Cleveland Guardians owner Larry Dolan dies at 94

New York Times

24-02-2025

Larry Dolan, who spearheaded the longest ownership tenure in the history of Cleveland's baseball franchise, died Sunday, the team announced. He was 94.
'We are saddened by the loss of our Dad, but lucky to have him as part of our lives as long as we did,' said Cleveland Guardians Owner/Chairman/CEO and son Paul Dolan on behalf of the entire family. 'He was a loving husband, father and grandfather who was passionate about his family, work, our community and his love of our local sports teams, including owning the Cleveland Guardians.
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Dolan, a lifelong Clevelander who graduated from St. Ignatius High School and rooted for the Indians for decades, purchased his hometown team through a family trust from Dick Jacobs in 2000 for $323 million. The sale price represented nearly 10 times what Jacobs and his brother, David, had paid for the club in 1986.
The Dolans had fallen short in bids to purchase other teams, including the Cleveland Browns. They acquired control of the Indians just as the team was entering a period of transition, as the club shifted from being a perennial American League powerhouse with a nightly sellout crowd into a painful rebuild less than two years after they took the reins.
Still, under the Dolan stewardship, the team has remained mostly competitive, with seven AL Central titles, two Wild Card berths and an AL pennant under their watch. The 2024 club reached the ALCS before sputtering against the New York Yankees. Cleveland does own the league's longest active championship drought, which dates back to October 1948.
Since the start of the 2000 season, Cleveland boasts a regular-season record of 2,046-1,899, for a winning percentage of .519, which ranks seventh in the majors, behind only the Yankees, Dodgers, Cardinals, Braves, Red Sox and Giants.
Dolan's son, Paul, took over as the control person for the organization in 2013, and a few years later, the family put in motion plans to relinquish its majority ownership stake. They brought aboard Kansas City energy magnate John Sherman, whose minority ownership pact included a path to eventual majority ownership. Sherman, however, divested his interests to instead purchase his hometown Royals.
After a years-long search for a replacement for Sherman, David Blitzer was approved as Guardians minority owner in June 2022, and he is expected to assume majority control of the franchise in the coming years.
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Prior to the Dolans' tenure, Alva Bradley held the longest ownership reign in team history. Bradley owned the club from 1927-46 before handing it off to Bill Veeck.
The Dolan family received the Lifetime Achievement honor at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards in 2020. Their tenure, while regularly met with criticism about stingy payrolls, has been marked by continuity, with front office pillars Chris Antonetti and Mike Chernoff spending more than two decades and counting with the club. Both have declined opportunities to run other teams' front offices. Mark Shapiro, who became Cleveland's general manager shortly after the Dolans took over, worked in the front office for nearly a quarter-century before moving on to Toronto in 2015. Terry Francona spent 11 seasons as the team's manager. Pitching coach Carl Willis, who has spent much of the last 30 years helping the organization develop a reputation as a pitching factory, voiced in September that part of his motivation for coaching into his 60s was to try to win a World Series 'for the Dolan family,' among others. 'I just want to see it happen,' Willis said.
Dolan's older brother, Charles, the founder of Cablevision and HBO, died in December. His nephew, James, owns the New York Knicks.
Dolan was president and managing partner at the Chardon, Ohio-based law firm Thrasher, Dinmore & Dolan. He earned his law degree from the University of Notre Dame. He was a board member for The Cleveland Foundation and the Geauga County chapter of the American Red Cross, president of the Christopher Foundation and founder of the Geauga County Public Library Foundation.
(Top photo of Larry Dolan in 2011: (Mark Duncan / AP Photo)