Bloggy Went A-McCourtin’...
My only contact with McCourt came three years ago, when she was one of the keynote speakers (J.P. Ricciardi was the other) at the MIT-Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. McCourt seemed an obvious choice, considering that 1) her husband owned the Los Angeles Dodgers, and 2) she had gotten her MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management some decades earlier.
Her speech was a disaster. Speaking to a mostly young, mostly male crowd interested in analytics, McCourt gave a speech that she must have given dozens of times before, to every organization in Southland from the Ladies Auxiliary of the Pasadena Rotary Club to the Watts Civic Improvement Society. If there was any mention of analytics—and I’m not at all sure there was—it was just a few sentences, tucked among the pablum designed to inspire Greater Los Angelenos to purchase tickets. McCourt couldn’t even reasonably fake the bleeding of Dodger blue. She grew up in Baltimore, then worked in New York and Boston before moving to Los Angeles in 2004 after her husband bought the franchise.
Afterward, the general reaction was equal parts shock and annoyance that McCourt would so blatantly disregard her audience.
Most of which I forgot within 30 minutes of the conclusion of her speech. But it all came back in a rush when news of the separation broke last year, and reports suggested that Jamie McCourt wants control of the Dodgers. It all came back again when I read this report suggesting that she recently harbored aspirations of gaining high political office.
Many stranger things have happened. But I will submit that people who don’t know much about baseball probably shouldn’t own baseball teams, and that people who can’t read their audience probably don’t have much of a future in politics.
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1. Mayor Blomberg Posted: March 17, 2010 at 10:43 PM (#3481125)It certainly worked out horribly for the Yankees under Steinbrenner.
it DID--as long as he was calling the shots
when he was suspended (twice) they had their mini-dynasties
as someone else pointed out, Steinbrenner was personally responsible for the competitive balance that existed through the 80s
McCourt being asked to speak in the first place is ridiculous. The two reasons which might make her look like a obvious choice are flimsy (edit: if not down right silly). She was asked to give a talk on a topic in which she possessed no expertise and she predictably bombed.
Right: there's no reason why such people shouldn't OWN teams, they just shouldn't run them. But that's not what rob said, is it?
If she was asked to speak on sport analytics (i.e. data driven decision making on player personnel), then her qualifications are ridiculous because she simply had no experience in that area (but she was the wife of an owner!). If she was asked to speak on challenges of owning a sports team, then certainly her qualifications make more sense. Rob uses her inability to read her audience as an example of McCourt's political ineptness. But I wouldn't be surprised if McCourt could read her audience perfectly but was simply given a task (i.e., give a speech in an area in which she had no experience) that didn't match her qualifications. And given that situation, she followed the old political adage of answering the question she wished she was asked rather than the one she was actually asked.
Well, according to her husband and his lawyers, she didn't...
But honestly, if you look at the Dodgers' record under the McCourts, it's hard to see any adverse effect from their ownership (beyond the embarrassing divorce). Four playoff appearances and only one losing season in six years ain't bad.
As an aside, Jamie's Wikipedia page says she has taught classes at Sloan (as well as at UCLA). She was clearly a poor choice to speak but it's obvious why they asked her.
In a December 2008 e-mail, Dodgers executive Charles Steinberg presented her with "Project Jamie," a seven-page action plan that included this line: "Goal: Be Elected President of the United States."
Since I am primarily from the "you can't make this stuff up" school of thought, I'll just leave it out there...
I wonder what about the speech made it specifically better suited to a female audience.
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