A tale of two Johns - on ownership, accountability and responsibility

Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty ImagesTomorrow, the NL East-winning Philadelphia Phillies will square off against the New York Mets in their third straight NLDS appearance. The Seattle Mariners finished one game out of a playoff spot. Again.

This morning, Daniel Kramer of MLB.com published a piece on John Stanton, chairman and managing partner of the Mariners ownership group. Around the same time, Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated published a piece on John Middleton, majority owner of the Phillies. To read them side by side, in quick succession, is brutal.

“We’re roughly the 15th-largest market in baseball,” Stanton said. “We’re pretty much smack dab in the middle in terms of the size of…