Professional sports team owners are like Navy SEALs, giant squid and Paris Hilton's high school diploma: They're shadowy, mysterious and almost nobody has actually seen one up close.
Say you wanted to get in touch with George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees and probably the most famous team owner in sports today. You would call up the Yankees front office and get routed to a secretary, who would transfer you to an assistant, who would send you to a public relations staffer who would direct you to an intern, who would dutifully write your name down on a piece of paper before promptly burning it. After all, the Boss is far too busy for anyone without a red-hot arm or a red-hot checkbook.
Now let's say you wanted to speak with Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, one of the most powerful tech executives in the country. Mr. Leonsis (or "Ted", as almost everyone calls him) is reachable through 15 different means, according to his own estimation, including two public e-mail addresses, his personal blog, the Capitals' message board, an AIM screen name and a Facebook profile. As I write this on a Tuesday afternoon, Leonsis has already uploaded three blog posts and is currently logged into Instant Messenger.
While Steinbrenner and his cigar-smoking, back office-prowling contemporaries may represent the model owner of the past, Ted and his fellow first-generation billionaires are the wave of the future. Owners like Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks) and Arte Moreno (Los Angeles Angels) grew up die-hard sports fans and just happened to make enough money to live the dream. Contrast this with any number of owners who had franchises dropped in their laps simply because they won the genetic lottery. I'm sure some of these guys couldn't give you directions from first to second base unless they had their personal drivers behind the wheel.
In every major sport it has become painfully obvious that good owners share a few basic traits. They love their teams and their sports above all else, they have the necessary cash to bring in the right people, they'll do almost anything to win and they leave the actual on-field decision-making to the real experts. Also, if the fans are lucky, the owners might actually realize they exist.
In Leonsis' case, these characteristics are only the beginning. Since he bought a 100 percent stake in the Capitals and Mystics and a 44 percent stake in the Wizards eight years ago, the current vice chairman emeritus at AOL has steered the District's hockey team into the local spotlight. Employing a wide-open approach that obsessively seeks out fan participation and feedback, Leonsis has secured one of the NHL's most exciting young players in Alex Ovechkin and is in the process of slowly transforming the Capitals from the ground up.
When he's not in his Arlington offices overlooking the Capitals practice rink, which is open for public skating for a ridiculously low price, Leonsis constantly updates "Ted's Take," his blog that ranges from posts about hockey to his thoughts on the latest gadgets from Best Buy.
Recently, the Capitals owner used the space to blast local radio personalities for belittling attendance at D.C. United soccer games, demonstrating a refreshing level of loyalty to sports fandom in general and winning him serious points throughout the metro area. I'll personally give you $20 if you find an impassioned speech from Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos that even mentions Major League Soccer.
Perhaps most telling of all is a list Leonsis made after an airplane he traveled aboard was forced to make a crash landing back in the early 1980s. On it, he spells out his 101 life goals, 75 of which are currently checked off. They range from the ordinary (have healthy children, pay off college debts) to the extraordinary (create the world's largest media company, start a charity) to the just plain unusual (invent a board game, go one-on-one with Michael Jordan). It's enough to make a Nobel Prize winner green with envy.
While I would like to predict that more owners like Leonsis will come along, I'm afraid that might be wishful thinking. In the money-clogged world of professional sports, finding someone so enthusiastic, transparent and driven (not to mention rich) is rare in what remains a true old boys club. But after all, what do I know? If you disagree, there are seven different ways to reach me. Pick one.
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