When Sports and HR Meet

I read a lot of articles about sports and I'm always interested when sports and human resources meet. Well that happened today as I was reading a baseball notebook in the Boston Globe:

"Jim Crane, prospective Astros buyer - Major league owners are wading through a lot of personal stuff on Crane before approving him. And he has some baggage, including complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because of his position on hiring blacks, Hispanics, and women. He paid $9 million in damages to workers at his Eagle USA Airfreight company in part over remarks he made to an associate to the effect that you should never hire blacks because you can’t fire them. He was also involved in a very messy divorce. So this is not a slam dunk."

The gory details can be found in this 2000 piece from the Houston Chronicle. That's not even it on Crane as Forbes continues, describing breaches of fiduciary agreements and profiteering from the war in Iraq (!?!).

People like Crane are why Major League Baseball and other organizations should vet their executives and other potential employees before hiring them. It actually seems like Crane will be allowed to buy the Astros despite all of this turmoil surrounding his name--but the problem is that once he's in, you can't fire him because he actually is an owner. That may be the biggest issue of all for Major League Baseball should some of the issues re-arise.