Maury Brown, who runs the Business Of Baseball website, has a cameo in Forbes Magazine today to talk about the sale of the Astros to Jim Crane. While there aren’t any incredibly surprising new stories here, there are some very unsavory details added to stories that were already discussed before. For instance, take the discrimination case against his company, Eagle Global Logistics:
Crane told his subordinates not to hire blacks because “once you hire blacks, you can never fire them.” On other occasions, Crane explained the reason he wanted to keep blacks out of the company was that his top managers are bigoted and they would mistreat the minorities, “giving them no choice but to sue Eagle.”
Witnesses also said Crane did not permit the company to advertise job openings because he did not want to create a paper trail of unhired qualified minorities.
Thats uh, that’s not a good thing at all. His company also engaged in some good ol’ fashioned war profiteering:
A further matter that will sure to raise eyebrows, Crane’s Eagle Global Logistics has settled war profiteering charges with the Justice Department. All told, EGL was sued four times by the Department of Justice.
In August 2006, Eagle paid $4 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice alleging that the company had inflated the costs of military shipments to Iraq.
While neither of these things is a particularly good reason to think that the Astros will be under bad management, it definitely does show a side of Crane that should give fans some doubt about how happy they are with the sale of the team to him.
For the record, Richard Justice thinks Crane will be approved 29-0 by his fellow owners.