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Lemieux And Burkle Make An Offer For The Bucs, Doesn’t Go Over

By Thejim
1 Feb 2010 9:15 am

This is how I imagine the conversation went when Bob Nutting told his wife that Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle made an unsolicited offer on the Pirates…a fact that came to light over this past weekend.

Wife: Hi, honey.  How was your day?

Bob: Oh, okay I guess.  I met Mario and Moneybags for lunch today.

Wife: That’s nice, sweetheart.  Where did you go?

Bob: Uh, Blush.  Free lunch buffet from noon to 2pm.

After that, I’m not entirely sure what happens.  He tells her about an offer of several hundred million dollars for the team that he rebuffed, she calls him a fool, he tries to explain how the franchise makes money as-is and why would he sell them right now.  Then she realizes he said they had lunch at Blush and really gets angry, but Bob deflects the blame onto Burkle and his sex addiction.  I say that like it’s a bad thing.

Anyway, I know Pirates fans really want to believe this could happen and would be literally dancing in the streets if the Pens ownership managed to actually buy the team.  But really, why the hell would Nutting sell?  The team is valued at $288M right now according to Forbes, that’s at the extreme low end of the scale for MLB teams.  It stands to reason that the offer was pretty close to this number.  Since the team is profitable and poised to make a run at competitiveness (allegedly), it also reasons that their value would increase over the next few years.  I’m no Gordon Gekko, but I’m pretty sure selling low would be a bad move here for Nutting.  Burkle and Mario would have to overpay in a big way and I doubt they want the team bad enough to make any kind of premium offer.  I think an ownership group consisting of Mark Cuban, Sophie Masloff, Sammy Khalifa, and Wiz Khalifa have just as good of a chance of buying the team as the Lemieux and Burkle tag team.

 

 

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