thelesterlee
We probably won’t see baseball in 2022 as Major League Baseball is in the midst of a lockout because the MLB owners and the MLB Player’s Association cannot come to terms with a new collective bargaining agreement.
These owners are billionaires who have all the money, power and influence on the planet. Due to their ability to dictate media narratives through favors and dolalrs, they’ve convinced casual fans into believing this is some petty disagreement between billionaires and millionaires.
But these CBA’s most directly affect the players making the least amount of money. The thousandaires. And although the top players may be millionaires, we cannot even fathom the massive chasm between having a few million and having a few BILLION.
Fans might have a problem with the owners but the blanket description of ‘owner’ allows these 30 individuals to hide from any and all direct criticisms. We know every player’s name but the owners get to hide in the shadows. Nah, fuck that.
Let’s take a look at all 30 MLB owners and why you should hate them all:
Ken Kendrick: Arizona Diamondbacks
Kendrick is a 78-year old who made his millions founding Datatel Inc, some computer software company. In 2016, he paid $2.8 million to purchase some rare Honus Wagner baseball card. Do you understand how many millions you need to have in your bank account in order to just waste 3 milly on a lame-ass baseball card?
Ken Kendrick paid the maximum allowed campaign donation to Republican representative, Lauren Boebert, who is the face of the new wave of Q-Anon conservative assholes using congress as an opportunity to make life worse for any and all non-white Christians while making some massive cash on the side.
Q-Anon supporters believe Hillary Clinton runs a secret pedophile ring at an NYC pizza place. They are on some highly specific mission to reveal all of the pedophilia of the ‘elite’ class while simultaneously ignoring their fearless leader, Donald Trump, and his frequent trips to Jeffrey Epstein’s rape island.
Also worth noting, Ken Kendrick lives in Arizona and Boebert is a Colorado representative. He was just soo moved by Bobert’s constant Islamophobia and racism. Oh, and she also directly aided the weirdos who stormed the capitol on January 6th. Kendrick’s girl. Go D-Backs!
John C. Malone: Atlanta Braves
The Braves are technically owned by Liberty Media but John C. Malone is the CEO of that company thus the owner of the Braves. Do you see how hard these owners try to hide behind anonymity?
Malone’s media company’s main goal appears to be acquiring every news entity available to them. Unlike Fox News’s Rupert Murdoch, Malone doesn’t seem like he closes the blinds and busts out the lotion at the thought of human suffering like Murdoch does. It’s all about improving his financial portfolio—an imaginary thing that doesn’t really matter to anyone not named John Malone.
Malone’s squad just won the World Series. Nice. Cool. They also invited former president and current Oogie Boogie cosplayer, Donald Trump, to Game 4 of the World Series where he would immediately use that extremely public platform to participate in the extremely racist ‘Tomahawk Chop’ where Braves fans pretend to be Native Americans—a race of people America slaughtered by the millions and turned into sports mascots.
John Malone has gotten away with never really facing any pressure for running a team represented by a group of brown people who were eradicated by white people. You guys know you can just change your name to the like, Cheetah’s or whatever, right?
Peter Angelos: Baltimore Orioles
We should start with Angelos being 92 YEARS OLD. The Orioles haven’t had a winning season since 2016. The only thing preventing them from having 4 consecutive 100 loss seasons was a Covid shortened season in 2020. Perhaps having an owner who is incapable of responding to emails isn’t ideal.
Angelos made his fortune as a trial lawyer. Some people might call him heroic for his defense of people exposed to asbestos and his fight against the tobacco industry. Other people, like myself who understands how disgusting the justice system is, might call him an ambulance chaser exploiting the sick for his own personal gain.
A lifelong Democrat who helped victims get money. Obviously, one of the least egregious humans on this list. In context to these MLB labor negotiations, Angelos has been a pest. In 2007, Camden Yards workers fought for a raise. Angelos pledged to pay out of his own pocket to secure them money. That was a lie. He didn’t help them at all. Pretty much just publicly lied to get a round of applause. Typical behavior of a lifelong Democrat. Say you care about all of these underprivileged people and then when it’s time to actually make change, you shrivel up and vanish.
John Henry: Boston Red Sox
Every single black player has a story about playing at Fenway Park and hearing racial slurs from Red Sox fans. The owner dictates the culture at and around the ballpark. This franchise allows their fans to be so openly racist that someone put up a “Racism Is As American As Baseball” sign down the Green Monster in Fenway and it made complete sense. It wouldn’t have had as a strong of an impact at any of the other stadiums.
John Henry also owns the Boston Globe. Don’t we love when billionaires purchase newspapers? But anyway, Henry is a union buster who went to war with the Globe staff and went as far as hiring the same lawyers Donald Trump hired to fight the 2020 election results.
You can tell the owners are great and normal people as this is the 2nd time I’ve mentioned someone being close to the Trump 2020 election bullshit. Maybe I was wrong about these great humans.
The Ricketts: Chicago Cubs
Joe Ricketts is the founder of TD Ameritrade and made a bajillion dollars. He then helped create some of the most useless spoiled children on planet Earth. The Ricketts are the family from Succession but astronomically less funny.
Pete Ricketts is my favorite of the fail-children. He currently serves as the governor of Nebraska and consistently jumps headfirst into culture war nonsense refusing to lock down the state at the height of Covid and obviously being anti-face masks. Oh, he also has a former field director get caught being a white supremacist who went as far as saying ‘the white race is dying’.
Speaking of racism, let’s not stray too far from big poppa Joe whose emails also leaked a couple years back where he called Islam a ‘cult’, not a religion and the typical Barack Obama racism/birthism garbage. One of the most powerful men in Chicago hates the former president from Chicago because he’s black. Yay.
Feels unnecessary to explore the other Ricketts’s. They are racist money vampires with no actual skills or talents outside of their father’s wealth.
Jerry Reinsdorf: Chicago White Sox
Everything you need to know about Reinsdorf’s owning prowess can be found in The Last Dance documentary. Michael Jordan could’ve stayed in Chicago and won more titles but Reinsdorf refused to pay any of them what they deserve. The Bulls came off 3 consecutive championships. The Bulls were the biggest franchise on Earth. And Reinsdorf wanted to pinch pennies and not pay MICHAEL JORDAN.
He also looks like an animated scrotum.
Bob Castellini: Cincinnati Reds
80-year old Castellini made his fortune from *squints* produce. Sick. He inherited the family fruit company and now he owns a Major League Baseball team. There truly is always money in the banana stand.
Hal McCoy, a long-time Reds beat writer, recently came out and said Castellini almost got him fired a few years back because he was too critical of the team. Fox Sports agreed to fire McCoy and the only thing that saved his job was emailing Castellini and begging him to change his mind.
We looooove having to crawl on our hands and knees and pleading to Oligarchs. Please sir, let me keep my modest salary.
Larry Dolan: Cleveland Guardians
You don’t have to work hard to uncover the insane levels of nepotism in the Dolan family all being billionaires from owning Cablevision. Larry Dolan’s nephew is famous for running the New York Knicks into the Earth’s crust and refusing to move the Knicks from Madison Square Garden. The Garden sits on top of Penn Station, the biggest subway hub in NYC that is decrepit and run by rats. In order for the city to fully renovate Penn Station, Dolan has to move the Garden. The Dolan family is holding Manhattan hostage.
Larry Dolan purchased a team named the ‘Indians’ with a wacky Native American caricature as the logo in 1999. The team didn’t change the name to the Guardians until 2021. Personally, if I bought a franchise with an incredibly racist brand, I’d immediately change that brand and not wait for the public to bring pitchforks and torches to my front door. Let’s completely support Ukraine from evil Russia’s imperialism while wearing our Cleveland Indians gear. Totally normal and not completely destroyed propaganda-stuffed brains.
Charlie and Richard Monfort: Colorado Rockies
Dick Monfort is an appropriate nickname. In 2014, Dick had to apologize for heated email exchanges with Rockie fans. All the fans want is for their baseball team to be competitive. Monfort took every email possible and told fans not to come and suggested they don’t deserve a baseball team and threatened to relocate the ball club.
But my favorite Monfort story is how he handed furloughed part-time Rockies employees. During the Covid shortened season, instead of bringing those furloughed employees back, Monfort instead made front office staffers do their jobs which included shining shoes and running to go buy spitting tobacco for the players. No one’s dream job is to clean dirty baseball jerseys but it’s a paying job for someone and Monfort took that pay from them and forced other employees to add all of that to their pre-existing job responsibilities.
Again, Dick.
Christopher Ilitch: Detroit Tigers
Chris Ilitich received all of his money and his team from his dad’s death. Chris’s father owned both the Tigers and Red Wings. He made his fortune slinging Little Caesar’s pizzas. Chris is a pizza prince gifted the keys to average ass dough and a historic baseball organization.
It is absurd how much political power and global influence these billionaires have just off the strength of being low-IQ children born into exorbitant wealth. Like, how dare these special needs adult babies sit across from some of the most talented athletes on the planet and say no to any of their requests.
How can any of these privileged sociopaths born with wallets full of cash care about other humans when they are created with the sole function of generating revenue? Sorry, I’m having a breakdown and there are still so many evil people left to mock.
Jim Crane: Houston Astros
Jim Crane is a piece of shit. Objectively the worst man on this list. Walk with me. Let’s go down a disgusting rabbit hole.
Let’s look at what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said about Crane’s company, Eagle Global Logistics back in 1997 regarding employee complaints:
“female and minority employees less than white men who do similar work; did not investigate employee complaints of sexual harassment; and destroyed evidence that the company was instructed to retain as part of the two-year EEOC investigation”
Crane told his subordinates not to hire blacks because “once you hire blacks, you can never fire them.” On other occasions, Crane explained the reason he wanted to keep blacks out of the company was that his top managers are bigoted and they would mistreat the minorities, “giving them no choice but to sue Eagle.”
Witnesses also said Crane did not permit the company to advertise job openings because he did not want to create a paper trail of unhired qualified minorities.
To discourage blacks and women from applying, Eagle managers refused to let female and minority applicants enter its secured facilities to fill out job applications. Eagle disagreed with that assessment.
Crane also warned managers not to hire women of child-bearing age because their productivity would be low. And top company officers told employees that women aren’t suitable for management positions because male managers won’t work with a woman.
This is the 90’s. We haven’t even gotten to him purchasing the Astros yet.
Crane is also a well-known war profiteer and fraud who was essentially able to steal money from the Iraq War. Very cool. All of this happened and the 29 other MLB owners still let this piece of shit purchase the Astros.
So knowing about Crane’s history of refusing to hire women and brown people and using a war to fill up his bank account, it’s shocking how long the Astros cheating investigation took to uncover considering the man is, and I can’t stress this enough, a piece of shit.
John Sherman: Kansas City Royals
Shout out to John Sherman acquiring the Royals in 2019. Amazing timing. Major League Baseball is on a ventilator fighting for its life right as Sherman arrives. Weren’t we told all our lives how much smarter these billionaires are? Sherman joining MLB right now is the equivalent of putting all of your money investing in phonebooths the week iPhones came out.
Arturo Moreno: Los Angeles Angels
We can talk about the terrible teams Moreno keeps running out every year. Instead, let’s talk about how he is the devil responsible for at one least 1 death. In 2019, Tyler Skaggs died from an overdose on a road trip against the Texas Rangers but to understand why it’s Moreno’s fault we must travel back in time to 2015.
Josh Hamilton was one of the biggest stars for the Texas Rangers but struggled with addiction. Texas understood Hamilton’s problems and embraced him the few times he admitted he relapsed. They went as far as celebrating winning the pennant back to back years with ginger ale as opposed to champagne.
In 2013, Moreno signed Hamilton to a 5-year $125 million contract. 2 years later, Hamilton told MLB he relapsed and Moreno immediately went on a mission to cut all ties with Hamilton and not pay him the rest of his salary.
I 1000% believe Tyler Skaggs would still be alive if he played for literally any other organization. Not the one who brought in world-renown skier, Matt Harvey, into the bullpen to do blow with Skaggs.
Mark Walter: Los Angeles Dodgers
Walter is the CEO of Guggenheim Partners. Without Googling the company, you can assume it’s a billion-dollar hedge fund that steals money from the poor and gives it to the rich. Okay, nevermind. I looked up Guggenheim Partners and they are exactly what I thought they were.
According to a lawsuit, Mark Walter and his boys defrauded investors and insurance companies to get the cash necessary to purchase the Dodgers. But we live in America where billionaires can steal millions and face zero consequences regardless of all the evidence against them.
Congrats on Walter’s 2020 championship. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
Bruce Sherman: Miami Marlins
Sherman recently took over the team after Derek Jeter stepped down in February. Thank god because I have no idea how to make myself or any of you guys hate The Captain. “He slept with the love of my life, Mariah Carey” doesn’t really hit the same as Jim Crane dedicated his life to holding down the advancement of brown people.
Mark Attanasio: Milwaukee Brewers
Mark Attanasio says the Brewers operated at a loss in 2019. And that’s not a report. He came out and said this in an interview. This is what evil CEOs say before they make sweeping payroll cuts and then Attanasio will blame the fans for not buying more soft pretzels at the games.
He didn’t follow that up by saying he’s going to take a pay cut to ensure everyone in the organization can maintain their current wages. It’s seemingly alwaysss the employees at the bottom of the pyramid who need their jobs the most who are told they don’t work hard enough and have to lose their income and never the bosses who are directly responsible for their own company’s lackluster performance.
Jim Pohlad: Minnesota Twins
There isn’t anything specifically unique about Jim Pohlad in relation to a majority of these other team owners. His dad was rich and everything Pohlad possesses was given to him and much like these people, Pohlad is ruining his gift. The Twins are an irrelevant franchise and Justin Morneau isn’t walking through the door.
Steve Cohen: New York Mets
Mets fans are in love with Cohen because he is more willing to spend money on players than the previous owners. Interesting to ignore Cohen spending the last half-decade being investigated by the SEC for all of the crimes he’s committed like insider trading and all that cute shit billionaires get away with.
In 2021, Melvin Capital—one of the many evil NYC hedge funds—almost crumbled to dust. Enter WallStreetBets that came and purchased all of the Gamestop stock Melvin Capital was trying to short sell and the entire hedge fund sank into the ocean like Atlantis only to be saved by Steve Cohen because billionaires stick together. Imagine if Cohen gave all that money to like, a food shelter, and not his fellow 1 percenters.
Hal Steinbrenner: New York Yankees
As a lifelong Yankees fan, I simply cannot think of anything negative the Steinbrenner family has ever done. Suddenly it all escapes my mind. Dang.
John Fisher: Oakland Athletics
During the Covid shortened 2020 season, the minor leagues were cancelled. John Fisher made the heroic decision to pay the minor leagues through the pandemic. Such a heroic move by Fisher who had to pay those players following an apology he was forced to make when the team initially came out and said they weren’t paying anyone. Bullying works.
We can also talk about Fisher spending all of his money donating to dark money organizations like one that put out attack ads against Barack Obama in 2012. This is repetitive to say these billionaires are heartless self-suckers who only care about ensuring the weakest people in America stay weak.
John Middleton: Philadelphia Phillies
John Middleton is a tobacco tycoon whose most famous brand is the beloved Black & Mild. The Middleton family is paying for their yachts off the obituaries of black people. But to be less morbid, let’s talk about John’s failson who got into a heated lawsuit against Hollywood producer, Roy Lee.
According to the billionaire’s loser son, John Middleton Jr claims Roy Lee took Middleton’s name off the credits of all the movies he helped finance and apparently, Lee spent all of Middleton’s money on drugs and prostitutes. The owner of the Phillies raised a son who is a walking ATM for anyone he meets.
Robert Nutting: Pittsburgh Pirates
As far as actual baseball operations go, Nutting is by far the worst owner in the sport. He is the 10th richest owner but runs the club like a small mom and pop shop that sells old candy and parchment. He is literally the reason the MLBPA is fighting so hard. Nutting is a scammer using revenue sharing to fill his pockets and doesn’t give a single shit about winning games.
Owning one of the 30 Major League Baseball teams should be an honor reserved exclusively for people who 1.) love the game of baseball and 2.) are willing to spend the money necessary to win games and entertain fans.
Bob Nut should be forced to sell his team yesterday.
Peter Seidler: San Diego Padres
Seidler is a typical private equity goblin from Cali who bought the Padres with his uncle. Parents spoiling their children is boring. Uncles spoiling their nephews is hilarious. I’m sure his uncle snuck him his first Budweiser on his 13th birthday and they’ve bonded ever since.
Anyway, let’s talk about Peter Seidler’s direct connection to the destruction of our beloved game of baseball. Remember a few years ago when the league just randomly changed the baseballs without telling any of the players?
Well in 2018, Seidler Equity Partners teamed up with MLB to purchase Rawlings Sporting Goods so the league could have complete say over the production of the balls. Ever since this sale, MLB has quietly been manipulating the balls and just swapping out different versions of baseballs every season with no warning even though the players are quite loud about how much they hate what MLB is doing.
Thank you, Peter Seidler.
Charles Johnson: San Francisco Giants
‘Ol Charlie Johnson was given his father’s investment firm yet is one of the largest Republican donors in the country. Don’t you just love these assholes who were handed everything in their life and then spend their lives shitting on poor people for wanting things handed to them?
Johnson is also a ghoul who believes there was election fraud in 2020 and Trump won despite there being literally zero evidence of that shit. He donates to Lauren Boebert—who tweeted out Nancy Pelosi’s location in the midst of the capitol riot on January 6th. He also donated to Kelly Loeffler who famously used her inside info about the impending pandemic to invest in companies that created work from home software.
OH, you can’t forget he donated to Cindy Hyde-Smith’s senate campaign who is famous for making a weird lynching joke to a sea of happy white faces in Mississippi. Go Giants!
John Stanton: Seattle Mariners
in 2018, former director for the team Dr. Lorena Martin filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against John Stanton and then CEO Kevin Mather. Martin claimed the Mariners higher-ups were discriminatory against Latin players and when she went to Stanton with this information, Stanton told her it’s not his job to handle that. Stanton is either racist, incompetent or just happened to hire a bunch of racist people who share none of his views and was shocked to find out they behave that way.
Baseball makes a bajillion dollars off the backs of Latin players and treats these players as if they are wild animals who should be thankful to be domesticated by these billionaires when in actuality, it’s the owners who need these Latin players in order to pay for their castles.
William DeWitt: St. Louis Cardinals
DeWitt is the PROUD owner of 63 Arby’s franchises. He also made a chunk of change in the oil industry where he would develop a relationship with George W. Bush and later be appointed to his “Intelligence Advisory Board” where one could assume all members sat at a large round table and planned war crimes and pretended like Hurrican Katrina wasn’t happening.
This man slings old roast beef sandwiches, actively participates in the dismantling of the Earth’s natural resources and helps presidents destabilize the third world. Pure class.
Stuart Sternberg: Tampa Bay Rays
Sternberg is a slimeball who has been accused of secretly gaining more and more stake in the Rays so he could take the team from his partners and move the ball club to Montreal. The Rays have terrible attendance. Sternberg thinks the solution is to leave St. Petersberg, Florida when the actual solution is to just give fans a reason to come to the park.
Every year, the Rays are praised for winning despite their small payroll which in turn, encourages them to continue shedding payroll every year. Why would I come to support a 25-man roster consisting of guys who will be traded for minor leaguers the second they get named to an All-Star team?
Billionaires pretending to be poor so they don’t have to give their money to anyone but themselves is disgusting.
Ray Davis: Texas Rangers
Davis is a billionaire who made his fortune running energy companies before purchasing the Rangers in 2010. He’s been described as the ‘Undercover Billionaire’ because of his refusal to ever participate in interviews.
Personally, I think if you are hoarding a majority on the wealth in America, you should poke your head out every once in awhile so you can accidentally say evil shit I can write about. Like, unless you’re going out at night and punching mentally ill crime bosses with your pre-teen sidekick, billionaires should be forced to give one press conference a year. They should also just be eaten.
Edward Rogers III: Toronto Blue Jays
The Rogers family has been described as the family from Succession. Ted Rogers died in 2008 and from that moment, all of the spoiled heirs have been battling for control of the family bank account. Really difficult to take the side of the MLB owners when one of them is battling with their brothers and sisters over the car keys to dad’s Ferrari.
Ted Lerner: Washington Nationals
I just sat here and wrote about 29 of the richest white guys in the country and all of their wrong-doing/foolishness. I’m done. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep looking at how many of these idiots donated money to Jeb fucking Bush.
Which of these MLB owners do you hate the most? Leave a comment below. Respond on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee. Let me know if you want to defend any of these owners so I can hiss at you.
