An Owner Worse Than McNutting

For all of you out there that think we have the worst ownership in sports with the Pirates, well, that's a pretty accurate statement. We're up there. But now, we have some serious competition. Mondesi's House readers, I give you Charles Wang.

No, I'm not going to make a Wang joke here. Been done too many times this week.

Wang is probably the one and only NHL owner who was actually born in Shanghai. He is the founder of Computer Associates, and by all accounts, is a pretty wealthy guy. Wealthy enough to donate $25 million to SUNY to build the Charles B. Wang Center, completed in 2002. He bought the Islanders in 2000, and he also owns the New York Dragons of the Arena Football League.

Wang certainly is no stranger to controversy. A 2000 class-action suit accused Wang and other Computer Associates officials of wrongly reporting revenue to boost stock prices. A 2004 Forbes article accused Wang of underreporting Islanders television revenue.

So Wang has had some problems. Haven't we all. But I think he sees things from a vantage point that we can only imagine to dream of. From informationweek.com:

As part owner of the NHL's New York Islanders, he once pushed the coaching staff to consider playing a Sumo wrestler in goal.

Didn't a fat guy in goal work in the Mighty Ducks movie?

A sumo wrestler in goal is one thing. But what Wang did yesterday borders on the unreal. GM Neil Smith, architect of the 1994 New York Rangers Stanley Cup team, and new Islanders GM as of June 8, 2006, was fired. The explanation was that philosophical differences between Smith and Wang led to his ouster.
Neil Smith: "Am I being Punk'd?"

That was the first shoe to drop. Then the second shoe came, and with a thud: current Goaltender Garth Snow, a former Penguin, would be the new GM, and retire from the NHL. In the day since this news, at least on local radio, Snow has been called a low-life miser by no less than resident nice guy Stan Savran (doing a guest stint as host of the Junker and Crow Show on ESPN Radio 1250). The national guys are having an absolute field day with this. I can't possibly imagine what it's like to be an Islanders fan today. If that wasn't bad enough, they got this stomach punch: franchise legend Pat LaFontaine, who recently came on board in the front office, was so sickened by this turn of events that he quit yesterday.

It's not a dream...Garth Snow is an NHL GM.

To translate this into Pirate terms, the Islander moves: the Pirates sign Refrigerator Perry as a catcher, hire Jeromy Burnitz as GM, and lose ties to Bill Mazeroski in the process.

Successor to Littlefield?

Of course, Wang's teams have made the playoffs three out of the five years he's been there. And nowhere on his resume do I see "14 consecutive losing seasons". So maybe I shouldn't be so quick to throw stones.