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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ted Lerner, who died on Sunday at age 97, was as famously workaholic as he was shy.
So it was an enormous deal when Washingtonian journal scored an interview with him in 2007, the yr after he assumed possession of the Nationals, the primary baseball staff in Washington, D.C., since 1971.
Within the interview, Lerner described his 18-hour days build up an actual property empire of malls and different developments that has formed D.C. and its suburbs. He additionally talked about the 2 issues that might pull him away from his work: a ball recreation, and Jewish holidays.
“I simply labored,” he mentioned. “I took off for Jewish holidays and a [football] recreation or two.” However he mentioned his real love was baseball, a recreation that introduced him again to the times of his youth.
“In Washington within the Thirties, that’s all there was — baseball,” he mentioned.
He recalled that as a youngster, he would purpose to promote sufficient Saturday Night time Night Posts to afford the streetcar to the Senators’ Griffith Stadium (worth: 3 cents) and the most cost effective ticket (25 cents).
He managed to get a gig as an adolescent usher to observe the 1937 All-Star recreation on the stadium — “when Dizzy Dean was hit on the foot by a line drive,” he instructed the journal. “He was by no means the identical after that.” (The damage successfully ended the legendary pitcher’s profession.)
When Main League Baseball determined in 2004 that the Montreal Expos’ new house can be in Washington, he secured conferences with the staff’s administration for himself and his heirs. His son and two daughters, and their spouses, have been his sacrosanct interior circle.
Lerner didn’t schmooze at Main League Baseball confabs and didn’t mount a publicity marketing campaign. However his seriousness led him to beat out seven different bids for the Nationals.
The payoff for that call got here in 2015, when the stadium he constructed to deal with the staff hosted Washington’s first All-Star Recreation since 1969. Lerner introduced a memento to that match: this system of the 1937 All-Star Recreation, along with his notations scribbled within the margins.
One facet of the job Lerner by no means bought used to was public talking. His highschool yearbook dubbed him “Silent Ted.”
Alongside baseball, Lerner made his title by turning northern Virginia right into a locus for buying. The huge mall complicated he constructed from dairy farms, Tysons Nook, gained worldwide renown.
Lerner died at his house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, of issues from pneumonia. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C. to Orthodox Jewish dad and mom. His father immigrated from British Necessary Palestine, and his mom got here from Lithuania. His in depth charitable giving included donations to the Hebrew College of Jerusalem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and his synagogue, Ohr Kodesh.
“I by no means might have dreamed of proudly owning a baseball staff,” he mentioned in 2015, receiving the City Land Institute Washington’s lifetime achievement award, when he contrasted his model with that of one other well-known actual property developer.
“And I by no means might have imagined over my life that I’d construct over 20 million sq. toes of economic and residential house, and only a few folks would know my title,” he mentioned. “I assume I’ve a unique strategy to actual property growth than Donald Trump. And I’m advantageous with that.”
After he bought the Nationals, the staff continued to develop its native fan base however took years for the staff to turn out to be a contender. Common Supervisor Jim Bowden defined the technique to Sports activities Illustrated in 2012.
“The Lerners made it clear: We’re not in a rush,” Bowden mentioned. “We need to construct this by way of identical to we construct our buildings, from the underside up. We don’t construct the penthouse first.”
The technique paid off. A yr after Lerner, age 93, handed his son Mark management of the staff in 2018, the Nationals gained the World Sequence.
“There have been generations of baseball followers who grew up in D.C. and not using a staff,” Mark Lerner instructed The New York Occasions on the time. “Now they’ve one, and one which gained a World Sequence. To place it into context, my father was born one yr after we gained the final World Sequence. That claims all of it.”
Along with Mark and his spouse, Annette, Lerner is survived by his daughters, Debra Lerner Cohen and Marla Lerner Tanenbaum, 9 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. His household nonetheless owns the staff.
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