The Ownership of National League Baseball Teams Past and Present

The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was founded in 1876, just ten years after the end of the civil war.  If you consider its predecessor the National Association of Professional Baseball Players founded in 1871 it is even older.  The 1876 founding was felt necessary because of the weakness of the central authority governing the sport.   Some of the team cities were too small to really support a team, one team dominated the league, and the scheduling and membership in the clubs was haphazard.   Collusion with gambling interests also was a widespread problem at the time.  Even after the formation of the stronger organization in 1876, it suffered from instability.  Many of the teams folded, moved, or were expelled for various reasons.  Major league baseball in a recognizably modern form did not form until 1903 when the newer American League formed and an agreement made to play a World Series at the end of each season. What follows then is a history of the National League, focusing on the ownership and origins of the currently existing teams.
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1.  The St. Louis Cardinals

They started out in 1875 as the St. Louis Brown Stockings soon shortened to the Browns.  It was part of the National Association which folded with the advent of the National League the next year.  They were caught fixing games in 1877 and were expelled from the league after which they barnstormed semi-professionally.  In 1882 saloon owner and grocer

Von der Ahe

Chris von der Ahe purchased the team and made it a founding member of the American Association  .Early in his career Charlie Comiskey guided the team to four pennants in the league.  After the 1891 season the team went bankrupt and transferred back to the National League.  In 1898 they changed their name from Browns to the St. Louis Perfectos and then when "Perfecto" did not sound perfecto to them in 1900 they became the St.

Louis Cardinals, while an American League team from Milwaukee came to town and took the name St. Louis Browns, and used their old ballpark.  (If you don't demolish it, they will come).   Von der Ahe went bankrupt in 1898 and had to sell the team.

Frank and Stanley Robison owned the team from 1898 to 1911.  Frank and Stanley also owned the Cleveland Spiders and were responsible for naming the Browns the Perfectos and transferred all the best players the Spiders had to the Browns.  As a result the Spiders became the worst team in Major league history, with a 20-134 record followed by oblivion. 

Frank Robison

Because of manipulation like this the leagues required owners to stick to only one team at a time.   Both Robisons were dead by 1911 and the team was owned by Stanley's daughter, Helene Hathaway Britton, who thus became the first female to own a major league baseball team.  In 1916 she divorced Mr. Britton, president of the team,  and sold the team the next year and remarried.  

Sam Breardon

Sam Breadon was a co owner from 1917 and became majority owner in 1920. Breardon owned a thriving Pierce Arrow auto dealership in St. Louis.   He hired the legendary Branch Rickey as president and then as general manager of the team. The team prospered under their guidance.  Rickey was the one who invented the "farm

Branch Rickey

system" where the club owned minor league teams and used them to locate up and coming talent, which was considerably cheaper than buying the players from various independent minor league teams.  After the end of the 1947 season he sold the team to Robert Hannigan and Fred Saigh.  Hannigan was Harry Truman's postmaster general, who died in 1949 at the early age of 49 from heart disease. 

Fred Saigh

Saigh owned the Cardinals outright from 1949 to 1953.  Saigh is credited with the move by owners to get rid of commissioner Happy Chandler.  Saigh had his own problems, however, pleading guilty to tax evasion in 1953.  This meant he had to sell his team because owners could not be convicted criminals. 

August Busch and wife

It looked as though the Cardinals would leave St. Louis as a result, but Brewer August Busch saved the day by buying the team.  When he died in 1989, Anheuser Busch took over the team, but sold it in 1995 to William DeWitt Jr. and other investors. Although out of town interests wanted to buy the team to move it, Saigh agreed to sell it to a St. Louis investor group for somewhat less money. 

William DeWitt Jr.

DeWitt and investors are the owners of team to the present day.  Dewitt made his money in petroleum, playing cards, and the Arby's fast food restaurant chain.  He had been around Baseball all his life, however, having served as bat boy for the St. Louis Browns, a team which his father owned. 

2.  Chicago Cubs.

The team started out as the Chicago White Stockings, a name they abandoned in 1889 for the Chicago Colts the name which they had until 1897.

Chicago Colts

The turn of the century must have been a particularly fertile time for lame team names, and, as with the St. Louis Perfectos, the Chicago team took the name Chicago Orphans.  From 1903 onward however, they took their present name, the Chicago Cubs. 

Hulbert

Depending on whom you ask the Cubs began either in 1870 or 1876 and are the oldest  continuously playing single venue team still in existence (other than the two years following the Chicago Fire) in Major League Baseball. In any case it was William Hulbert, president of the Chicago club, who instigated the changes leading to the formation of the National League.  Hulbert died in 1880 and

Spalding

Albert Spalding, who started a sporting goods company became the owner and president. When someone had the cheek to suggest in print (correctly) that baseball was derived from the British games of cricket and rounders, Spalding appointed a "commission" to research the question.  In this way the myth was born  that Union General Abner Doubleday was the  inventor of the game. 

Not the inventor of baseball.

Charles Webb Murphy owned the team from 1906-1913 having bought the team from Jim Hart.  Charles

Weeghman

Phelps Taft, brother of President Taft, was owner from 1914-1916.  Charles Weeghman was a fast food entrepreneur in the early part of the century in Chicago and once owned 15 such fast food restaurants. 

He built what was to become Wrigley Field in 1914 for the Federal League team he had founded, the Chicago Whales. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the Ku Klux Klan and hosted a state-wide rally on his property in 1912. When the Whales and the Federal League went belly up, he along with William Wrigley bought the Cubs from Taft and

renamed the park (which had originally been "Weeghman Park")   "Cubs Park".  Afterwards,  Weeghman, was eventually bought out by Wrigley and the park was renamed "Wrigley Field" in 1926, a name that has persisted to this day, even though

the Wrigley family sold the Cubs in 1982.    When Wrigley died in 1932, the team's ownership passed to his son Phillip K. Wrigley, and when he died in 1977, his son Willam Wrigley III inherited the team, but did not keep it long.  When both his parents died within months of each other, he was forced to sell the team to pay inheritance taxes, and the Cubs were purchased by the Tribune Company in

1982.   When the Tribune Company went into bankruptcy in 2009,  the team was sold to current owner Tom Ricketts, son of the founder of Ameritrade, Inc.  and an investment banker based on Chicago.  The price was $900 million.



3.  The Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers had their beginning in 1890 as one of the venerable east coast teams, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, named that because many of the players had recently gotten married.  In their first major league season in the National Association, they had a winning season (86-43) and won the pennant. 

When they went to play the American Association that year the game ended in a tie.  Bad weather and the lack of stadium lights might have had something to do with that.  In 1899 the manager of the Baltimore Orioles also became the manager of the Brooklyn team, and, raiding the best players of the Orioles, made the Bridegrooms a team to be reckoned with.  In that year they also changed their name to the Brooklyn Superbas.  The Superbas did not do well after the initial couple of seasons.  They suffer as many National League teams did, from the demand for players to fill rosters in the American League.   In 1911 they figure a new name might be in order, calling themselves the Trolley Dodgers, and then in 1913 they shortened it to just the Dodgers but the next year someone had a brain wave and decided to change the name to the Brooklyn Robins, and a play on the name of manager Wilbert Robinson, which would probably not be such a bad name considering the ornithological bent of team naming in that era. 

Charles Ebbets

In 1925 Charles Ebbetts, the first president of the Brooklyn team, died suddenly. 

Acting President Ed McKeever went to the funeral which was cold and windy.  McKeever caught a cold and died a week later. Thus both principal owners of the team went to the other side in a single week.

  When manager Wilbert Robinson retires in 1931, the new manager is Max Carey and the name is changed yet again, this time back to the Dodgers, where it has stayed ever since. 

Charles Byrne was one of the original founders of the team.  He was in real estate.  Byrne died in 1898. His partner Ferdinand Abell was a casino owner.  No one at the time looked askance at an owner's involvement in gambling at that time or in the raiding the early Baltimore Orioles for talent when both teams were owned.  He was eventually bought out by Charlie Ebbetts in 1907.  Ebbetts was a draftsman and architect and designed a number of New York structures, but also managed the team for a while.  He built the team's first stadium, Ebbets Field, in 1912 which remained the home of the Dodgers until they moved to  Los Angeles in 1957.  When Ebbetts and Ed McKeever died the team passed to the ownership of  Grace Ebbetts, his widow and Stephen McKeever, Ed's brother, who was in the construction business.  Grace was the other woman when Minnie Ebbetts sued her husband for divorce in 1922.   Ed McKeever continued as owner until he died in 1938.   Joseph Gilleaudeau was the grandson of Charlie Ebbetts and also had a part of the team.   James and Dearie Mulvey, son in law and daughter of Stephen McKeever inherited his interest in the team. 

Rickey

In 1942 Branch Rickey arrives on the scene when he and Walter O'Malley buy the Dodgers.  Rickey was a major influence on not only the Dodgers but a number of teams in Major League Baseball.  He played for the St. Louis Browns and the New York Highlanders until 1914 when an arm injury ended his on-field career. 

O'Malley

He then went on to manage in various capacities for the Browns and the Cardinals.  As Cardinal general manager he originated the concept of the farm system, where minor league players could be groomed and brought up as needed from minor league teams they owned.  He went to the University of Michigan where he not only earned his law degree but coached the baseball team there.  In 1942 he continued his innovative career for Brooklyn.  He started the first Spring training camp for a baseball team, in Vero Beach, FL.

Jackie Robinson

  And in 1947 he broke the unwritten rule that black players could not play in Major League Baseball, by signing Jackie Robinson, who has been a star player for the Negro League's Kansas City Monarchs.  In 1950 Branch Rickey becomes general manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and O'Malley buys him out. 

In 1958 the Dodgers move to Los Angeles after lukewarm support from New York City Mayor Robert Wagner and opposition by Robert Moses to the construction of a new stadium to replace Ebbetts field.

Murdoch

  O'Malley dies in 1979 and the team's ownership passes to his son, Peter O'Malley.  In 1998 he sells the Dodgers to Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation for $310 million, the largest sum ever paid for a baseball team up to that time.  In 2004 the News Corporation sold the

Magic Johnson

team to Frank McCourt, a Boston real estate developer.  In 2012 as a consequence of a nasty divorce, and bankruptcy proceedings,  the team was sold to a group of investors headed by former Los Angeles Lakers Basketball star Magic Johnson. 






   

4.  The Atlanta Braves

The Atlanta Braves are one of the oldest if not the oldest franchise in Baseball history.  They started out as the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869.  The next year they moved to Boston and became the Boston Red Stockings, one of the two charter teams in the National Association, the other one being what is now the Chicago Cubs. In the early years of the National Association the Boston Red Stockings were dominant.  Their name went through a number of unofficial changes before settling on the Braves.  They were at various times called the "Red Caps", the Beaneaters,

the Rustlers, and the Doves, the last name for an all-white uniform they wore for a while and after their team owner.  In 1936 a selection of sportswriters and fans voted for a new name, the Boston Bees, but that lasted only a few years, and did not go so far as to adopt anything resembling the stinging insect on their jerseys.  By 1945 they were back to being the Braves.

Adams

The team was founded by Ivers Whitney Adams when it was moved from Cincinnati to Boston in 1870. In 1872 it was sold to John Conkey, who sold it the next year to Charles Porter.   Porter two years later sold it to Nicholas Apollonio.  Apollonio sold it to Arthur Soden in 1876.  Soden also owned the New York Giants, which was not considered a conflict of interest in those days.

Soden

  Soden introduced the concept of the reserve clause which prevented players from just going to whatever team offered them the most money.  This was great for the owners because it kept the cost of players down for owners.  It was replaced by free agency only in 1975, when a player, especially a valuable one, could sell his services on the open baseball market.  George Dovey a St. Louis auto dealer,  bought the team from Soden in 1907 and renamed it the Doves. 

Dovey

Dovey died of a hemorrhage on a train near Xenia Ohio at the age of 46 and his brother John Dovey took over the team, but he sold it a year later to John P. Harris.    Harris owned the team for all of a month in 1910, afterwards selling it to William Russell, who promptly changed the name from the Doves to the Rustlers (a play on his name).  He died the next year.  One gets the distinct feeling that maybe owning this team was not good for the health of its owners.  James Gaffney bought the team from Russell's estate in 1912 and, owning it for three seasons, built a new stadium for the team and sold it in 1915.  Percy Haughton was another owner who died young, even if he only owned the Braves for two years from 1916-1918. He was football coach for Cornell, Harvard, and Columbia, where he died suddenly during a game, so maybe it was the football that did him in at the relatively tender age of 48.  He sold the team to George W. Grant in 1919, and Grant in turn sold it to

Emil Fuchs

Emil Fuchs and Christy Matthewson in 1922.  Fuchs became in time the majority owner, but financial problems drove him to desperate measures.  In 1935 he bought Babe Ruth, whose glory days were behind him, on a promise that he would be allowed to manage the team the next year.  When this turned out to be an empty promise, Ruth retired and Fuchs sold out to Charles Adams.  Charles Adams was not really as interested in baseball as in hockey, being one of the first Americans to start the Boston Bruins. Bob Quinn, who had much involvement with the Boston Red Sox in prior years, became an owner in 1938 until 1945. 

Lou Perini

Lou Perini took over in 1945 and 1953 moved the team to Milwaukee where they became the Milwaukee Braves.   Perini was in the construction business.   He sold the team to William Bartholomay in 1961.  Against fierce resistance in court by Milwaukee to keep the team in town, he succeeded at last in moving the Braves to Atlanta in 1965, where it has remained.

Bartholomay

  In 1976 Bartholomay sold a controlling interest in the team to Ted Turner and Turner Broadcasting.  His superstation gave the team a wide audience and enhanced its popularity as the first major league baseball team located in the deep South.  In October 1996 Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting merged, and in 2000 AOL bought Time

Ted Turner

Warner.   As owner of the Braves Turner had to be told by the National League and then by the Baseball Commissioner that ownership and managing don't mix, unlike in years past when Connie Mack of Philadelphia Athletics did just that.  In 2007 Time Warner sold the Atlanta Braves to Liberty Media in part of a cash and stock swap,  and are the current owners of the team. . 

5.  The San Francisco Giants.

The New York Gothams

The San Francisco Giants started out as the New York Gothams baseball team.  They were founded by tobacconist  John B. Day

John B. Day

and ball player Jim Mutrie in 1883.  Many of the team were former members of the Troy (NY) Trojans.  This was the second team Day and Mutrie had founded, the first being the New York Metropolitians who belonged to the American Association.  At some point Mutrie renamed the team the New York Giants.  The Player's League, which was founded in 1890 also fielded a team known as the New York Giants, and many of Day and Mutrie's Giants abandoned him for that team.  When the Player's league folded, C.C. van Cott bought the National Association's Giants.  A while later van Cott sold the Giants to Andrew Freedman in 1895, and in 1902 Freedman sold the team to John T. Brush.

John T. Brush

Brush was an important player in early baseball owning several teams including the short-lived Indianapolis Maroons, and the Cincinnati Reds as well as the New York Giants.  He played a role in fighting competition from the newer American League.  When the Giants won the pennant in 1904 he refused to let them play the AL pennant winners in Boston.  But Brush's health declined considerably during these years, suffering from locomotor ataxia leaving him unable to use his legs.  After suffering from injuries in an auto accident in September 1912 he died en route to California to recuperate and was buried in Indianapolis.

Hempstead

  Harry Hempstead bought the team and owned it until 1919.  Brush was Hempstead's father in law. In 1919 Hampstead allegedly lost the team in a high stakes poker game to Charles Stoneham, a New York Stockbroker.  Stoneham was indicted twice, once for perjury and once again for mail fraud owing to the collapse of two other brokerage houses but was never convicted.

Stoneham

He was a close business associate of Arnold Rothstein, implicated in the notorious Black Socks scandal of 1919.  Stoneham also owned a casino in Havana and a racetrack   The first baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis forced him to sell his racetrack and casino.  Stoneham cooperated with Ban Johnson, who was trying to drive the Yankees from town by refusing to allow them to lease the Giants-owned Polo Grounds for their games, however he realized belatedly that he would lose a valuable tenant in the process so he extended his least one more year.  In that year the Yankees built Yankee Stadium so as to avoid such maneuvers.  Charles Stoneham died in 1936 and his son Horace inherited the team.  Horace Stoneham owned the team for the next 40 years.  

Horace Stoneham and Jacob Ruppert

In 1957, the same year that the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles,  Stoneham moved his team to San Francisco.  When Stoneham finally sold the team in 1976, it almost got moved back to Toronto, New York, or even Tampa Bay, but local businessman Bob Lurie purchased the team and kept it in San Francisco. 

Bob Lurie

Unfortunately the stadium built on Candlestick point was subject to wind and cold temperatures that made playing there less than optimal.  And Lurie was losing millions annually since the team was not doing well.  At the end of 1992 Lurie decided to sell the team.  Originally he could have sold it to Vince Namoli who planned to move it to St. Petersburg, Florida, but was blocked by the National League and ended up selling it for somewhat less money to Peter MacGowan whose family made its money with the Safeway chain of grocery stores.

Peter MacGowan

Under MacGowan's watch they built Pacific Bell Park in 2000 (Since renamed twice as SBC Park then AT&T Park). in the China Basin area, which is an industrial park fronting on San Francisco Bay.   MacGowan owned the team until 2008 when he chose to step down and make another investor, Bill Neukom principal investor.  In 2012 he was forced out because of disagreement about how to share the additional team income as a result of the Giant's winning the 2010 World Series.

Charles Bartlett Johnson

Since then Charles Bartlett Johnson, the 147th richest person in the world according to Forbes, has become the principal investor in the team.  Johnson  is co-owner of Franklin Resources, a mutual fund. 

6.  Philadelphia Phillies.  

The Phillies haven't done as much messing around with their name as other teams but there was some.  When founded in 1883 they were known as the Philadelphia Quakers.

   The team has been acquired from what was left of the Worchester, Massachusetts Worcesters an early National League team. As the Quakers they drifted into being called the Philadelphias, and finally the Phillies, until they were officially called the Phillies.   In the 1940's the owner at the time tried to rename them the "Bluejays" but the name did not catch on.

  After 1949 they were known as the Phillies, as they are today.     

The Phillies took 77 years to win a world series and are now looking for their third such win.  The Cubs of course won their first two in 1907 and 1908 and are still looking for their third.  Alfred Reach who later made a fortune

Alfred Reach

in sporting goods, founded the team in 1875 and served as president until 1899, when he sold his share of the team to his partner, John Rogers.    In 1903 they sold the team but not the park, the Baker Bowl,  to investors led by James Potter.   Then tragedy struck when a balcony at the park collapsed and killed 12 people and injuring hundreds more.  In the lawsuits that flooded in afterwards Rogers and Reach also

Shettsline

sold the park to the new owners.  A year or so later Potter sold the Phillies to Bill Shettsline in 1905.  Shettsline had been manager of the team for the previous five years, and owned it for another 4 before selling it in 1909 and becoming the business manager for the team.   Charles Taft, the brother of President Taft, was owner of the Phillies from 1909 to 1913, i.e. at about the same time as his brother was President of the US. 

Then in 1915 he went on to buy the Cubs as described above.  

From 1913 to 1930 the team was owned by William Baker.  Baker had a reputation for being cheap.  The park where the Phillies played, the Baker Bowl kept the grass trimmed by allowing a flock of sheep to graze there.  After the 1915 world series, where they lost, they had continuous losing seasons until 1930, when at a

Baker and wife

league meeting, Baker died suddenly.  Gerald Nugent was a bit better than Baker, but the team limped along for another decade with only one season where they managed to play ball above .500.  In 1942 he sought to sell the team to Bill Veeck, but when Kennesaw Mountain Landis heard Veeck wanted to field black players from the Negro Leagues, he vetoed that sale and Baker ended up selling the team to lumber baron

Cox

William D. Cox.   Cox seemed to be ideal as an owner, a bit more forthcoming with money to buy players, but it soon came out that he was betting on baseball, and Landis banned him from baseball for life, the first and last time any owner has suffered such a fate.  The team was sold to the Carpenter family that same year. 

RRM Carpenter iii

In 1949 the father died and R.R.M. Carpenter Jr. took over.  He was the youngest owner in baseball history being only 34.  He owned the team and was president until 1972, when his son, RRM Carpenter III took over.  The family sold the team in 1980 when free agency had made baseball much more expensive.  William Y. Giles was principal owner and was president from 1981-1997.  In 1997 co-owner David P. Montgomery became president of the team. 

7.  The Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pittsburgh Pirates started as the Alleghenys, in the then separate city across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh,  Allegheny City.  This was in 1876, when they joined the American Association.  When they joined the National league in 1877 and renamed themselves the Pittsburgh Alleghenies.  It wasn't until a dispute over a player hired away from the Philadelphia led to accusations that the Pittsburgh club was "piratical" that the owners decided that, hey, that's a pretty good nickname and they became "The Pittsburgh Pirates" in 1891.    Or the "Pittsburg" pirates, since The United States Board of Geographic Names, told the city to lose the "h".  It was only in 1911 that the city of Pittsburgh got the terminal "h" back.  

McKnight

Denny McKnight was the founder, first owner and also manager of the team.  In 1890 the team went through a crisis when most of the players left to join the Pittsburgh Burghers of the new Player's League.  When the PL folded the next year he got most of them back.    William A Nimick was principal owner from 1887 to 1891. William Kerr and Phil Auten owned the team from 1891 to 1899.  

Dreyfuss

Barney Dreyfuss finally bought the team in 1900, keeping it until he died in 1932.  His family made its money in manufacture and sale of spirits, and he emigrated to America at the age of 16 to avoid conscription into the German Army. As owner he was one of the first who built a modern steel and concrete ball park, Forbes Field in 1909.  He was instrumental in establishing the World Series and in making peace between the two major leagues.  He won two World Series and six pennants during his tenure.  His widow, Florence Dreyfuss owned the team until 1946 when it was sold to John Galbreath, building contractor, who headed a group including singer-actor Bing Crosby and others.

B. Crosby

  Galbreath and his investor group owned it for almost 40 years, until 1985.  The Pirates during this era won three more World Series titles. In 1985 the Pittsburgh Associates bought the team in order to keep it in Pittsburgh during a time when drug scandals cast a shadow on baseball in the city. 

Nutting

Kevin McClatchy, heir to the newspaper fortune, bought the team in 1996 and sold it to current owner Robert Nutting in 2007, who is also a newspaper publisher.  







8.  Cincinnati Reds

In 1869 the Cincinnati Red stockings became the first all professional team in baseball.  In 1876 the Reds became a charter member of the National League, but got in trouble almost immediately because of they insisted on playing ball on Sunday and serving beer at their stadium, two things dear to the hearts of its largely German fan base.  After a couple of years in the wilderness, as it were, they formed the American Association to compete with the National League.  Owing to a dispute with Browns owner Von Der Ahe about who was to become president of the American Association, the Reds along with the Brooklyn Bridegrooms (Dodgers) left the league and joined the National league in 1890.  

Justus Thorner owned the Cincinnati team from 1882-1890 when it belonged to the American Association.  John T. Brush who also owned the New York Giants bought it and moved it back to the National League whence it had been expelled years earlier. 

August Herrmann

He sold it in 1902 to August Herrmann, who was also for many years the president of the Baseball Commission in the days before single baseball commissioners.  August Herrman owned the team until 1927.  CJ McDiarmid owned the team from 1927-1929. Sidney Weil owned the team from 1929 to 1933, when he sold it to Powel Crosley, Jr.  

Powel Crosley started out as the automobile manufacturer of the Crosley an inexpensive automobile, but later got into automobile accessories and radios and then broadcasting.  His station Cincinnati's WLW was once so powerful it could be heard in Siberia.   In sports he was the originator of night baseball games, receiving permission to hold night games under artificial light in 1935.  

Dewitt

Crosley died in 1961 and in that same year Bill DeWitt (see St. Louis Browns and Detroit Tigers) bought the team and owned it until 1967.  DeWitt is often remembered for making one of the worst trades in baseball history, Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas.  Nevertheless DeWitt is credited with building the basis for the "Big Red Machine" which went on to such dominance in the 1970s,  Francis Dale bought the team as principal owner in 1967 and owned it until he sold his share to minority owner Louis Nippert in 1973.  Nippert was an heir to the Procter and

Gamble fortune.  He sold the team to William and James Williams in 1980, and the Williams brothers sold the team to Marge Schott in 1984. 

Marge Schott was the heir to a lumber fortune and her husband owned automobile dealerships and other interests, so when he died in 1968 she inherited those as well.

Marge with Schottzie

  Although the Reds won the world series during her ownership, she is best remembered for her apparent racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia, referring to two of her players as "million dollar niggers", repeatedly expressing sympathy for Adolf Hitler, and criticising players who wore earrings as "fruity".  She also allowed her Saint Bernards the freedom of the baseball field and to defecate on it at will. 

McSherry

When an umpire, John McSherry,  collapsed on the field and shortly afterwards died,  she was heard to complain bitterly when officials decided to postpone the game 24 hours.   By 1989 they had had enough of the Marge Schott, the minority owners were plotting to oust her, and she had been suspended for the third time by Major League Baseball.  She sold her majority interest in the team but retained a minority interest.  

Bob Castellini and Pete Rose in 2011

Carl Lindner Jr. a man who had made his money in a chain of convenience stores and insurance, got a majority share of the Reds in 1999 when he was already in his late 80s.  He sold a majority interest in the team in 2005 to Bob Castellini the current majority owner of the team.

9.  Houston Astros

The Houston Astros were part of a National League expansion to the Houston area, and while they just this year moved to the American League, their first 51 years were with the National League so I am discussing them here.  

  They did not begin to play in major League Baseball until the 1962 season, and were known initially as the Houston Colt 45's.   In 1965 they   changed their name to the Houston Astros, in a salute to the fact that  the US Space Program was headquartered in Houston.   They also started play in their new stadium, the Astrodome, which was the first indoor stadium that was fully enclosed by a dome, which meant that weather was not a factor in the playing of games.

The Astrodome was also the first major stadium where games were played on an artificial turf surface, known originally as "Chemgrass" and later as "Astroturf".  

The major owner of the group that originated the Houston Astros was Roy Hofheinz, who developed a series of radio and TV stations in Texas and was the driving force in developing both  the

Roy Hofheinz

Astrodome and the artificial grass that Monsanto manufactured for sports venues.  In 1972 the team was acquired by General Electric and the Ford Motor Company who were creditors of Hofheinz.  Then it was sold to Jim McMullen, naval architect and marine engineer  in 1979.  He sold the team to Drayton McLane in 1992.

Drayton McLane Jr.

  Drayton McLane Jr. is on the Forbes 400 richest persons list as #272 in 2009.  His money is in the grocery distribution, and logistics.  When McLane sold his grocery distribution business to Walmart in 1990, he used to proceeds two years later to purchase the Astros.   In 2011 Jim Crane of Crane Capital, purchased the team for a reported $610 million. 
Crane Capital has most of its holdings in energy and in shipping and logistics.  In 2013 they started playing as an American League team. 

In 2000, the team moved to newly constructed Enron Field.  Later when Enron collapsed and its shady business practices were exposed, the new field was re-named Minute Maid Park, after the purveyor of Orange juice, which is owned by Coca Cola.  In contrast to the old Astrodome, the new field has a completely retractable

roof, allowing play in all weather conditions, but during pleasant weather it can retract so play can occur in the open air.  The field has natural turf rather than the old "AstroTurf".  AstroTurf has gained a reputation for increasing certain kinds of sports injuries, though the surface properties have been improved over the years.

10.  New York Mets

The New York Mets were the other team created in the team expansions of 1962.  They were created to replace the void left by the same-year departure of both the Dodgers and the Giants from New York.  They played their first two seasons in a venerable old park known as "The Polo Grounds", which was replaced by Shea Stadium in 1964, and by their new stadium, Citi Field, in 2008.  

Payson

Joan Whitney Payson, who inherited wealth as one of the members of the Whitney family of New York, was instrumental in regaining a National league team for New York.  After flirting with starting a team with the proposed Continental League, she induced the National League to grant  one of its two 1962 expansions to her, founding the New York Metropolitans or "Mets" as they inevitably became. 

Wilpon

After the team was kind of a joke for most of the 1960s, they won the world series in 1969 against the Baltimore Orioles.   When Joan died in 1975 her husband took over as owner.  He sold the team to Doubleday and Co., the book publisher in 1980.   Doubleday was

purchased by Bertellsman, the German publishing giant, and then Doubleday and Fred Wilpon bought the team from them.  In 2002 Wilpon bought out Nelson Doubleday's portion.  Bill Maher,   is a minority owner.     






11.  Washington Nationals

The Nationals, the third attempt to establish a baseball team in the nation's capital, started as an expansion team in 1969 as the Montreal Expos,

The M is a W upside down

the first major league baseball team in Canada.  They were named after the world's fair held in Montreal known as Expo '67.  It was never a very dominant team, winning its only division title in 1981, a year when a player's strike shortened the season.    In 1994, the year that a player's strike wiped out the end of the season and post season play, the Expos were also in first place in the Eastern division.   In 2002, a vote by the 30 owners, agreed by a 28-2 margin to contract by two teams, the teams eliminated being the Minnesota Twins and the Expos.  The Expos would have been history but a court decision saved the Minnesota Twins, and since the fates of the Twins and the Expos were linked together (Can't just get rid of one team) they kept both of them.  In 2005 the team was moved to Washington DC and became the Washington Nationals.  

Bronfman

The initial majority owner of the Expos was Charles Bronfman, who owned the Seagram distillery empire, and remained principal owner until 1990, which is when the Seagram empire began to unravel because of a series of bad business decisions.  In 1991 Claude Brochu headed a group of investors who stepped in to keep the Expos from moving to Arizona, however in the wake of this

Premier Lucien Bouchard

acquisition they began selling off the best players, the team's performance tanked, and with the refusal of both the Canadian and Quebec governments to help with the construction of a new stadium, Brochu threw up his hands and sold his share of the team to New Yorker Jeffrey Loria in 1998.  

Jeffrey Loria

Loria also tried to get the Quebec government to help build a new stadium but Premier Lucien Bouchard balked at that suggestion, especially in light of the fact that Olympic Stadium, 25 years old by that time, hadn't been paid for completely yet either.  Major League Baseball pooled its resources and bought the team from Loria.  In a complicated maneuver, John Henry, owner of the Florida Marlins, then sold his team to Loria, which made it possible for him to buy the Boston Red Sox. 

Ted Lerner

Loria moved the Expos staff to Florida but when contraction plans fell through and the other Expos owners filed a RICO lawsuit against Loria, which they lost.  To make a rather long story short, the team ended up in Washington DC as the Nationals in 2006.   Current owner, Ted Lerner, a Washington DC area real estate developer bought the team that year.  

12.  San Diego Padres

C. Arnhodt Smith

C. Arnholdt Smith owned the San Diego Padres since 1955 as a minor league baseball team.  In 1969 they became one of two expansion teams in major league baseball.  He sold the team to Ray Kroc, the guiding force for McDonald's corporation in 1974, about the same time Kroc stepped down as CEO.  Kroc was the owner of the team until his death in early 1984.

  His widow, Joan Kroc owned the team until 1990 when she sold it to TV producer Tom Werner.  In 1994 Werner sold the team to John Moores a software company executive.  In 2008 Moores and his wife filed for divorce and as part of that process he sold the team in 2012 to an investor group headed by John Fowler, who is CEO of a local beer distributor in the San Diego area.  

13.  Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies were an expansion team announced in 1991.  They began play in Mile High Stadium (home of the Denver Broncos) in 1993, while Coors Field was being built.

Pete Coors

They have, in their twenty years of existence played in the post-season three times, going to the world series in 2009, where they lost to the Boston Red Sox. 

The Colorado Rockies are owned by an investment group led by Pete Coors, who is chairman of the Miller-Coors Brewing Company.  Coors lost as the Republican candidate for US Senate from Colorado in 2004. 

 

14.  Miami Marlins

The Miami Marlins started out as the Florida Marlins in 1993, the same year as the Colorado Rockies.  Until 2012, they played in the Sun Life Stadium which was home to the Miami Dolphins Football team.

Huizenga

  Now they play in Marlins Park, which occupies the ground where the old Orange Bowl used to stand, in downtown Miami.   They have been to the World Series twice, each time as a wild card team, and have won both times, in 1997 and 2003.  They changed their name officially to the Miami Marlins in 2011, perhaps in acknowledgement of the existence of other teams in Florida in Tampa Bay.  

Jeffrey Loria

Wayne Huizenga owned the team from the outset, as CEO of Blockbuster Video, selling the team in 1999 to John Henry who had the team for two years and then sold it in 2001 to current owner Jeffrey Loria who was also involved in the transfer of the Montreal Expos to Washington DC as the Nationals.    Jeffrey Loria is a dealer in fine art.  


15.  Arizona Diamondbacks

The Arizona Diamondbacks are an expansion team founded in 1998 in Phoenix, Arizona.   After only 4 seasons they won a world series championship in 2001 over the New York Yankees. 

Jerry Colangelo

Jerry Colangelo was the driving force in obtaining an expansion team for Phoenix, and was the principal owner for most of the club's existence.  Colangelo has also brought basketball teams, soccer teams, arena football, and even an NHL team to town.  While he did win a world series under his watch, he also took the team close to bankruptcy and turned it over to Ken Kendrick in 2004.  

16.  Milwaukee Brewers 

The Brewers switched from the American to the National league in 1998.  Since that time they have clinched the National League Central Division title once, in 2011, but proceeded no farther.   Miller Field was completed about the time they moved to the National League.   For more on the Milwaukee Brewers see my article here.