One morning in October 2016, I made a phone call from a hotel room in Cleveland, not far from Progressive Field. The Cleveland Indians were about to host the Chicago Cubs in Game 1 of the World Series. A franchise was going to end a long and harrowing drought. I was in town to cover the series for The Kansas City Star, which is why I was interested in talking to John Sherman, a minority owner of the Indians and a Royals season ticket holder.
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Sherman had moved to Kansas City in the 1970s, made a fortune in the energy business and came to spend his summers following the local baseball team. He told me about his father, Jack, who had grown up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He told me about following the Royals during their glorious run in the late 1970s and ’80s. He talked about the joy of being a fan, a joy that had been revived during World Series runs in 2014 and ’15.
“It starts with being a fan,” he said.
By that morning in Cleveland, Sherman was fully on board with his new investment in the Indians. He had become interested in sports ownership after a company he founded, Inergy, L.P., underwent a merger in 2013. He had time to pursue other ventures. He preferred baseball, he said. He found a comfortable fit in Cleveland. In that moment, the club was closing in on an elusive world championship.
I thought back to that conversation Tuesday, after The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark broke the news that Sherman is heading up a group in discussions to buy the Kansas City Royals from longtime owner David Glass.
#Royals owner David Glass in discussions to sell the club, sources tell me and @jaysonst. Story: https://t.co/GnTLMpJGgQ $
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 27, 2019
The sale is not final, of course. There are hurdles that remain. The price, for starters, could surpass $1 billion, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. It would be subject to approval from Major League Baseball’s owners. Sherman would need to divest himself from the Indians if, and when, it is finalized. And it’s also not clear what other partners — in Kansas City or elsewhere — might be involved in the prospective ownership group.
So there are your caveats. There is your context. Yet there’s also this: Tuesday may have marked the dawn of a new era for baseball in Kansas City, one defined by a potential owner who has considered himself a Royals fan for most of his adult life.
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“You really have to be a fan,” Sherman told me in 2016, discussing his new minority ownership with the Indians. “It starts with baseball. It’s a business, and it’s an interesting business. But if you’re not a fan, I don’t think you’ll enjoy the business.”
If you have spent any time observing the Royals over the last two decades, you probably have opinions about the Glass family. Maybe they are strong. Maybe they have evolved. But they are likely there.
Glass bought the team in 2000 for just $96 million, collecting a dilapidated asset that had fallen on hard times following the death of owner Ewing Kauffman in 1993 and the strike in ’94. The team was bad. The economics of baseball were squeezing small-revenue clubs. The team did not get better. And Glass had been present during those lost years without an owner, serving as an interim chairman and CEO during the very time the franchise depreciated so much in value.
For a time, it seemed like no owner could be more loathed, more detested, more criticized for the way they ran their team. To put it another way: It did not seem like David Glass much enjoyed the business of baseball.
Then it all changed. Well, not overnight. But it did change. Glass hired general manager Dayton Moore to run the club’s baseball operations department in 2006. He invested more money in the club. He listened to the right people. The club spent on the draft and amateur scouting all around the world. Payrolls would increase. (Glass also collected plenty of public money from taxpayers to renovate Kauffman Stadium, though that’s a story for another time.)
The result, as well chronicled by Kansas City Star columnist Sam Mellinger, was one of the worst small-market owners turning into a perfectly adequate one. The result was a playoff breakthrough in 2014 and a World Series championship in 2015 and a parade in downtown Kansas City … and the most unbelievable sight any Kansas City sports fan could imagine: There was Glass, once a symbol of a lost franchise, hoisting the World Series trophy in the visitors clubhouse at Citi Field. There was Glass, presiding over the city’s crowning sports achievement of the century.
David Glass celebrates a World Series win with manager Ned Yost. (Al Bello/USA TODAY Sports)
The story arc of Glass makes a proper accounting of his tenure difficult. No owner is perfect, of course. Under Glass, the club nixed a naming-rights deal for Kauffman Stadium and negotiated one of the worst local television deals in the sport. There were also perceptions that died a hard death. Glass has always gone to more home games than most fans realize. He loves baseball. He is the kind of baseball fan who enjoys the history and hates the shift. And the end? Well, we’re not there yet.
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At this moment, it’s not clear what has motivated Glass to negotiate a possible sale. He is 84 years old. He would make an enormous profit considering the meager price he paid nearly 20 years ago. Still, he has never publicly disclosed a willingness to sell the team.
It would seem, considering the escalating franchise values and rising television rights contracts, that the business of baseball is a good one. It would seem that it will stay that way. For now, though, we know this: Sherman and his group seemingly want in. Which brings up another question: What kind of owner would they be?
Sherman is well respected in Kansas City as a businessman and entrepreneur. He is well regarded as a civic leader. He is involved in the community and known to others who are. Yet his public profile has mostly been understated and under the radar. Maybe that’s not unusual. He certainly has done few things that come with the scrutiny of owning a cherished institution.
There would be questions of spending and investment and the front office. There would be questions about the club’s current rebuild. The team is in the midst of retooling its farm system and pointing toward 2021 and beyond, following a similar blueprint to the one that resulted in a championship. No plan is the same, of course, but the front office putting it into practice largely is. We will know more in a year or two.
There are also big-picture questions, things like stadium leases and television contracts and the health of baseball in one of the smallest markets in the league. If you want answers now … well, we don’t have them. The potential sale of the Royals is not official. The Glass family is still in charge.
But at the very least, we can say this about those answers: Another ownership group believes it does have some.
(Top photo of Rob Manfred, left, and David Glass in 2016: Denny Medley / USA TODAY Sports)
