MLB player to owner: There’s a history to A-Rod’s idea

MIAMI, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 02: Former baseball player Alex Rodriguez looks on before Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium on February 02, 2020 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
MIAMI, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 02: Former baseball player Alex Rodriguez looks on before Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium on February 02, 2020 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
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(Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images)
(Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images) /

Derek Jeter is the only former MLB player-turned-owner today, but the practice used to be common

The New York Post report that Alex Rodriguez may be interested in purchasing the New York Mets, coming just two years after former teammate Derek Jeter purchased a significant interest in the Miami Marlins, might herald the resurrection of a trend that has been dead for a literal lifetime: former MLB players as owners.

Citing unnamed sources, the Post reported Friday that Rodriguez was “kicking the tires” on entering an auction to purchase the team.

The current owners, the Wilpon family, thought they had a deal with Steve Cohen to buy the Mets for $2.6 billion. But Cohen backed out when the Wilpons insisted on retaining controlling interest for several more years.

The Post sources characterized Rodriguez’s interest as “a long shot” and contingent on being part of a group similar to Jeter’s. In 2017, Jeter’s $25 million stake was combined with 15 other investors to create the winning $1.2 billion offer. Jeter became the controlling partner and CEO.

For decades, major league teams have virtually without exception been run either by such groups —  sometimes family-based such as the Wilpons — or by corporate entities. Save for Jeter and Nolan Ryan — who briefly held an ownership stake in the Texas Rangers a few years back — in every case, those families or groups made their billions in enterprises other than baseball.

There was a day, however, when closely ownership’s first-person connection to the field of play was not at all unusual. In fact, for most of the game’s first three-quarters of a century, the concept of former MLB players as owners was a bedrock of baseball’s structure. While some struggled, others at times built very successful, even dominant, organizations.

(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images) /

Albert Spalding

Al Spalding, who for the final two decades of the 19th Century owned the Chicago Cubs – then known as the White Stockings – is best recalled today as the owner of the sporting good firm that bears his name. Less recalled is that Spalding started out as a pitcher, and a very good one.

Star pitcher of Boston’s perennial champions of the National Association, an 1870s MLB entity that preceded the National League, Spalding jumped to the White Stockings when the NL was founded in 1876 by William Hulbert, who owned the team.

In his first season, he won 47 of 60 starts and led the White Stockings to the initial NL pennant. Spalding retired following the 1877 season at age 26 to pursue his business interests but maintained an interest in the White Stockings. When Hulbert died in 1882, Spalding purchased the team.

Under his direction, Chicago won pennants in 1882, again in 1885 and 1886. As his business grew, Spalding gradually relinquished his ownership stake in the team to concentrate on those business interests, which were flourishing.

His company held the exclusive franchise to sell baseballs to the National League and quickly expanded from its Chicago headquarters to open successful offices in New York and several other cities.

He died in 1915.

(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images) /

Connie Mack

Connie Mack holds the record for tenure by an MLB team owner, having held a share of the team from its formation in 1901 until shortly before his death in 1956. He is so closely identified with the formation and history of the Athletics franchise in Philadelphia that it may be easy to overlook the fact that he first came to the game as a player.

Mack was 23 when the National League’s Washington team signed him to a late-season tryout. Those Nats were awful – they went 28-92 – and Mack didn’t help things much. Installed as the regular in 1887, he hit .201, on his way to an 11-season career with other stops in Buffalo and Pittsburgh that included a .244 lifetime batting average.  During the final three of those seasons, he acted as player-manager for the Pirates.

Mack retired in 1896. But five years later, when Ban Johnson created the American League, Mack bought a share of the Athletics and was installed as manager. Under his control, the team became a dynasty, winning pennants in 1902, 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913 and 1914. Mack led his Athletics to World Series wins in 1910, 1911, and 1913.

Gradually increasing his ownership stake, Mack eventually bought out his partners and ran the A’s himself. He tore the club down and rebuilt it, fashioning a second dynasty that won pennants in 1929, 1930 and 1931, twice claiming the World Series.

(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images) /

Charles Comiskey

Charlie Comiskey is almost entirely recalled today as the pinch-penny owner of the 1919 Chicago White Sox of “Eight Men Out” fame. Subsequent research has established that motif to be largely fiction – Comiskey was actually relatively generous with his players by the standards of that era – but hey, it holds the movie’s plot together and Comiskey’s been dead since 1931 so who really cares?

As with Mack, Comiskey’s visibility as an owner obscures the fact that in his he was a superb player, arguably good enough to have been elected to the MLB Hall of Fame for his on-field accomplishments alone.

Comiskey got his professional start as a 22-year-old first baseman with the St. Louis Browns of the fledgling American Association, a circuit created in 1882 as a rival to the National League. Quickly demonstrating his leadership skills, he was appointed player-manager just one season later, leading the Browns to their first of four consecutive pennants starting in 1885. In 1886 his Browns beat the White Stockings in the third World Series.

Comiskey played through 1894, his best season being 1887 when he batted .335. A close friend of Johnson, Comiskey got the Chicago franchise when the American League was created in 1901, and his team won the inaugural AL pennant.

The Sox repeated as AL champs in 1906, and went on to win the World Series. They won a second World Series in 1917 before their date with infamy in October of 1919.

Comiskey continued to own the team until his death when control passed to his son and other members of the Comiskey family.

(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images) /

Clark Griffith

Clark Griffith may not have been the most successful MLB player-turned-owner, but until Jeter’s purchase of the Marlins, he was very likely the best player to become an owner.

Coming up as a 21-year-old pitcher with the Association’s St. Louis club in 1891, Griffith migrated to Chicago in 1893 and became a star. Between 1894 and 1899 he averaged 23 victories against 16 defeats, eventually compiling a 237-146 record.

When the American League was founded, Griffith was one of the early “jumpers” – National League stars whose defection gave the new AL credibility. He went 24-7 for Comiskey’s White Sox in 1901 and led them to the inaugural pennant. He also managed the Sox in 1901 and 1902.

By then Griffith had set his sights on management and ownership. Appointed manager of the New York American League team in 1903, he was released in mid-season 1908, hired by Cincinnati in 1909, fired in 1911 and hired by the Senators in 1912.

Griffith managed to wrangle a small ownership stake out of the deal, gradually increasing control to full ownership by 1920, his last active season as an on-field manager. In 1924, Griffith’s Senators won their first American League pennant and beat the Giants in a dramatic seven-game World Series.

They repeated in 1925, this time losing the World Series to the Pirates in seven games and made their third and final visit to the World Series in 1933.

Griffith maintained ownership of the Senators until his death following the 1955 season. His death marked the end of the era of player-owners until Jeter revived it 62 years later.

(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
(Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images) /

Other part-owners

Although not as fully invested as Spalding, Comiskey, Mack or Griffith, several other former MLB players have from time to time held slices of an ownership group.

Back in 1911, a Tammany Hall power named James Gaffney purchased controlling interest of the National League’s Boston Braves. Gaffney, who knew a lot about rigging elections but nothing at all about baseball, decided he needed a minority partner, so he enlisted John Montgomery Ward, a prominent former MLB player who had become an even more prominent attorney.

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Ward had been a combination pitcher-infielder for the Providence, New York and Brooklyn teams of the 1880s and 90s, and a good one. He was a central figure on championship teams in 1879, 1884, 1888 and 1889, combining a lifetime .275 batting average with a 164-103 record as a pitcher. Leading Providence to the 1879 National League pennant, Ward went 47-19.

His ownership role was brief. In July of 1912, barely six months after Gaffney and Ward purchased the team that became known as the Braves Gaffney bought out Ward.

Gaffney sold the Braves in 1916, but the club’s flirtation with former players as owners was renewed when Judge Emil Fuchs purchased controlling interest in 1923. Like Gaffney, Fuchs felt he needed a player’s advice, so he turned to Christy Mathewson, legendary star of the New York Giants who already by then was suffering from tuberculosis that would soon kill him.

Mathewson’s ownership stake ended with his death in October of 1925.

During their tenure in Brooklyn, the Dodgers twice incorporated former players into their ownership structure. In 1899, team owner Charles Ebbets enticed former outfielder Ned Hanlon to be his field manager by offering a slice of the team. Hanlon accepted, drove the Dodgers to the 1899 and 1900 pennants, and remained as a part-owner until 1906.

As a player for Detroit and other teams, Hanlon had been part of the Wolverines 1887 championship run. As manager, he gained Hall of Fame status leading the Baltimore Orioles to 1894-95-96 pennants  then taking the Dodgers to those 1899 and 1900 titles.

Then in 1945, a group led by banker Walter O’Malley and including general manager Branch Rickey purchased the Dodgers from the Ebbets estate. A light-hitting catcher during parts of four undistinguished major league seasons, Rickey is far better known for his front office skills, which included his primary role in the game’s integration of Jackie Robinson in 1947.

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Rickey held his ownership stake until selling out to O’Malley in 1950.

Finally, there’s the case of Ryan, a minority partner when Ray Davis and Bob Simpson purchased the Rangers in 2010. Ryan held that minority position until selling out in 2013.

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