Game 33: Blue Jays at Twins

Roberto Alomar, radio guy, John Olerud. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Time: 7:10 Central

Weather: Partly cloudy, 52°

Opponent’s SB site: Bluebird Banter

Radio: Gets louder after 8PM

Tonight’s Blue Jays hurler is Patrick Corbin, who in 2018 signed a six year, $140 million contract with Washington, and boy did they get hosed; an ERA of 5.11 and WAR of 2.8. He was slightly better in Texas last year, and is off to a decent start in Toronto. Corbin’s primarily a sinker/slider guy who will mix in a curve and change; the slider’s his best pitch. Starting for the Twins is Simeon of the Long Name, who would not be starting for the Twins if a bunch of other starters weren’t injured.

Tonight we’re gonna take a little break from Baseball Stories, and veer off instead into a Cautionary Fan Tale. About how any ownership situation can, always, get worse.

I was an Oregon resident for most of my first 30 years, and a Portland Trailblazer fan for about 25 years. I largely gave up that fandom in 2015, because by then my sports soul had switched to the Twins. Also, because after 14 years without winning a playoff series, the Blazers had finally won a first round in fabulous, thrilling fashion:

I just knew in my heart that this was the happiest watching the NBA could make me. Nothing would top it. The Blazers weren’t going to win a championship in my lifetime (they did when I was four but I didn’t notice). Accept that, take the joy, move on.

So how has the team done since? I was curious.

They actually advanced to the Western Conference Finals in 2019, where they got swept. They’ve stunk badly the last four years, although they snuck into the playoffs this year (with a record of 42-40, since the NBA has Too Many Playoff Teams). And got handily beaten in five games. Still, better than a lot of people had predicted.

The team’s former owner, Paul Allen, died in 2018. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft, wasn’t exactly a beloved figure in Portland, but he wasn’t reviled either. He was a basically harmless rich weirdo; he’d pay the Rolling Stones to party on his yacht so he could play guitar with them. (He must have paid quite well.) After Allen’s death, his family ran the team for some years.

The fam fired the team’s reasonably successful head coach in 2021, hiring Chauncey Billups instead. Even though Billups settled a case involving alleged sexual assault in 2000. Billups’s four years running the team led to a 117-211 record; he coached one game this season before being suspended by the NBA after a federal indictment on gambling charges. I’ll just let Wiki take it from here:

“The indictments alleged that the defendants were part of a sophisticated criminal conspiracy involving several members and associates of the Bonanno, Genovese, Gambino and Lucchese crime families in New York. Prosecutors claimed that the group organized rigged high-stakes poker games in cities including Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan, and the Hamptons, where victims were enticed to play alongside former professional athletes such as Billups and [former player Damon] Jones. Participants allegedly used concealed technology—including contact lenses and glasses designed to read marked cards, modified shuffling machines, and an X-ray table—to cheat players out of millions of dollars. Officials stated that when victims refused to pay their debts, members of the crime families resorted to threats and intimidation. The scheme is believed to have defrauded victims of approximately $7 million, according to federal authorities.“

Not just your average points-shaving scheme, that one!

Billups’ replacement has been assistant coach/former NBA player Tiago Splitter; he’s the one who helped Portland sneak into this year’s playoffs. But he’s still considered the “interim coach.” Why? Because new owner Tom Dundon (who bought the team at auction a year ago) doesn’t want to pay Splitter any more than an assistant coach’s salary.

I didn’t know who Tom Dundon was until this last week, when I read Drew Magary’s article “There’s a new contender for worst owner in sports.” (Magary is a Defector and former Deadspin writer; his book The Night the Lights Went Out is the only book about surviving a stroke that didn’t make me want to hurl the book across the room.)

Magary tells us how Dundon made his billions; subprime auto loans. These involved loaning car buyers purchase money with a deceptively low rate, burying in the fine print how the rates could skyrocket within a few years. Two-thirds of customers ended up with an interest rate of over 20%. Dundon even beat private equity in selling these loans, and as Magary writes, “When you’re an even bigger scumbag than private equity, that’s quite a feat.”

Dundon refused to giveaway T-shirts at the team’s first home playoff game in five years (something that teams usually do), and requires team employees to check out of hotels at 12:30 to avoid extra stay costs, even if the team isn’t scheduled to leave town until several hours later. (When the Blazers had a play-in game for the playoffs in Denver, the team masseuse didn’t have anywhere to perform pre-game treatment of the players.)

And when it comes to coach Splitter, Dundon apparently made him an incredibly lowball offer, and has told the team he wants any new coach to accept a salary of $1 million a year — nice money for you or me, but well below the norm of what NBA coaches make (the lowest is paid $2 million, according to this site). One source told The Athletic that the way the team’s treating Splinter is “the most vicious thing I’ve encountered in 30-plus years.”

Now I’m sure Blazer fans will accept a lower-paid coach if that means Dundon actually is willing to spend on payroll (the NBA has a salary cap, but there are ways around it, and the top payroll team this season outspent the bottom by about 50% more). Still, there’s indications that this guy is one heckuva cheap dude. And he’s already soaked state taxpayers for $365 million in arena upgrades and wants the city/county to give him $235 million more. (For an arena that cost $554 million in today’s dollars to build the thing in the first place.)

So be upset with the Pohlads if you like (I’m not crazy about them either). But remember — any new owner can ALWAYS be worse. (You never know, Jeff Loria might want to get back into baseball ownership…)

Also, I learned that the Blazers have a player named “Scoot.” Real name, Sterling, but everyone calls him Scoot. That’s pretty cool.