[新聞] Buffett Is Invested in Rodriguez

看板A-Rod作者bluefly99 (Let's Go A-Rod)時間18年前 (2007/08/10 16:25)推噓2(2推 0噓 3→)

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On Baseball Buffett Is Invested in Rodriguez By MURRAY CHASS Published: August 10, 2007 Now that Barry Bonds has eclipsed Henry Aaron as No. 1 on the career home run list, baseball and its fans will watch with rapt interest in the next five or six seasons to see if Alex Rodriguez supplants Bonds. One of those fans is Warren E. Buffett, whose position in the financial world is similar to the one Rodriguez occupies in baseball. “He’s the man who’s going to break Bonds’s home run record someday,” Buffett said Tuesday, hours before Bonds hit his record-setting 756th home run. When asked about Bonds in a second telephone interview Wednesday, Buffett said without uttering the word steroids, “The guy is an impressive player no matter how he got there, but I predict A-Rod breaks it and there will be joy in Mudville when it happens.” He added, “I’m going to be 77 in a few weeks, and I hope I’m here when he breaks it.” Buffett lives in Omaha, the home of his Berkshire Hathaway holding company, the College World Series and the Kansas City Royals’ Pacific Coast League affiliate, of which Buffett has been a quarter owner for 10 years. With a Forbes-estimated $52 billion personal worth, Buffett is considered the world’ s second-wealthiest person. He has been a big baseball fan since he was 8 and his grandfather took him by train to Chicago from Omaha to see a game on May 17, 1939 between the Cubs and the Brooklyn Dodgers that ended in a 9-9 tie after 19 innings. In more recent years, Buffett has become a Rodriguez fan. Given that Rodriguez, the Yankees’ third baseman, is the highest-paid player in baseball history, there is sort of an economic link between them. “A couple years ago, he got in touch with me and wanted to come in and talk, ” Buffett said. “We hit it off very well.” In Toronto, Rodriguez explained his reason for contacting Buffett. “I just always admired him as an American icon more than anything,” Rodriguez said. “I have so much respect for everything he’s accomplished and how humble he’ s stayed despite all of his success.” Buffett recalled a more recent meeting with Rodriguez, who leads the majors in home runs and runs batted in this season. “I saw him earlier this year, and he told me how hard he had been working,” Buffett said. “I knew he was going to have a good season.” In December 2000, Rodriguez impressed another business magnate, Tom Hicks, the Texas Rangers’ owner, who gave him a 10-year, $252 million contract. “We actually insured him,” Buffett said. “We own some insurance companies, and they bought disability insurance on him. It was a big policy, so big that no one else would write it. I think it was a $260 million permanent disability policy.” Buffett’s company, a Berkshire subsidiary, never had to pay on the policy. Rodriguez missed only one game in the three seasons he played for the Rangers. Buffett has long been viewed as an ideal person to own a team. He loves baseball, and he has the money to buy a team. “Up until the age of about 20, I probably did think if I got rich I would buy a baseball team,” he said. “Then I got rich, and I changed my mind.” Two groups have approached him about buying the Chicago Cubs, he said, and he recalled receiving a half-dozen calls about the Royals when they were available in the late 1990s. “If I was in a major league city, who knows?” Buffett said. “But the answer is no, I will not be buying a major league team.” Buffett also recalled advice he gave in the early 1990s to Bill Gates, who tops the Forbes list. The Nintendo people were buying the Seattle Mariners, and they were seeking investors. “Bill Gates asked me if he should buy into it,” Buffett said. “I said: ‘ If you love baseball, buy it. But if you buy and you don’t win every year, you’ll be a bum.’ ” Gates did not buy. It was not long ago that doomsayers were predicting that the price of franchises would plummet. Even Commissioner Bud Selig said the only reason prospective owners might be found was “the greater fool” theory. Baseball, however, has flourished in recent years. Asked about baseball as an investment, Buffett said: “If you buy teams at present prices, you will not do well, in my view, in terms of the actual income that will result from that ownership compared with the price you pay. But as the super-rich get richer and there are a limited number of teams, they love the sport, and just like they buy paintings, there will be more of those people who buy teams.” Buffett, meanwhile, will be content with his baseball artifacts. “I have an A-Rod Yankee uniform on my wall and a bunch of baseballs,” he said. Also hanging on a wall are illustrations from the Ted Williams book “The Science of Hitting.” “The most important thing in investing,” Buffett said, “is what Williams said was the most important thing in hitting” — waiting for the right pitch. “What’s nice about investing is you don’t have to swing at pitches,” Buffett said. “You can watch pitches come in one inch above or one inch below your navel, and you don’t have to swing. No umpire is going to call you out. You can wait for the pitch you want.” 新聞來源：http://tinyurl.com/3d2vab ============================ 巴菲特有沒考慮買下YES或洋基啊？ XD -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 59.126.97.4