Wyc Grousbeck Joins Parades While John Henry Just Seeks Pity originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Depending on which sport’s metaphors you prefer, this column will be a layup or a can of corn.
The topic: Wyc Grousbeck versus John Henry.
Both owners were in the news this week, but for very different reasons. Grousbeck’s Celtics are just two wins away from clinching the franchise’s 18th banner as they visit Dallas with a chance to win the NBA Finals. Henry’s forever .500 Red Sox are in neutral after splitting with the terrible White Sox, much closer to last place in the American League East than first place at 33-33.
Both owners gave high-profile interviews to business reporters laying out starkly different views. Grousbeck told Shirley Leung of The Boston Globe that he is losing money and doesn’t care because he is doing it out of “Celtic pride” in pursuit of another championship.
Henry, meanwhile, lamented the high expectations of his fans in the pages of the Financial Times, answering the question of whether he would sell the team with the fiery and passionate statement: “We generally do not sell assets.”
Put it on a T-shirt.
Nothing sums up the current state of the two franchises quite like the involvement levels of their respective owners. Grousbeck has seen both the long and the short side of the past decade with enormous success, first enabling Danny Ainge to parlay the final days of the New Big Three into the picks that became Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, and then by surrounding its young stars with established talent, from Isaiah Thomas to Gordon Hayward to Al Horford to Kyrie Irving to Kemba Walker to Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis.
This has entailed significant costs. The Celtics will likely owe $75 million in luxury tax payments next year according to the brilliant Ryan Bernardoni, could be staring at a $300 million bill in two years when Jayson Tatum’s supermax extension kicks in if they keep the band together. Three. Hundred. MILLION.
“We are fans who bought the team. We do this out of love,” Grousbeck told the Globe. “We are doing this for the pride of Celtic and we are going to do everything we can to convince the team to win a banner, to win a championship.”
Compare that to Henry, who continues to perpetuate his apparent offense that “it’s expensive to have baseball players,” as he memorably muttered during the team’s winter 2023 weekend. In the FT interview, he criticized fans for getting “easily… frustrated” and not recognizing the simple math that winning it all is really just a 1-in-20 or 1-in-30 nonsense.
The odds of winning the World Series can only be characterized as 1 in 30 if you don’t try. Over the past thirty years, 21 of baseball’s 30 champions have ranked in the top 10 of opening day payrolls. Big spending guarantees nothing, as the Mets learned from Steve Cohen, but smart spending, as the Red Sox largely did between 2004 and 2018, helped produce four champions. That’s why fans are frustrated.
Henry went on to decry the “false belief… that you must mortgage the future every year for the present,” which is such a gross misinterpretation of fan and media sentiment that it is hard to believe is that he is the owner of a newspaper.
No one wants the Red Sox to trade Marcelo Mayer for a marginal upgrade, and even the diehards didn’t blame Henry for letting superstar Juan Soto join the Yankees this winter. Red Sox fans expect Henry to spend money something however, as we wait for the next wave of prospects, and it’s easy to imagine the current club competing for a wildcard this winter with just a little more help. Sadly, it never came.
So let’s take a moment to salute Grousbeck and his partners. When he asked for their investment as part of his $360 million purchase 20 years ago, he told them not to focus on percentage returns.
“We will be paid with pleasure,” he said, according to the Globe. “We will get paid in parades.”
It’s a sentiment John Henry used to preach, before ripping him became a layup and the Red Sox simply became an asset.
