Jim Crane, the owner of Houston Astros needs to call Mark Cuban, the celebrated billionaire, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks right away. Crane should take a lesson from Cuban’s playboy on how to handle a crisis – and fast. The guy could not have screwed up any more from the press conference he did last week offering a poor attempt to apologize for the cheating scandal.
Instead of offering a contrite recount of his team’s actions, Crane attempted to deflect any accountability placed on himself and argued that fellow owners, Astros fans, and general baseball enthusiasts essentially accept their World Series title as nothing more than a well-deserved accomplishment by a quality team.
Well, you can’t do that, Jim. Instead, you should have done what Cuban did when faced with the sexual harassment scandal brought on by the action of the Mavericks’ former CEO. Upon an internal investigation’s findings, Cuban apologized to his front office staff, apologized to the general public, gave millions to women’s causes, hired a qualified CEO to replace that one (who happened to be also an African American female), and then went on a media circuit to answer any and all questions. At one point, Cuban stated that “I don’t run away from my mistakes.”
Cuban fully recognized that as the owner, he is ultimately accountable for the operations of his company and that he didn’t know about the sexual harassment case was a problem in and of itself. Crane, on the other hand, tried to do the opposite and exonerate himself of the cheating done by his employees. In doing so, he put into question not only his team but Major League Baseball. League Commissioner Rob Manfred now must step and suspend Crane from baseball for at least a year, if not a lifetime, enforcing them to sell. I believe this issue will go down as one of the great scandals in MLB history – as bad as Pete Rose’s betting escapades and, if not addressed, could reach proportions equivalent to the 1919 Black Sox crisis. This is how bad it’s going to get.