Monday, January 31, 2011

Martin Luther King III wants to own the New York Mets--(Watch the video)

Martin Luther King III/Courtesy: Robin Nelson-New York Post
Yeah, that Martin Luther King, his son that is. Mr. King is apparently part of a group that is angling to purchase at least a portion of the New York Mets.

The Mets are now becoming "In Play", due to the huge financial losses that owner Fred Wilpon suffered in the Bernard Madoff scandal. For his part, King wants to be the first black owner in Major League Baseball, a statistic that is alternately scary and strangely not surprising. The other potential owners include money man Larry Meli, former Met Ed Kranepool and Donn Clendenon Jr, who's father played for the Mets in the late 60's.

Read more from the New York Post RIGHT HERE

King's hometown paper, the AJC has more on this RIGHT HERE

We find this a fascinating story for several reasons. One of them is that having lived in Atlanta for many years, we are very familiar with the King family and they have gone to great lengths to profit off the legacy of MLK Jr. We do wonder where the money for this big of an undertaking would be coming from.

What's more scary to us is that Baseball has no minority owners. In some respects, it should be the most diverse of all the professional sports and yet its not. We aren't implying there is a conspiracy afoot, but it really made us raise an eyebrow. There are plenty of minorities in a financial position to be able to afford such a thing, but yet they aren't in. You do have several teams that have become corporately owned (see-Atlanta Braves) and you would think baseball would try and promote individual ownership. You'd think.

Anyway, enough of the soapbox. We'll keep an eye on this story and see how it develops.

Check out this utterly hilarious commercial spoof of the Mets now hiring. Courtesy: GREGandLou:

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