Magic Johnson — home-run hitter?
Well, metaphorically speaking, anyway. This week, the NBA Hall of Famer joined the national pastime as the leader of an investment group that proposes to pay $2 billion-plus for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
This would make him baseball’s first African-American principal owner.
Appropriately, Johnson invited Jackie Robinson’s widow, Rachel, into the ownership group and placed her on the Dodgers board — thus honoring the memory of the man who broke MLB’s color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers 65 years ago.
But far more significant, when so many retired sports stars fail — having earned millions, but ending up broke — Earvin “Magic” Johnson stands quite apart.
After his playing days, he plunged full-steam into the business world as an entrepreneur and real-estate titan.
He first established his Magic Johnson Theatres chain in primarily black neighborhoods. That included New York’s Harlem 9, which opened in 2000, helping revitalize a neighborhood and attract retail giants like Old Navy and Disney.
Johnson leveraged the success of the theater chain first into a franchise relationship with Starbucks and then into broader urban property-development opportunities.
All told, Johnson’s net worth is said to be at least half a billion dollars.
Jackie Robinson helped show kids of all backgrounds that, yes, baseball’s playing field is open to them.
Magic Johnson is showing that there are even larger fields upon which to excel.