I deal in this industry. It's not always about needing the money or not needing it. It about gambling that the that offer of 1 million actually could be 2 million. You'd be surprised at how even ordinary people think when they get wind that they have something valuable.
Fun Fact: I bought a domain name for a reasonable price off a patent troll company. Was actually one of the easier and most surprising transactions I ever did.
The owner of baseball.com, Relfex Publishing, has come often while I was searching for a good domain name.
They have quite a few domains like this and they aren't interested in selling at all. And as frustrating as that is, it is much better than other squatters in the space who try to treat the domains they have as farmland to be worked and leased off to companies for temporary use.
Its the system we have, and it is what it is. In a lot of ways it is disappointing how closely it mirrors physical land use and ownership.
The article somewhat goes into that. They were late to get online. Luckily they were able to get the mlb.com domain for free from Morgan Lewis. They didn't start to get team domains until 2000. Luckily MLBAM has been leading the way technology wise for quiet a few years. They've been so successful that they have partnered with WWE, PGA, and NHL.
The whole operation to secure team domains has been so stealth I learned in that article that MLBAM was able to finally secure my favorite team's domain earlier this year, Rangers.com. All the ads at the ballpark still refer to their old domain, texasrangers.com.