“So What’s up with Sport Team Owners Anyway?”

“So What’s up with Sport Team Owners Anyway?”

By Glenn Peppers                                                                                      4-28-14

So what is it with these sport team presidents, general managers and owners (Oh, by the way, I hate the title, Team Owners), and front office phonies, anyways? Does the title, sport team owner give these billionaire idiots a God Complex or what? Imagine, telling a sports figure like  (for instance) Shaquille O'neal that you (as a team owner) out of pity simply gave Shaq his a car, and gave him his home, and gave him as a hand out, his money. As if Shaq (or any other ballplayer) didn’t earn their money after almost twenty years in the sport! When in fact Shaquille O'neal worked damned hard for everything he owns! And that goes for all ball players, in any sport... Everywhere! They all work hard by the sweat of their brow for what they have! Nobody gave them anything! Just like Donald Sterling worked for his few pennies to attain his wealth, so did they! 

Take a short trip with me and look back at just a few other Sport Team Owners and one sport bookie, announcer and point man, all who apparently lost their minds in recent years, spewing some pretty wild racist remarks and comments on air, as if they'd lost their minds momentarily! 

Lets first take a look at former Cincinnati Reds Owner, the late Marge Schott. Remember her? This woman was so bad that she once referred to by an ex-employee as follows: 

Marge Schott Cincinnati Reds Baseball team owner

“I think she is the single worst person I've ever known. Spiteful, mean-spirited and evil."

Think Donald Sterling was bad?  Cincinnati Reds team owner, Marge Schott spewed a bevy of horribly insensitive comments toward just about everyone! Here are just a few of them in quotes: 

"Some of the biggest problems in this city come from women wanting to leave the home and work."

"Sneaky goddamn Jews are all alike."

"Never hire another nigger. I'd rather have a trained monkey working for me than a nigger."

"Only fruits wear earrings."

"Everybody knows [Hitler] was good at the beginning, but he just went too far."

                                                              Marge Schott

Then there was the one comment that Marge Schott made that really heated the Reds players! An ex-employee of Schott's, Charles "Cal" Levy, said in his deposition for attorney, Tim Sabo that he’d heard Schott call Reds outfielders, Eric Davis and Dave Parker "Million-Dollar Niggers!" 

Seems Marge Schott was of the same cut of the cloth from the likes of Donald Sterling alright! Heck, they even look somewhat like brother and sister! Both also having a long history of racial intimidations and bullying those she felt were beneath her! Don Sterling and Marge Schott would have had quite the adorable reality show, had she lived! I’m kidding of course... you know that don’t you?... NOT!!!

Al Companis, LA Dodgers General Manager and sports announcer

Then there is the late Al Companis, former LA Dodgers General Manager, and Baseball Sports Announcer. His racist remarks that blacks do not have the intelligence and the smarts to be sport team General Managers was shocking to news anchor, Ted Kopple. To quote Companis on his interview on ABC’s Nightline with Ted Kopple!... 

”Blacks may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager for these positions.” 

                                                     Al Companis

For whatever reason, Al Companis went off on another ridiculous tangent, in the same interview by stating that blacks were awful swimmers, not having the buoyancy necessary to swim! What that had to do with the price of tea on the dark side of Mars is beyond me; asides from being horribly misguided and ignorant. it made him look like a complete fool! As a result of this interview on Nightline, protest erupted the following morning, and as further result, Companis resigned two days later.

Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder, Odd's man and Bookie former NFL Today Host

Finally, there is the late Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder. famous for his odds making and off-hand betting and percentages babel, of which CBS Sports adopted, yet at the same time, dumb-down and changed around Snyder’s format somewhat in order for his longtime bookie skills to not seem as if he were actually giving out gambling or sport betting tips over the air. By law, Jimmy The Greek Snyder could not give out any clues and/or advice on who the fans should wager on in a professional football game, over live television. Synder's talk skills was relegated mainly to interviews, sport percentage babel, talking up only percentages and his amazingly spot on score predictions, based on his odds system of who would win a game using his keen statistics and luck! 

Snyder’s early claim to fame was his Las Vegas betting and bookmaking skills on Professional Football Games. Jimmy The Greek (as he called himself) made such a name for himself doing this that CBS Sports gave him a spot as an odd’s and statistics man, and sports announcer on the long running, CBS football show, NFL Today! 

On January 16, 1988, Jimmy the Greek Snyder was fired by the CBS network (where he had been a regular on NFL Today since 1976), after commenting to WRC-TV reporter Ed Hotaling at Duke Zeibert’s Washington, D.C. restaurant that, African Americans were Naturally Superior Athletes, at least due in part because they had been bred to produce stronger offspring during the slavery era. To Quote Snyder:  

“The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way, because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trade … the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid …”

                   Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder

Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder also commented during that same WRC-TV interview that 

“if blacks take over coaching jobs, like everybody wants them to, there's not going to be anything left for white people."

Now I don’t know about you, but as a black man, my thighs surly don’t go up into my back. If they did, we’d have one hell of a SyFy/sideshow movie going on! In researching, reading and remembering all of these gigantically monumental bouts of diarrhea of the mouth and soul from these people are to say the least, disturbing for me! 

Apparently Donald Sterling was right about one thing. There is a culture out here that feeds this kind of arrogance and exclusion of minorities, and further feeds this False Sense of Entitlement Syndrome! 

Sterling was right! Team Owners appear to have this odd culture of plantation style superiority! It is a culture of bigotry and hatred, and control! It is blind, and it is head strung, fueled by money and power at the hands of a chosen few insecure once adolescent geek wimps with money who think of people as things and possessions, instead of human beings. This arrogance grows like a fungus. It reasons with no one! It functions out of fear, and jealously, breeding hate and intolerance!  

Maybe just maybe sport teams should never be owned by any one person! Who knows, maybe in essence they really aren’t. Maybe those people Donald Sterling was so afraid and concerned about pissing off because of his girlfriend being seen with minorities are the ones who really do own all those basketball teams! Remember, Donald Sterling was speaking up on their behalf as well as his own!

Could it be these people outside of the other 29 other team owners are fueling this separative hate culture in sports; and small minded people like Donald Sterling, Marge Schott, and Al Companis are just figure heads on a chess board of power? 

Given that, maybe the Donald Sterling’s are merely a front, or a symbol to focus on while the real fat cat owners sit behind the scenes, pulling the strings?... Who knows! I guess people in my tax bracket will never really know, will we?

Glenn Peppers