Former Pirates president Mark Sauer, who called for changes to baseball's inequities, dies at 78

Mark Sauer transformed from an executive for three major sports franchises, including the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1990s, to become a passionate advocate for educational equality in retirement.

Sauer died May 22 in Delray Beach, Fla. He was 78.

After serving as deputy chief operating officer of MLB’s St. Louis Cardinals from 1987-89, the Pirates hired Sauer as president and chief executive officer in 1991. He replaced Carl Barger, who left to become president of the expansion Florida Marlins.

The Pirates were owned by a public-private consortium of individuals and businesses at the time. Where Barger had to clear moves through board chairman Douglas Danforth, the Pirates granted Sauer full autonomy over day-to-day decisions for a team that won three consecutive National League East Division titles and reached the NLCS from 1990-92.

Sauer was ahead of his time in calling out baseball’s impending financial inequities. He lamented that the Pirates had to lower ticket prices as attendance dipped by an average of 2,000 per game in 1992, after drawing a club-record 2.085 million fans the previous season. With impending free agents in 1990 MVP Barry Bonds and 1990 Cy Young winner Doug Drabek, Sauer called for MLB to adopt a salary cap and revenue sharing for their television contracts.

“Fans are not happy with superstar free agents going from team to team, and they’re not happy with ticket prices,” Sauer said, per the Associated Press. “We have to address that, and we have to preserve baseball in a town like Pittsburgh.”

The Pirates would lose both Bonds and Drabek in free agency, the beginning of a two-decade stretch without a winning season, the longest in North American pro sports. He left the Pirates in 1996, after Kevin McClatchy bought the team, to become CEO of the NHL’s St. Louis Blues and held that role until 2005.

Born Nov. 17, 1946, in Brooklyn to Ralph Sauer, a U.S. Navy officer, and Betty Foley, Sauer’s family lived in Virginia, Hawaii, Kansas City and Chicago. He studied accounting at Illinois and later earned his MBA from Columbia. His worked for three Fortune 500 companies, eventually joining Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis before transitioning into sports management. Mark and his first wife, Georgia, raised two sons, Peter and Alex. Peter was a basketball star at Shady Side Academy and was captain of Stanford’s 1998 Final Four team. He died while playing in a pickup game in 2012 at age 35.

Sauer was proud of his post-retirement work in South Florida. In 2006, he moved to Delray Beach, where he met his second wife, Donna Sandberg. They were married in 2013.

Sauer became athletic director at Village Academy, where he saw the barriers his students faced.

In 2014, he founded Delray Students First, a nonprofit designed to prepare low-income students for college. The organization was renamed Bound for College in 2020 and provides ACT/SAT tutoring, mentorship, life skills support and scholarship assistance for students who are mostly the children of immigrants or the first in their family to attend college. It expanded to six Palm Beach County public schools, serving more than 200 students in grades 6–12 who are committed to pursuing higher education. Among its alums is Tre Quan Smith, a former wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints and Denver Broncos.

Mark Sauer is survived by his wife Donna; son Alex; daughter-in-law Amanda; granddaughters Cate, Charlotte and Cassie. A Celebration of Life will be held July 20 at the Opal Grand Hotel in Delray Beach. In lieu of flowers, donations in Mark’s memory may be made to the Mark Sauer Scholarship Fund and Bound for College.