Mother Jones magazine reports that at least five current and former [baseball] owners are Bush-appointed U.S. ambassadors, including former Seattle Mariners owner George Argyros, now ambassador to Spain despite his inability to habla español; Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals co-owner Mercer Reynolds III, now ambassador to Switzerland, who speaks neither German nor Italian; St. Louis Cardinals co-owner Stephen Brauer, our man in Brussels, who doesn't speak French or Flemish; Texas Rangers co-owner Jeffrey Marcus, who very briefly was appointed ambassador to Belgium but never reported for duty because of sticky divorce proceedings; and former Texas Rangers co-owner and Bush cousin-by-marriage Craig Stapleton, ambassador to the Czech Republic, who reportedly stormed out of a tough meeting on Iraq with the Czech prime minister and undiplomatically slammed the door behind him.

(New York Daily News, via Wonkette)