Sarah Zhang is a senior online fellow at Mother Jones. Before moving to San Francisco, she wrote for Discover Magazine in New York and did research on fruit flies in Israel.
In early February, a US Patent and Trademark Office court in Washington, DC, confirmed what baseball fans had suspected for more than a century: The New York Yankees are evil. After an internet startup, Evil Empire Inc., had attempted to trademark the phrase "Baseball's Evil Empire," the Yankees filed an injunction, and the panel of judges agreed. As the court put it, "The record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees." If only it were true. The ranks of Major League Baseball owners include some of the richest men—and they are almost exclusively white males—in the country, as likely to open their wallets for a super-PAC as they are a top-shelf free agent. Viewed in the context of the competition, with its anti-discrimination settlements and SEC investigations, the Yankees are, like their Opening Day roster, fairly pedestrian.
So where does your team's ownership rank? We took a stab at it, analyzing each franchise by its level of political activity (based on campaign donations and office-seeking) and relative degree of evil—copyrighted or not. Read below the matrix for the full breakdown.
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Baltimore Orioles: Peter Angelos made his big break in 1992, when his law firm scored $100 million from a class-action lawsuit against asbestos manufacturers. Henceforth, he made bank by (mostly) sticking up for the little guy—taking on more asbestos companies, the lead paint industry, and a diet pill manufacturer. But he also uses his money and influence to get what he wants. Angelos agreed to take the lead in a massive suit by the states against tobacco giant Philip Morris only after demanding 25 percent of the winnings—far greater than any other attorney received. (He eventually settled for half that.) Angelos and his wife gave $1.8 million to Democratic candidates and PACs last fall.
Boston Red Sox: John Henry, the team's majority owner, purchased the franchise in 2002 with the earnings from his commodities futures trading company. Hedge funds, of course, have produced some of the worst excesses in an industry notorious for them, while arguably producing little of merit for society. But there are probably worse ways to make your money than what Slate’s Matt Yglesias calls "a scam where one class of rich people rips off another class of rich people." When minority partner Phillip Morse (who founded a medical device company) chartered his private jet to the CIA, he never expected that it might end up being used for something nefarious—like the rendition of terror suspects to countries with less humane methods of interrogation. ''I was glad to have the business, actually," he told the Boston Globe. "I hope it was all for a real good purpose." But Morse wanted to make one thing clear in his interview with the Globe: "When it's chartered, it never has the logo of the Red Sox on it." Henry gave almost $1 million to Democrats between 1992 and 2004, but nothing in 2012.
Chicago White Sox: Jerry Reinsdorf made his fortune as a real estate developer who specialized in building tax shelters. One of the league's most anti-union owners, he was accused of colluding with fellow owners to drive down player salaries in the 1980s. He gives millions to charter schools, but takes even more out of the city's coffers thanks to a sweetheart deal that allows him to pay just 25 percent of the standard property tax rate for the United Center (home of the NBA's Chicago Bulls, which he also owns). Reinsdorf also threatened to move the White Sox unless the city and state agreed to build it a new $125 million stadium on the South Side. In March, he teamed up with a former Secret Service director, a top aide to Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, and a private prison lobbyist to launch SRB2K LLC, billed as a "global security firm." (We're guessing they'll come up with a better name.) Whatever happens, though, he's probably better than Charles Comiskey.
Cleveland Indians: The worst thing about lawyer Larry Dolan is actually his nephew, James, the widely derided owner of the New York Knicks. One thing Larry hasn't done: change that awful logo.
Detroit Tigers: Little Caesar's founder Mike Ilitch can't compete with the team's former pizza-mogul owner, Domino's founder Tom Monaghan, who built his own quasi-theocratic township in South Florida. Ilitch and his wife, Marian, gave $184,000 to federal candidates in 2012, mostly to Republicans.
An official labor report alleged that Astros owner Jim Crane told subordinates, "Once you hire blacks, you can never fire them."
Houston Astros: Jim Crane's company, Eagle Global Logistics, was forced to pay the federal government more than $4.3 million to settle charges of war profiteering related to contracts in Iraq. In 2001, Eagle paid a $9 million settlement after an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation found rampant racial and gender discrimination at the company. (Among other things, the agency's report included an allegation that Crane had told subordinates, "Once you hire blacks, you can never fire them.") Crane gave $45,800 to political causes in 2012, most of it to the Obama Victory Fund—which may explain why he went golfing with the prez and Tiger Woods in February.
Kansas City Royals: In 1992, when he was still president and CEO of Walmart, David Glass was confronted by NBC's Dateline with evidence of child labor at a T-shirt factory in Bangladesh. His response: "You and I might, perhaps, define children differently." As Glass explained, looks can be deceiving—Asians are short. Then he ended the interview. Meanwhile, as the Royals' owner he's pocketed profits without making any discernible investment in the on-field product. He also once revoked press credentials of reporters who asked critical questions.
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: They say your first billion is always the hardest. Arte Moreno made his hawking roadside billboards. Staunch Republicans, the Morenos gave $100,000 to the Romney Victory Fund in 2012. Moreno's worst move as an owner was his insistence on giving his team its clunky new, multi-city moniker. But in his defense, nothing says "don't be evil" like lowering the price of beer.
Minnesota Twins: Jim Pohlad, a Minneapolis banker, hasn't had much time to prove himself after inheriting the franchise from his late father, Carl—who was infamous for volunteering to kill off the team in exchange for $150 million from Major League Baseball. That is, until Hennepin County ponied up $350 million for a new stadium. In 2012, the Pohlad clan doled out $644,000 to political causes and candidates, almost all of it to Democrats.
New York Yankees: The Steinbrenner brothers' father, shipping magnate George, was banned from baseball twice—once for paying a gambler to spy on his own player, and once for attempting to cover up illegal donations to Richard Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign. Current Yanks owners Hal and Hank haven't given anything to candidates. They did, however, manage to copyright the expression "Evil Empire."
The Bronx Bombers pay their respects to the Sith Lord.
Oakland Athletics: Lewis Wolff, a real estate magnate and hotel developer, bought the A's in 2005 and has talked openly about moving the team more or less ever since. But his biggest crime may have been shutting down the upper deck of the mostly-empty O.co Coliseum, which had become a refuge for fans wishing to smoke pot during the middle innings. He gave just $2,500 to federal candidates in the 2012 cycle; now politicians know how the A's fans feel.
Seattle Mariners: Hiroshi Yamauchi is the former president and chairman of Nintendo, and the man responsible for introducing the world to Pokémon—even though he can't stand video games. Or even baseball: He has been the owner of the Mariners for the last two decades, but has never once been to a game. It's time to seriously consider the idea that Yamauchi, whom profiles describe without fail as "autocratic," is actually just a bot. His fellow owners are a bit more active, though. You may know minority owner Wayne Perry as the president of the Boy Scouts of America, which is still weighing whether it should keep discriminating against gay children. Last year, Perry and co-owner Robert Glaser gave six figures to Republican and Democratic super-PACs, respectively.
Tampa Bay Rays: Goldman Sachs alum Stuart Sternberg took controlling interest of the club in 2005. He had left Goldman in 2002, two years after it had acquired his firm, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg—and six years before Goldman helped bring down the global economy. SLK was no angel either. Prior to its acquisition by Goldman, it had been fined $1 million by the National Association of Securities Dealers for delaying paperwork in order "to secure a competitive advantage, protect its interests and maximize its profits or minimize its losses." But by the standards of 21st-century Wall Street, the Rays' Goldman-stocked front office—ably chronicled in Jonah Keri's The Extra 2%—looks more George Bailey than Bernie Madoff. Sternberg's only political gift in 2012, a grand total of $1,000, went to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
Texas Rangers: Compared with one of its previous owners, George W. Bush, who went on to invade two countries and enter the United States into an intractable War on Terror, the Rangers' current front office is downright tame. Principal owner Ray Davis made his billion on gas pipelines; in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita his company, Energy Transfer, paid the federal government $10 million to settle an allegation of price manipulation (the company did not admit to any wrongdoing). Bob Simpson, Davis' co-chair, sold his fracking giant XTO to Exxon Mobil for $41 billion. Former hurler Nolan Ryan, who also has a stake in the team, was instrumental in getting Ron Paul elected to the House in 1996.
Toronto Blue Jays: The Jays are one of only two Major League teams owned entirely by corporations. In this case, it's the Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications, which is prohibited by law from contributing to American political campaigns. We don't really have anything to add to that.
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Arizona Diamondbacks: Ken Kendrick made headlines back in April 2010 when he announced that he had purchased one of the rarest and most expensive baseball cards ever produced—a 1909 Honus Wagner—for $2.8 million. Soon thereafter, he was back in the news: Arizona legislators passed the state's draconian anti-immigration law, SB 1070, and activists were calling for boycotts of the Diamondbacks and the 2011 All-Star Game at Chase Field. Why? While Kendrick claimed to oppose the bill, the Republican donor also reportedly held a private fundraiser for an SB 1070 proponent, state Sen. Jonathan Paton, in his private box at Chase Field.
Liberty Media chair John Malone, according to Wired, was "widely considered the Darth Vader of the infobahn."
Atlanta Braves: Liberty Media started as a spin-off of cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI). Its chairman, John Malone, currently owns more land than any other American—2.1 million acres. (Interestingly enough, America's No. 2 landowner is none other than former Braves owner Ted Turner.) Malone, according to a 1994 Wired profile, was "widely considered the Darth Vader of the infobahn" because of his insatiable push to conquer the industry. His Wall Street nickname is marginally more favorable: "swamp alligator."
Chicago Cubs: Remember the plan hatched last year by Cubs family patriarch Joe Ricketts to defeat the "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln" (a.k.a. Barack Obama)? 'Nuff said. The Ricketts family, which owns the team through a trust, spent almost $14 million on elections last year. Most of it went to Republicans, but daughter Laura, an Obama bundler, gave more than $575,000 to Democrats. (She also launched a super-PAC to support LGBT candidates.) Pete Ricketts, one of Joe's three sons, is a Republican National Committeeman from Nebraska and former US Senate candidate; he may run again next year.
Cincinnati Reds: Robert Castellini took over his family's business and turned it into one of the nation's largest fruit, vegetable, and flower distributors. Profiles of the septuagenarian invariably mention how, when he was starting out, his workdays would start at the crack of dawn (hard work!) and how he promised Reds fans a World Series when he bought the team in 2006 (passionate and driven!). In 2011 and 2012, he gave more than $100,000 to Republican candidates and committees, including $30,800 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Colorado Rockies: From the family that brought you factory farms and coked-up cattle! Charlie and Dick Monfort helped run the eponymous Big Ag empire until 1987. That's when family patriarch Kenneth Monfort sold out to ConAgra, and the Monfort boys became ConAgra execs. Kenneth made his fortune by busting the union that served his workforce and replacing union workers with immigrant laborers—many of them undocumented. (At one point, the company's annual employee turnover rate hit 400 percent.) Also represented in the Rockies' ownership group is former GOP senate candidate Pete Coors, purveyor of super cold beer and brother to Joe Coors Jr., who once predicted that Armageddon would arrive in 2000. Here's Pete explaining how poor people caused the financial crisis:
Los Angeles Dodgers: Lead owner Mark Walter's financial house, Guggenheim Partners, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission over his ties to former junk bond trader Michael Milken. Walter and co-owner Magic Johnson (yes, him) teamed up to give six figures to the Obama Victory Fund. The families of Dallas investor Bobby Patton ($93,800) and Todd Boehly ($169,000) gave big to both Democrats and Republicans. The most offensive thing about this ownership group was probably The Magic Hour.
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, a major foe of the Marlins Park fiasco, called it "the gift that keeps giving."
Miami Marlins: Jeffrey Loria, the millionaire art dealer and Charlie Brown-as-philosophy author, is widely considered the worst baseball owner of his generation. The Marlins' boom-and-bust cycles were already diminishing the team's shaky South Florida fanbase when along came the Miró-inspired Marlins Park. Built last year with $474 million in public financing, the deal, which will end up costing Miami-Dade County $1.1 billion, has made Loria the second least popular person in South Florida (behind Fidel Castro), according to one 2012 poll. Carlos Gimenez, who parlayed his opposition to the stadium deal into a successful run for Miami-Dade mayor, described Marlins Park to Sports Illustrated's S.L. Price as "the gift that keeps on giving."
Milwaukee Brewers: By all accounts, Mark Attanasio is a laid-back, baseball-savvy guy who also happens to run an investment company that manages some $11 billion in assets. Commissioner (and former Brewers owner) Bud Selig had this to say about him in the New York Times: "Mark is quiet, thoughtful—he has a personality that really fits Milwaukee, even though he's not from here. He has the same passion I have for the game, and he lives and dies with each pitch, which I can understand completely." But Selig is terrible, so never mind. Attanasio didn't give to any candidates in 2012, but his co-owners chipped in about $1 million.
New York Mets: Sterling Equities cofounder Fred Wilpon famously was a major mark for Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme: At one time, according to The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, Madoff had 480 accounts from Sterling employees or clients. By the time the scam fell apart in December 2008, Wilpon and his partners had invested some $550 million. On top of that, the Mets' stadium sold its naming rights to Citigroup in 2006 for $400 million, shortly after the bank had received $45 billion in TARP money. As if all that weren't enough, an Amway meeting space/recruiting center recently moved into Citi Field.
"I just believe the organization needs an image that's not directly tied to wins and losses," said Phillies owner David Montgomery.
Philadelphia Phillies: David Montgomery worked his way up through the ranks in the Phillies organization, even working as the team's scoreboard operator in the early '70s. But his long tenure hasn't exactly made the mild-mannered "Gentleman Dave" a fan favorite, probably because he's said things like this: "I just believe the organization needs an image that's not directly tied to wins and losses." The ownership group's $200,000-plus in 2012 contributions came mostly from pipe-tobacco magnates John and Leigh Middleton.
Pittsburgh Pirates: The Nutting family has had an ownership stake in the Pirates since the mid-'90s, and a majority share since 2007. During that time, the team hasn't had a single winning season. Robert Nutting apparently has been content to collect handsome profits without reinvesting in better personnel—although the Pirates did manage to secure $228 million in public funding for PNC Park. Nutting's contribution to the general collapse of society has been negligible, however. He runs a four-star resort in Pennsylvania* and a chain of small newspapers.
San Diego Padres: Last year, Southern California beer distributor Ron Fowler headed up an ownership group that included the son and four grandsons of former big-league owner Walter O'Malley, the guy who moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
San Francisco Giants: Charles B. Johnson, a mutual-funds baron and the 211th-richest person in the world according to Forbes, spent some $200,000 to try to defeat California's Proposition 30, the sales and income tax increase that included elements of the state's millionaire's tax initiative. (Prop. 30 passed in November.) Other political expenditures: $50,000 for Prop. 32, which would have kept unions and corporations from using automatic payroll deductions to bankroll political activity, and $200,000 for Karl Rove's American Crossroads.
St. Louis Cardinals: In the early 1990s, William DeWitt Jr. helped put together an ownership group—including George W. Bush—that would go on to buy the Texas Rangers. Years later, he would buy the Cardinals from Anheuser-Busch and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to help elect (and reelect) his former partner.
Washington Nationals: "Nobody tells Ted Lerner what to do," former business magazine publisher Bill Regardie told the Washington Post. "Ted Lerner is not used to being told what to do. In the last 30 years, no one has told this man to do anything." One of the things Nationals' owner Lerner hasn't done, whether told to or not, was to pay for a doctor or certified athletic trainer at the team's Dominican academy, even after teen prospect Yewri Guillén died of a brain infection in 2011.
Correction: This piece originally placed Robert Nutting's luxury resort in West Virginia.
Let Mary Roach be your guide through all things digestive. The author of winsome expositions on astronauts (Packing for Mars), cadavers (Stiff), and sex (Bonk) takes on the alimentary canal in her new book (out yesterday). Whether Roach is drooling into a pipette or has her head up her own ass (literally, watching her own colonoscopy), her enthusiasm is downright infectious. Naturally, I asked her to talk about Gulp while forming some grilled-cheese boluses—bolus being the technical term for a chewed up ball of food just before it's swallowed.
In an otherwise lovely Oakland bar, we discussed rectal smuggling, the ins and outs of making fake poop, and why calling someone an "asshole" is such a great compliment.
Mother Jones: What made you decide to write a book about the digestive system?
Mary Roach: I was talking to a physician reader, and he got to telling me about the anus, which is this amazing thing that nobody appreciates. Here's this ring of muscle with nerves that has to discriminate between solid, liquid, and gas, and let it out accordingly. He's like, "No engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine-tuned as an anus. To call someone an asshole is really bragging him up." That was the moment I thought, "Oh yeah, this could be an interesting book."
MJ: In the book, you go to prisons and talk about prisoners smuggling things in their rectums—up to three smartphones at a time! How did you find a guy willing to talk so openly about his rectum?
"Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist's." Thus begins a series of tweets from the writer Teju Cole, each one a famous novel's opening line rudely interrupted by drones. He calls them "drone short stories."
Discursive, allusive, and always thought-provoking, @tejucole stands out in a Twitterverse crowded by hashtags and throwaway jokes. The Nigerian American writer published his debut novel, Open City, to great acclaim in 2011, but Cole may be best known (online, at least) for his Small Fates tweets about Lagos. Small Fates is inspired by the French journalistic tradition of fait divers, roughly equivalent to "news briefs." Perfunctory accounts of crime from Nigerian newspapers are transformed with a literary, humanizing twist: "Love is so restless. When T. Dafe's girlfriend dumped him in Surulere, he went at her with a pen knife until she was no more."
His drone vignettes also breathe empathy into anonymous killings that happen far away. And Cole, also an occasional Twitter essayist, previously posted a a series of tweets linking drones, Downton Abbey, the IMF, and Virgin America. It's easy to ignore drone strikes quietly happening halfway across the world; it's harder to ignore them when they invade our familiar cultural turf.
1. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist's.
2. Call me Ishmael. I was a young man of military age. I was immolated at my wedding. My parents are inconsolable.
3. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather. A bomb whistled in. Blood on the walls. Fire from heaven.
4. I am an invisible man. My name is unknown. My loves are a mystery. But an unmanned aerial vehicle from a secret location has come for me.
5. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was killed by a Predator drone.
6. Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His torso was found, not his head.
7. Mother died today. The program saves American lives.
Intrigued by all of the above, I telephoned Cole to ask him what it means to be a writer in the 140-character era.
Mother Jones: What was the inspiration for your drone stories?
Teju Cole: I had been thinking so intensely so much about the global war on terror, especially the heavy silence that has surrounded the use of drones to assassinate people outside this country. I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at. The weird way that things come together is that when I wrote those drone tweets, the subject was not on the front page of papers. Two, three weeks later, it's on the front page of the New York Times and everybody is talking in a very direct way because the release of this white paper.
To understand the modern calorie counting system, we have to go back to the late 19th century *, when Wilbur Atwater sat in his Connecticut lab and burned a bunch of food. Then he weighed some human feces and urine. The burning told him the amount of energy in the food; the human waste told him the amount excreted. Subtract the two, and the Atwater system was born: four calories per gram of protein, nine for fat, four for sugars. Check out the label on a supermarket salad in 2013, and the caloric value you see is largely based off of Atwater—even though scientists are increasingly suspicious the number is wrong.
Debate over the science of calories comes at the same time that health-conscious legislators are requiring restaurants to show calorie counts on their menus. Following the lead of New York City and California, Obamacare has a provision to make calorie labeling mandatory at chain restaurants across the country. For that to make a difference to our health, however, we have to understand what a calorie really means. At the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last week, a panel of scientists presented research that is just beginning to tease out the nuances of the calorie. Whether food is cooked, the energy it takes to break down tough-to-digest foods, and gut bacteria activity all affect how much energy humans actually get from eating.
"I know this is not the first time this country has debated how to reduce gun violence," President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. "But this time is different." In light of the national debate set off by the massacre in Newtown, here are six stories about guns that will take you from the annals of the NRA to the Vietnam war to the US-Mexico border.
While the National Rifle Association claims to represent more than 4 million "marksmen, hunters, and responsible gun owners," recent polls show its politics are out of whack with those of most Americans, gun owners included. Some observers believe that the NRA and its lightning rod of a front man, Wayne LaPierre, essentially acts as a lobbying outfit for the powerful firearms industry.
In more than three decades of service to the NRA, Wayne LaPierre has done more than any other man alive to make America safe for crazed gunmen to build warlike arsenals and unleash terror on innocents at movie theaters and elementary schools. In the 1980s, he helped craft legislation to roll back gun control passed in the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations. And since the late 1990s, twice he has destroyed political deals that might have made it hugely difficult for accused killers like Holmes and Lanza to get their hands on their weapons.
Beyond the blustering on Benghazi and the budget sequester, there are many serious issues facing the nation. Climate change, gun violence, immigration reform, drone warfare, human rights—Mother Jones is dedicated to serious investigative reporting on all of these. But we need your help. We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our work is mostly funded by donations. Please donate 5 or 10 bucks to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund today to turbocharge our reporting and amplify our voice. Thanks!
