Intelligencer - What Money Can’t Buy Steve Cohen

To its owner, a sports team is more than just a plaything. If you happen to have the billions it takes to acquire one, you presumably have a near-infinite number of ways to spend your money. By buying a team, an owner can reveal their inner winner — or make people forget how they made all that money in the first place. Thus, a shipbuilder and Watergate bit player named George Steinbrenner could take over the Yankees and turn himself into The Boss. If his dad had never bought the Knicks and the Rangers, Jim Dolan would just be an angry guy who used to own a cable company. An owner gets to play fantasy in real life, going to work at a park. And what other trophy asset can end up yielding an actual trophy?

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