Sterling Not Unusual Among Sports Owners

Joe Posnanski reminds us that this week’s scandal with Donald Sterling echoes the experience with Marge Schott 20 years ago—

Marge Schott was an insular and intolerant person who also would do very kind things. She was a cheapskate of the first order who would sometimes, seemingly out of nowhere, be deeply generous. She kept a swastika armband in a drawer of a hallway table in her home, and she rarely hesitated when offered the opportunity to lecture on all the “good” that Hitler had done, and a former employee would recall her referring to two players as “million dollar n—–.”

–and that there are probably more out there:

But the people who should be watching most closely are the people running leagues and business. Because Donald Sterling is hardly the only ticking time bomb out there. I remember when Marge Schott was getting punished by the league, a prominent executive in baseball told me: “She deserves to be suspended. But you know, we probably have 10 other owners who are more backward than Marge. Maybe more than 10.”

He wouldn’t tell me who they were. In those days you could keep that stuff quiet.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.