Larry Lucchino — master of flexibility

Larry Lucchino, the sharp-elbowed executive who helped John Moores line his pockets with a subsidized ballpark, now named Petco Park, will be leaving his job as president of the Boston Red Sox, according to Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe. The team is mired in last place in the East Division of the American League.

After winning a big ballpark subsidy in Baltimore, Lucchino joined Moores in San Diego and preached the wisdom of governments subsidizing ballparks for the ultrarich. Then Lucchino left to be president of the Red Sox, and switched completely — twice.

First, when the Red Sox built a fan base without a taxpayer subsidy, Lucchino boasted in 2010, "We knew the perils of of asking for public money." Fans "get annoyed when teams teams ask taxpayers to build a stadium, and then raise ticket and concession prices on the very people who paid for it." In San Diego, he denigrated anybody who uttered such statements.

But it didn't last. This year, Lucchino and some other moneybags bought a Red Sox farm team in Pawtucket. Lucchino then turned around and was spearheading an effort to get a fat yearly subsidy from Rhode Island to move the team to Providence.