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Buddy LeRoux


Edward Guy "Buddy" LeRoux Jr. (August 17, 1930 – January 7, 2008) was an American businessman and a club owner in Major League Baseball. LeRoux, a general partner in the Boston Red Sox from 1978 through 1986, became a successful businessman after beginning his sporting career as an athletic trainer for the Boston Celtics (during their championship runs in the 1950s and 1960s), the Boston Bruins and—from 1966 through 1974—the Red Sox themselves. A native of Woburn, Massachusetts, LeRoux graduated from Woburn Memorial High School and Northeastern University and was a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

Buddy LeRoux invested in real estate and a series of physical therapy and rehabilitation hospitals during the 1970s and by 1977 he was a wealthy man — wealthy enough to assemble a group of investors seeking to purchase the Red Sox from Jean Yawkey, the widow of Tom Yawkey, the team's longtime owner who had died in 1976.

With the backing of Rodgers Badgett, a Kentucky-based coal magnate, LeRoux put together a group of 30 limited partners and then recruited Red Sox vice president Haywood Sullivan, one of Mrs. Yawkey's favorites among her husband's employees, as a member of his syndicate. When the American League initially rejected the purchase in 1978, Mrs. Yawkey herself joined the LeRoux-Sullivan bid, and when the league finally approved the sale, the club had three general partners: LeRoux (in charge of business operations), Sullivan (general manager in charge of baseball operations) and Mrs. Yawkey (club president). At one point, LeRoux and Badgett controlled an estimated 42 percent of Red Sox stock.


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