athletes, the celebrity status, and the show-off factor. But they're expected to leave the operation of that very franchise to other people--people who's paychecks they sign!--and treat their ownership as an investment. When people don't come to the ballpark, it's widely expected that the owner will invest less into the team. That's business as usual. (And, as we've all learned from the most recent LeBron episode, sports is a business.)
In David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game, widely considered the best basketball book ever written--and a must-read for any Basketball Junkie--there's a great section where the owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, Larry Weinberg, vetoes a pending trade that would send disgruntled forward Maurice Lucas to the Bulls. The team's general manager, Stu Inman, was desperate to trade the player as contract issues were affecting his performance, and "was furious" at the "lack of professionalism" Weinberg displayed by rejecting the deal. Inman screams at him: "Are you really telling me that you are rejecting what I recommend and all your coaches recommend, and that you know more than us?" And Halberstam is quick to point out that though Weinberg was a shrewd business man "he hadn't spent the previous season in a hundred small motels in a hundred tiny towns watching a hundred college games."
Of course, basketball lifers' (including Inman) disdain for the game's relentless shift towards business and away from the spirit of sport is a central theme of the story. They don't like that basketball is a business, yet feel threatened when their owner isn't simply concerned with the return on his investment and wants a say in team operations. It's really a double-edged sword. The sports media and sports fans hate to be reminded that sports are a business, yet disapprove when the owners of their favorite franchise acts unprofessionally.
I bring this up in light of the two big sports ownership stories to hit in the last week: Dan Gilbert's letter to LeBron James, and George Steinbrenner's death. (Steinbrenner has been sanctified in the media postmortem, but before his age robbed him of his bombastic public image, he was widely despised). Rip the letter all you want, and disapprove of Steinbrenner's treatment of some stars, most notably Dave Winfield, but keep in mind these are the guys that own the team.
Gilbert's letter, if viewed as a statement from the owner of a business valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, was entirely unprofessional. His PR advisers surely would have urged him to release a statement ensuring his customers--I mean, fans--that business will continue as usual despite the major loss, and the corporation will do whatever possible to recoup as much of its losses as possible. Similarly, Steinbrenner would be lambasted in business for his inability to keep his anger to himself. Putting public pressure on employees is not a good "business practice." A good businessman would have displayed patience with Billy Martin, dealt with Dave Winfield in private, and not gone back on his promise of patience with Yogi Berra at the managerial helm.
But who wants to view sports as a business? What ultimately made Steinbrenner so well-loved was that for all his faults, no fan questioned his love for the team. He was the Yankees' owner, sure, but also the franchise's biggest fan. We can pull a Frank Costanza and lambast him for trading Jay Buhner, but we must keep in mind that he didn't make the trade to decrease the payroll and increase his income; he did it so that his team would win. And win now. Everything he did was a by product of perhaps his most famous mantra: "I hate to lose. Hate, hate, hate to lose."
The same goes for Gilbert's letter. Released less than an hour after "The Decision" aired, many noted that the letter reads like one written by a "psychotic ex-girlfriend." I love that description. Gilbert loved his team so much that he acted with his heart, and not the head that has earned him millions during a successful business career. He loves his team, loves his fans, and was hurt by his favorite player's decision. And in his response he talked about winning championships, not about losing season ticket-holders.
As fans, we like to speak about our favorite teams in the first person. "How did we do today?" "Do you think our coach made the right call?" How could the refs screw us like that!?" We have a sense of ownership over our team, so it's easy to forget that somewhere in the stadium there's a man that laid down staggering amounts of money to actually own the team. When he's able to put his financial investment aside, and have an emotional attachment to his team, we shouldn't help but love it. This style of ownership is likely the last remaining vestige of a time when sports were about the love of the game and not the dollars that come along with it. For better or for worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment