The Marlins are looking for new ownership, and the search has ended up in some bizarre places. First the Kushner family was rumored to make, then withdraw, a bid for the team in February. Now Tom Glavine and Tagg Romney are reportedly dueling with a Derek Jeter–Jeb Bush bid. At this point, who ISN’T trying to buy the Marlins? We put together our ownership dream teams, as it seems no one is off the table.
Michael Baumann: Chipper Jones and Tipper Gore. (1) The rhyming thing. (2) It fits the pattern of early-2000s baseball star and family member of an early-2000s political figure. (3) The Marlins take a lot of embarrassing losses in Florida, and nobody knows how to take embarrassing losses in Florida better than the Gore family.
Jack McCluskey: Mark Cuban and Alex Rodriguez. Cuban’s got plenty of cash and possible political ambitions, and he’s expressed interest in owning a baseball team before. A-Rod has ties to Miami and, obviously, a real baseball pedigree. This ownership group would be entertaining — potentially even more so than the (non-TMGS) product on the field.
Paolo Uggetti: Richard “Goose” Gossage and Dick Cheney.
Sam Schube: Ken Griffey Sr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Schube: Ken Griffey Jr. and Joseph P. Kennedy III.
Ben Lindbergh: Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and Mike Mussina.
The modern baseball ownership group must be conversant with stats and smart about spending, so no bidders could be better suited to take over the National League’s lowest-attended team than two baseball-obsessed former Fed chairmen and an egghead future Hall of Famer. Greenspan played sandlot ball, memorized baseball stats and developed his own system of scoring notation, and produced Fever Pitch. (Fine, Fever Pitch was a different Alan Greenspan.) Bernanke blogs about baseball for Brookings, thinks our political leaders could learn from the Nationals, aspires to be MLB commissioner, and has thoughts on ERA.
We also need a ’90s baseball star to cement the sale, and the best choice is Mussina, a deserving Hall of Famer who’s headed for induction one of these years. Mussina earned an econ degree from Stanford in 3 1/2 years, wrote his senior thesis on the economics of signing out of high school as compared with college, and declared the most recent recession months before economic experts officially did. This trio will either assemble the most monetarily brilliant team the sport has ever seen or waste all of its time arguing about interest rates.
Katie Baker: Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle.
Kevin Clark: Jay Buhner and Hunter Biden.
Mallory Rubin: Hillary Clinton and Carmelo Anthony. These two could both really use a win. And if we can’t keep the White House away from Donald Trump, at least we can keep Marlins Park away from the Kushners!
Lindbergh: Ozzie Smith and Ross Perot.
Baumann: Kevin Appier and Roger Clinton.
Riley McAtee: Dwayne Johnson and Howard Dean. How much fun would this be? Baseball desperately needs an owner that can rival Steve Ballmer’s energy level, and Dean could be the one to do it.
David Shoemaker: John Rocker and Track Palin.
Lindbergh: Fred McGriff and Robin Dole.
Clark: Mark Grace and Barron Trump.
