https://theathletic.com/1189973/2019/09/11/talking-baseball-with-terry-pegula-whose-childhood-fandom-inspired-his-purchase-of-buffalos-teams/
He grew up in Carbondale, Pa., while a coal-mine fire burned for three decades underneath it. Pegula’s father worked in the mines, then found better work as a truck driver and mechanic. When hernia surgery prevented Myron Pegula from working for a year, the family waited in welfare lines for food.
“Which was very embarrassing for me,” Pegula said. “I was 10 or 11 years old. We’d go and get puffed rice in bags, five-gallon containers of peanut butter. We didn’t have the money.”
Aside from Channels 16, 22 and 28 on the family’s black-and-white Philco television, young Terry’s mind would float fancifully while watching the steam shovels and draglines excavate smoldering culm from the mine. The Pegulas heated their rented home with whatever coal they raked out of the dumped rubble.
“I use Terry without mentioning his name when I explain to other clients what it takes to actually make a commitment to buy a team,” said Steve Greenberg, an industry titan who has brokered the sale or acquisition of teams in every major North American sports league. “There was no way Terry and Kim were going to be runners-up for the Buffalo Bills.”