Bruce Portner

Bruce S. Portner (born c. 1953) was the colorful owner of the Sacramento Steelheads and Solano Steelheads in the independent Western Baseball League from 1999 to 2002. While personal information about him is not readily available, some of his stunts are well documented. The Steelheads were not his first foray into baseball: in 1994, he had bought the Melbourne Bushrangers of the Australian Baseball League and "managed to alienate most of the league as well as the baseball community of Canberra", according to Joe Clark in his book A History of Australian Baseball.

In 1999, he tried to hire Pete Rose as the team's manager, defying the permanent ban imposed by the Commissioner on the all-time hits leader. While the independent leagues were technically not covered by the ban, they needed to maintain good relations with Organized Baseball, and Portner eventually retreated, giving Rose only a personal services contract in which he would make a few appearances in hitting clinics.

After one year in Sacramento, CA, he moved the team to Vacaville, CA, in Solano County in 2000, but had to sell out in 2002 after accumulating a mountain of debt and being forced into bankruptcy. Towards the end of his final season, he once had to cancel a game because he had failed to pay the insurance policy on the ballpark. Baseball was not the only thing going on at Steelheads games, as he entertained fans with fireworks, fish tosses (which raised howls of protest from local animal rights defenders) and diamond ring hunts, with a constant objective of attracting free publicity for his small-budget operation. In perhaps the mst infamous incident of his career, on August 3, 2000, he was punched by Kevin Mitchell, of the opposing Sonoma County Crushers when he ran on the field following an on-field brawl between the two teams which had started following a pitch thrown behind Mitchell's head. The former National League MVP was suspended for the remainder of the season for his gesture.

Following the sale of the team, he sued the Fairfield Daily Republic for defamation over a series of articles the local paper published regarding some of his dealings as Steelheads owner, particularly his dealings with the Vacaville City Council over ownership of the team's ballpark. In a bizarre twist on the lawsuit, Portner had once hired the articles' author, Jess Sullivan, to work in costume as the team's mascot in order to write about his experience. Sullivan wrote that he had been fired from the gig, something which Portner denied as one of 18 instances of what he characterized as misleading statements from the journalist. It took until 2010 for the case to be resolved, but the judge found completely in the newspaper's favor, as it had never published flasehoods about a public figure knowingly and with malicious intent, which what Portner would have needed to prove in order to win.

Further Reading

• Derek Wilson: "Former Steelheads owner talking stock", The Reporter (Vancaville, CA), January 16, 2006. [1]

Related Sites

• Portner v. Sullivan