Short owned the Minneapolis / Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association and the Washington Senators / Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball.

[1] Short practiced law for several years and started to invest in business ventures after buying an interest in Mueller Transportation, a small trucking line.

[1] Short bought the Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball Association in 1957 and moved the team to Los Angeles in 1960 due to terrible attendance (George Mikan had retired in the mid-1950s) in the Twin Cities.

The Lakers immediately resumed their winning ways in L.A., resulting in increased attendance and revenue, and Short sold the team in 1965 to Canadian magnate Jack Kent Cooke.

Miraculously, the '69 Senators improved by 21 games and posted 86 victories en route to a fourth-place finish in the American League East–the only winning season the expansion-era version of the club experienced in its 11-year lifespan.

With a winning team, Williams as a drawing card, and the All-Star Game at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, the Senators almost doubled their 1968 attendance, to over 918,000 paid spectators.

[7] Short was Bob Lurie's original investment partner in an attempt to purchase the San Francisco Giants from Horace Stoneham in order to prevent the franchise's sale and move to Toronto.

With hours to go before a league-imposed deadline, Lurie replaced Short with Phoenix, Arizona-based meat-packer Bud Herseth, and the $8 million deal was approved by the other league owners on March 2, 1976.

He also served as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee during Hubert Humphrey's 1968 presidential campaign,[11][12] remaining involved in the DNC for a number of years.

He narrowly upset Congressman (later Minneapolis mayor) Donald M. Fraser in the Democratic primary, but lost the general election to Republican David Durenberger with only 35% of the vote.

During the 1978 campaign, Short was hindered by his conservative positions on a few hot-button issues — abortion, motorboat usage in the Boundary Waters Canoe area, and government spending.