Heir to Doubleday Publishing. Owner of New York Mets baseball team.
Books and baseball defined Mr. Doubleday’s life. He was the grandson of Frank Nelson Doubleday, who founded the publishing company bearing his name in 1896, and the son of Nelson Doubleday, who built the business into a mass-market powerhouse.
Another Doubleday ancestor was Abner Doubleday a great-great-granduncle long credited (erroneously) with inventing the game of baseball. Growing up on the family’s Long Island estate, in Oyster Bay, Nelson Jr. was a passionate baseball fan, following the fortunes of the Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio.
He expressed his love for the sport on a grand scale when Doubleday & Company became majority owner of the last-place Mets in 1980, buying the team from the original owners, the family of Joan Whitney Payson. Doubleday put up 80 percent of the $21.1 million purchase price, a record at the time for a baseball franchise. Its partners were the City Investing Corporation and Fred Wilpon, of the real estate investing firm Sterling Equities.
He and Mr. Wilpon invested a further $20 million over the next three years to rebuild the franchise, a daunting task. “The Mets were not only a last-place team, but a well-entrenched last-place team,” Mr. Doubleday recalled in the euphoric year of 1986. “A classic last-place team.”
Four years after the purchase, the Mets were a profit-making franchise and a pennant contender, finishing second in their division in 1984 and ’85. In 1986, when the team won the World Series, attendance at Shea Stadium had risen fourfold since 1980, and the team’s earnings totaled $6 million.
He attended Green Vale School in Glen Head on Long Island and the Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy, both in Deerfield, Mass., before enrolling at Princeton At the university he played baseball, football and hockey. After graduating with a degree in economics in 1955, he worked briefly as a copywriter at Doubleday before serving with the Air Force in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Returning to the family business, he was an assistant in the promotion and subsidiary rights departments, then manager of the trade publications division. He later became chairman of Doubleday’s new broadcast subsidiary and then executive vice president in charge of sales.
In 1973 he gained full control of the company stock left to him by his father, who died in 1949. With the stock left to him by his mother, who died in 1978, he had a controlling interest, and in May 1978 he became president and chief executive.
Mr. Doubleday was an avid outdoorsman, fond of practical jokes and not particularly bookish. He enjoyed playing golf; hunting at his plantation near Beaufort, S.C.; sailing the world on his yacht, Mandalay; and heading off to annual pheasant-hunting trips in Somerset, England. In the 1960s and ’70s, he invested in two hockey teams, the California Golden Seals and the New York Islanders. On his daily drive into Manhattan, he chatted with a group of fellow CB radio enthusiasts who called themselves the Cuckoo’s Nest Convoy. His handle was Bookworm.
Books and baseball defined Mr. Doubleday’s life. He was the grandson of Frank Nelson Doubleday, who founded the publishing company bearing his name in 1896, and the son of Nelson Doubleday, who built the business into a mass-market powerhouse.
Another Doubleday ancestor was Abner Doubleday a great-great-granduncle long credited (erroneously) with inventing the game of baseball. Growing up on the family’s Long Island estate, in Oyster Bay, Nelson Jr. was a passionate baseball fan, following the fortunes of the Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio.
He expressed his love for the sport on a grand scale when Doubleday & Company became majority owner of the last-place Mets in 1980, buying the team from the original owners, the family of Joan Whitney Payson. Doubleday put up 80 percent of the $21.1 million purchase price, a record at the time for a baseball franchise. Its partners were the City Investing Corporation and Fred Wilpon, of the real estate investing firm Sterling Equities.
He and Mr. Wilpon invested a further $20 million over the next three years to rebuild the franchise, a daunting task. “The Mets were not only a last-place team, but a well-entrenched last-place team,” Mr. Doubleday recalled in the euphoric year of 1986. “A classic last-place team.”
Four years after the purchase, the Mets were a profit-making franchise and a pennant contender, finishing second in their division in 1984 and ’85. In 1986, when the team won the World Series, attendance at Shea Stadium had risen fourfold since 1980, and the team’s earnings totaled $6 million.
He attended Green Vale School in Glen Head on Long Island and the Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy, both in Deerfield, Mass., before enrolling at Princeton At the university he played baseball, football and hockey. After graduating with a degree in economics in 1955, he worked briefly as a copywriter at Doubleday before serving with the Air Force in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Returning to the family business, he was an assistant in the promotion and subsidiary rights departments, then manager of the trade publications division. He later became chairman of Doubleday’s new broadcast subsidiary and then executive vice president in charge of sales.
In 1973 he gained full control of the company stock left to him by his father, who died in 1949. With the stock left to him by his mother, who died in 1978, he had a controlling interest, and in May 1978 he became president and chief executive.
Mr. Doubleday was an avid outdoorsman, fond of practical jokes and not particularly bookish. He enjoyed playing golf; hunting at his plantation near Beaufort, S.C.; sailing the world on his yacht, Mandalay; and heading off to annual pheasant-hunting trips in Somerset, England. In the 1960s and ’70s, he invested in two hockey teams, the California Golden Seals and the New York Islanders. On his daily drive into Manhattan, he chatted with a group of fellow CB radio enthusiasts who called themselves the Cuckoo’s Nest Convoy. His handle was Bookworm.
Heir to Doubleday Publishing. Owner of New York Mets baseball team.
Books and baseball defined Mr. Doubleday’s life. He was the grandson of Frank Nelson Doubleday, who founded the publishing company bearing his name in 1896, and the son of Nelson Doubleday, who built the business into a mass-market powerhouse.
Another Doubleday ancestor was Abner Doubleday a great-great-granduncle long credited (erroneously) with inventing the game of baseball. Growing up on the family’s Long Island estate, in Oyster Bay, Nelson Jr. was a passionate baseball fan, following the fortunes of the Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio.
He expressed his love for the sport on a grand scale when Doubleday & Company became majority owner of the last-place Mets in 1980, buying the team from the original owners, the family of Joan Whitney Payson. Doubleday put up 80 percent of the $21.1 million purchase price, a record at the time for a baseball franchise. Its partners were the City Investing Corporation and Fred Wilpon, of the real estate investing firm Sterling Equities.
He and Mr. Wilpon invested a further $20 million over the next three years to rebuild the franchise, a daunting task. “The Mets were not only a last-place team, but a well-entrenched last-place team,” Mr. Doubleday recalled in the euphoric year of 1986. “A classic last-place team.”
Four years after the purchase, the Mets were a profit-making franchise and a pennant contender, finishing second in their division in 1984 and ’85. In 1986, when the team won the World Series, attendance at Shea Stadium had risen fourfold since 1980, and the team’s earnings totaled $6 million.
He attended Green Vale School in Glen Head on Long Island and the Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy, both in Deerfield, Mass., before enrolling at Princeton At the university he played baseball, football and hockey. After graduating with a degree in economics in 1955, he worked briefly as a copywriter at Doubleday before serving with the Air Force in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Returning to the family business, he was an assistant in the promotion and subsidiary rights departments, then manager of the trade publications division. He later became chairman of Doubleday’s new broadcast subsidiary and then executive vice president in charge of sales.
In 1973 he gained full control of the company stock left to him by his father, who died in 1949. With the stock left to him by his mother, who died in 1978, he had a controlling interest, and in May 1978 he became president and chief executive.
Mr. Doubleday was an avid outdoorsman, fond of practical jokes and not particularly bookish. He enjoyed playing golf; hunting at his plantation near Beaufort, S.C.; sailing the world on his yacht, Mandalay; and heading off to annual pheasant-hunting trips in Somerset, England. In the 1960s and ’70s, he invested in two hockey teams, the California Golden Seals and the New York Islanders. On his daily drive into Manhattan, he chatted with a group of fellow CB radio enthusiasts who called themselves the Cuckoo’s Nest Convoy. His handle was Bookworm.
Books and baseball defined Mr. Doubleday’s life. He was the grandson of Frank Nelson Doubleday, who founded the publishing company bearing his name in 1896, and the son of Nelson Doubleday, who built the business into a mass-market powerhouse.
Another Doubleday ancestor was Abner Doubleday a great-great-granduncle long credited (erroneously) with inventing the game of baseball. Growing up on the family’s Long Island estate, in Oyster Bay, Nelson Jr. was a passionate baseball fan, following the fortunes of the Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio.
He expressed his love for the sport on a grand scale when Doubleday & Company became majority owner of the last-place Mets in 1980, buying the team from the original owners, the family of Joan Whitney Payson. Doubleday put up 80 percent of the $21.1 million purchase price, a record at the time for a baseball franchise. Its partners were the City Investing Corporation and Fred Wilpon, of the real estate investing firm Sterling Equities.
He and Mr. Wilpon invested a further $20 million over the next three years to rebuild the franchise, a daunting task. “The Mets were not only a last-place team, but a well-entrenched last-place team,” Mr. Doubleday recalled in the euphoric year of 1986. “A classic last-place team.”
Four years after the purchase, the Mets were a profit-making franchise and a pennant contender, finishing second in their division in 1984 and ’85. In 1986, when the team won the World Series, attendance at Shea Stadium had risen fourfold since 1980, and the team’s earnings totaled $6 million.
He attended Green Vale School in Glen Head on Long Island and the Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy, both in Deerfield, Mass., before enrolling at Princeton At the university he played baseball, football and hockey. After graduating with a degree in economics in 1955, he worked briefly as a copywriter at Doubleday before serving with the Air Force in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Returning to the family business, he was an assistant in the promotion and subsidiary rights departments, then manager of the trade publications division. He later became chairman of Doubleday’s new broadcast subsidiary and then executive vice president in charge of sales.
In 1973 he gained full control of the company stock left to him by his father, who died in 1949. With the stock left to him by his mother, who died in 1978, he had a controlling interest, and in May 1978 he became president and chief executive.
Mr. Doubleday was an avid outdoorsman, fond of practical jokes and not particularly bookish. He enjoyed playing golf; hunting at his plantation near Beaufort, S.C.; sailing the world on his yacht, Mandalay; and heading off to annual pheasant-hunting trips in Somerset, England. In the 1960s and ’70s, he invested in two hockey teams, the California Golden Seals and the New York Islanders. On his daily drive into Manhattan, he chatted with a group of fellow CB radio enthusiasts who called themselves the Cuckoo’s Nest Convoy. His handle was Bookworm.
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