Answer at bottom.
And besides all the members of Maas Alliance of course. (accept the Socialists Democrats of America – they are the only Mass Alliance member I respect – straight shooters – but that is for another post)
Globe Spotlight showed us how Red Sox allow people with shady steroid life styles access to players. Until they get caught of course and then comes the plausible denial.
Why did former Red Sox poohbah John Harrington decide to sell when he did? He didn’t have to. There were no provisions under his fairy godmother’, I mean Jean Yawkey’s will or the trust that he sell.
Perhaps he saw the writing on the wall. Yes he got $700 million for the trust, but that wasn’t his money.
Bud Selig, the car salesman from Milwaukee was becoming more and more controlling of baseball and built up a majority of owners behind him.
John Henry was one he could count on to play ball and Larry Lucchino was a get things done lawyer with powerful friends in Washington and responsible for building Camden Yards.
The goal? To make money. The means? Run production, particularly home runs.
How? By looking the other way but also make sure ball players aren’t walking into Gold’s Gym in Revere and buying the roids off Vinny the part-time bouncer.
Baseball owners need lots of home runs from ball players to make money.
Ball players need steroids to hit lots of home runs.
Ball players need safe access to steroids.
Baseball owners are complicit in the access department and they got a big bonus with the sports media complicit in the denial department..
How? By looking the other way regardless of the evidence.
Then of course there are the innocents who get caught up because they are around these roid head ball players. The club house kid from Mattapan who was pulled over while driving a players car a few years ago. (not uncommon for club house kids to have players cars, esp when the team is on road) This kid was removed from his club house job after the cops found steroids in the glove department.
Obviously the kid was not doing the roids and inner-city black kids from the Mattapan are not the usual source of roids.
The player was never questioned and went on with his career.
So anyway, back to the sale of the team. The roids were taking over the game and it wasn’t just the cynical people that knew it. They also knew of the complicity by ownership and the Commissioner’s office.
Boston was a big money team. If they could win it all they would be America’s team and Big money flows to merchandizing and TV ratings and everything else, Huge potential needed to be tapped. Would be money for all owners if Boston gets World Series ring.
Selig needed the right people in there. He orchestrated the whole thing and made sure Harrington would sell to these guys rather than Joe O’Donnell, the guy Harrington promised it too.
Selig’s hand picked ownership team knew what it took to win, or at least what it was taking to win in this new steroid environment.
With Henry’s money, Larry’s ahem, character; and Werner’s expertise in make believe and theatrics the three succeeded.
Answer to Question: Yes, the Boston sports media. If I didn’t know better I would think David Ortiz and all the sports writers lived together in some men’s gay commune or something. Because only real love could explain their laughable opinions on this latest looks-like-a-duck-quacks-like-a-duck story.
And had never won. I think you’re right that he knew what it took — a major investment he wasn’t prepared to make.
I should of left the harrington speculation out and just attacked fraudos Lucchino et al.
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p>Damn literary license. Took away from the main point.
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p>Good point JomC
Baseball owners don’t get much worse than a New York City art-dealing dilletante who couldn’t arrange English-language television for his team, then oversaw the sale of his venerable and quirky Montreal Expos to Major League Baseball.
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p>(Okay, maybe Claude Brochu who sold a championship-level team piece by piece, even though players were willing to take pay cuts to keep the team together).
Harrington sold the team because he saw that Selig was going to press owners to look the other way on steroids? And Harrington didn’t want to play ball?
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p>Yowsers, that’s a reach.
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p>I agree the sale was rigged for Selig’s guys. But I don’t think steroids were the issue.
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p>Like many things in his tenure, Selig handled the steroid issue poorly. And late. He didn’t push hard enough against the players and the players didn’t see the long term damage created by the steroid issue going public.
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p>I might make the argument that the jump in home runs doesn’t have as much to do with steroids as it does a juiced ball (more subtle than the 80s attempt) and newer ballparks, most of which are significantly smaller than the old ones. Or designed to help the ball fly further. Consider shorter fences or indoor stadiums in hot climates where balls used to be slowed by heavy air. I also don’t know that there has been a huge increase in steroid use by players that hit the ball to right field in Yankee stadium, but the HR number sure seemed to have jumped.
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p>No doubt, HRs have gone up thanks to steroids and HGH use. But to suggest it was the secret ingredient to the rigged sale of the Sox is laughable.
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p>PS–Most sportswriters have been accused of focusing too much on steroids. Not TV guys, but the pencils. Most public opinion says they make big a deal over it. I disagree.
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p>Did you read Mazz or Shaughnessy last week? Hardly gay commune stuff.
Sometimes I admit I like the polls better then the posts. Besides, I am really, REALLY ignorant about baseball and not a Massachusetts native, so not caught up in the Red Sox stuff.