I have what I call a habit but that my wife calls hoarding. Piles of newspapers can be found on my desk, next to my desk, in front of my desk. It’s really hereditary. My father used to have piles of magazines stacked several feet high next to his lounge chair in my parents’ bedroom. My sons have reportedly inherited the same habit.
The piles of newspapers in my office contain articles I want to read but haven’t had a chance to read. To me, that’s a perfectly harmless, even admirable, intention.
For example, if I had recycled this particular pile, I would have missed reading the obituaries of two great comedians, Don Rickles and Professor Irwin Corey, who died two months apart early in 2017, Rickles at the age of 90, Corey at 102. Rickles was better known and more popular with his acerbic wit, but Corey had a zany routine that produced laughter from first word to last.
One Corey example:
Self-proclaimed as “the world’s foremost authority,” Corey wore a black swallowtail coats, rumbled pants, string tie and sneakers. “Why do you wear tennis shoes?” the professor said he was often asked.
His answer: “‘That’ is actually two questions. The first is ‘Why?’ This is a question that philosophers have been pondering for centuries. As for the second question, ‘Do you wear tennis shoes?’ the answer is yes.”
Around the same time Corey and Rickles died, so did Ed Garvey, and I saved his obituary to read. Garvey was the leader of the N.F.L. players union and had the misfortune of holding his position at the same time Marvin Miller was the chief of the baseball players’ union.
Garvey, later an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate from Wisconsin and for governor of Wisconsin, compounded his labor problem by publicly criticizing Miller in 1975 for deliberately giving up the chance to gain free agency for all players every year when an arbitrator’s decision gave the players free agency.
Garvey ridiculed Miller, but it was Garvey who looked foolish. Contrary to Garvey’s ignorance, Miller knew that having every player be a free agent every year would create a glut of free agents in the market and dilute the value and the earning power of each free agent. Eventually Garvey awoke to that reality but not until he had made a fool of himself.
My pile of newspapers was not lacking baseball articles. There was one that sent me off on a search for more details but unfortunately, they were not readily available.
This article from November 2017 reported the surprising impending departure of Bob Bowman as president of Major League Baseball Business and Media, a.k.a. the man who turned M.L.B. into a $10 billion industry.
Bowman’s contract was expiring, and Commissioner Rob Manfred had let him know it wouldn’t be renewed because of his atrocious office behavior. Manfred and his predecessor, Bud Selig, had ignored Bowman’s behavior because they didn’t want to interrupt the flow of revenue that was pouring into everyone’s treasury. You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, and Bowman was that goose.
I have no personal knowledge of Bowman’s behavior, but I’m bothered in a way about his end in baseball. I didn’t have a great deal of contact with him, but whenever I did, he was honest and even candid. He answered questions other baseball executives sidestepped or ignored or flat out lied about. Yes, baseball executives lie. Can you believe that?
Three men make my list of baseball executives whom I found to be honest: Fay Vincent, Lee MacPhail, and Bowman.
I called Bowman last week to find out if he had determined his next step. He said he had not but said he had been in communication with individuals or companies who had proposed various possibilities.
“I’m not sure how it will all work out,” he said. “People have talked to me about things, but nothing is happening.”
Whatever Bowman winds up with, it is certain to have a digital component. It was digital, after all, that produced billions for M.L.B. The Walt Disney Company, for one, gave M.L.B. a sum a few dollars under $2.6 billion for 75 percent of BAMTech, the digital spinoff of the non-baseball business from M.L.B. Advanced Media.
BAMTech and Advanced Media are involved in a lawsuit that was initiated last March by Dinn Mann, a former executive vice president of the entities, who was fired – he says without cause – at the end of last year, presumably as a result of what Mann asserts in his lawsuit.
Mann contends he is owed $80 million for his 2 percent share of the sale to Disney, but his former employer denies that he had an equity stake. Mann says he and a fellow BAMTech executive, Noah Garden, each received a 2 percent equity share in 2006 to keep them from going to IMG.
However, a lawyer to whom I showed Mann’s complaint, told me,
“Reading between the lines, it sounds as if this was never documented. It also sounds like he never sent MLB the IMG proposed tax structure.
“I think the complaint is filled with irrelevant facts. What Mann did doesn’t matter. The question is what happened with respect to the grant of the options.
“It’s unclear exactly what the board decided. It seems pretty clear that the options were not granted at that board meeting because if they had been, then there wouldn’t have been any reason to have looked at the IMG structure.
“It sounds like the board authorized Bowman to move forward with Mann but that nothing ever happened.”
If Mann doesn’t get his $80 million, he has an earnings backup in his new venture. He was recently named executive vice president for content of a new professional football league.
Didn’t know a football league has content, did you? I’ll admit I didn’t. Have you heard about the new professional football league, the AAF, the Alliance of American Football? I hadn’t either until I began looking into Mr. Mann, who like most of the other people mentioned in this column did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Nor did Matt Gould, MLB’s vice president for corporate communications.
I did not try to find a spokesman for the new football league, which plans to play a 10-week 40-game schedule in eight cities: Phoenix, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Orlando, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego. Opening day is scheduled for Feb. 9.
Creation of the league may remind those with good memories of the bad memories of the World Football League (1974-75) and the United States Football League (1983-85). May they rest in peace.
The USFL may be easier to remember if you think Donald Trump. He owned the league’s New Jersey Generals. About 10 years later he pursued the possibility of buying a baseball team in a new league that was being planned to replace the strike-bound major leagues. However, on the day the prospective owners were to deposit an amount of money that would hold their place, Trump and his partner, Meshulam Riklis, didn’t show up.