The Biz of Baseball's Maury Brown just took a flamethrower to the Houston media. (And it was pretty awesome).
With an expanded article on yesterday's Forbes piece, Maury Brown has some bones to pick:
The story on Forbes is mostly interesting for one thing: it’s amazing that myself, and Richard Sandomir of The New York Times are really the only two that have reported on past dealings with Crane’s global-supply chain company and their discrimination and war-profiteering pasts.
Sports sections in the Houston market have been devoid of the report. Whether it’s a matter of just feeling it was not newsworthy or not, it should be noted that Champion Energy, a Crane Capital company, and the Astros are very large Houston Chronicle advertisers.
Also, it's not necessarily the case that, because Crane was in advanced negotiations to buy the Astros, Cubs, and Rangers, MLB knows about these (pretty serious) charges:
I conducted several interviews with executives within Major League Baseball for the Forbes article. The issue of discrimination was known, but aspects such as the war profiteering, were not. That was concerning given Crane’s multiple attempts at ownership prior. The explanation was that deep due-diligence work does not begin until an exclusive arrangement is reached between owner and potential buyer. Part of the reasoning boiled down to clubs having control of vetting potential owners that could reach double-digits, beforehand. The league is really there to only make sure that the deal does not somehow place the club under extended debt duress, or that there is something so incredibly egregious that it would throw red flags with Commissioner Selig and the owners.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
