Mavs Mark Cuban: 'Baseball Is A Mess; I'm Thankful They Didn't Let Me Buy A Team'
DALLAS - Groucho Marx once said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban isn't quite as funny as Groucho, but his latest review of the problems with Major League Baseball is no less succinct and no less biting.
"Baseball is a mess right now,'' Cuban tweeted early Tuesday morning, "and they have zero vision to see them out of it. I’m thankful they didn’t let me buy a team.''
Cuban is of course referring to the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball, their World Series cheating scandal, and MLB commissioner's look-the-other-way handling of the issue.
Cuban is of course associated with the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, having been the team's owner for 20 years and having been a ticket-buying fan before that. But he grew up in the Pittsburgh area as much a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates as any team, and has often discussed a love for baseball that led him to multiple attempts over the years to buy a Major League team.
“I really really doubt it," Cuban told FOX Sports seven years ago. "People have to die and go to heaven for that to happen and I hope that doesn’t happen.”
That was a polite take on the closed fraternity that is MLB ownership that didn't let him in when he submitted a $1.3 billion to buy the Chicago Cubs in 2008 but didn't win the bid (long suspected to be in part due to his outspoken nature), that didn't fall right in 2010 when he tried to acquire the Texas Rangers, and that never came to fruition in 2012 he expressed interest in owning the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Advocates of Cuban in baseball argued that his intelligence, passion, devotion and commitment to innovative thinking - all of which the NBA has put to good use - would be an asset for Major League Baseball, which remains behind the times in so many areas.
“I think it has a lot to do with my being outspoken," Cuban said a few years ago, in explaining his lack of success in getting involved. "Major League Baseball is run more like the mafia and more like a fraternity than it is a business.”
Major League Baseball powers-that-be never much liked comments like that. But now they have larger problems that simple criticism ... and Cuban seems glad to be neither part of those problems or part of the solution.
