Ted Lerner buys the Nationals [pg. 12]

A leading Washington Jewish community member is at the head of a group which has bought the city's baseball team.

By NATHAN GUTTMAN
A leading Washington Jewish community member is at the head of a group which has bought the city's baseball team. The consortium lead by Theodore (Ted) Lerner, a well known figure in the Jewish community of Greater Washington, was picked by Major League Baseball to buy the Washington Nationals. The purchasing group also includes former Atlanta Braves executive Stan Kasten. "This has been a long journey. ... While I do apologize for the time, I think history will prove it maybe was time well spent," commissioner Bud Selig said in announcing the $450m. agreement. A resident of Bethesda, Maryland, the 80-year-old Lerner is active in the local Chevy Chase synagogue and over the years has sponsored many Jewish activities. Raised in the Washington area, Lerner is one of the largest promoters of Jewish life in the nation's capital, through the Annette M. and Theodore N. Lerner Family Foundation he created. One of the philanthropic foundation's most noticeable contributions was sponsoring the upper school campus of the Cherles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD. Lerner's foundation has also supported the Jewish Community Centers in DC and the suburbs and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in the national mall. "Ted Lerner is a real 'community builder' as a developer, as a philanthropist, as a citizen and now as the owner of the Nationals", said Dr. Misha Galperin, Executive Vice President and CEO of Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. Lerner, who is one of Metro DC's largest real estate developers, has also been a supporter of academic institutes in Israel, among them the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Weizmann institute for science in Rehovot. Alongside Lerner, who will serve as managing principle owner of the team, the management team of the Nationals will also include his son Mark Lerner and sons-in-law Edward Cohen and Robert Tenenbaum.