As a founding franchise of the American League, at least in its major-league incarnation, the Boston club has had its share of colorful and fascinating owners. Though the club enjoyed considerable on-field success at the beginning of each century, it is perhaps most famous for its 86-year championship drought, a period dominated by its most prominent owner — Tom Yawkey — and his immediate successors.

Charles Somers

When Ban Johnson and the American League agreed, in October 1900, to move ahead as a major league, competing directly with the existing and uncooperative National League, Boston was not part of their plans. The original plan was to relocate the Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Kansas City franchises to Washington and Baltimore, which had recently lost National League teams, and Philadelphia, which would join Chicago as a two-league city. The Boston Beaneaters had long been a National League power and had won five of the previous 10 league pennants. Johnson likely believed that putting a team in Philadelphia would anger the NL enough without adding Boston to the grievance.

That same winter, plans were afoot to create a new American Association, which would work co-operatively with the National League. Word soon reached Johnson that the Association planned to put a team in Boston, and this, along with the NL’s hostility to the AL’s earlier announced plans, caused his change of heart regarding Boston. At an early January 1901 meeting to formalize plans for the coming season, the league decided to drop Buffalo and add Boston immediately. Charles Somers, the AL vice president who was already financially backing the Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia clubs, once again opened his checkbook.1

Somers, born and raised in Cleveland, had just turned 32 when this was all happening, but he had already become a millionaire in coal mining and shipping in the Great Lakes region. His primary interest was in the Cleveland club, but he (temporarily) divested himself of his Cleveland interests because he and Johnson were unable to find local owners in Boston. After a search conducted by a group that included Connie Mack, Hugh Duffy, and Tommy McCarthy, Somers leased a plot of land in the western part of Boston and built (in two months) the Huntington Avenue Grounds, just across a railroad yard from the National League’s South End Grounds. Somers installed Joseph Gavin as business manager and stayed away from the day-to-day management of the team, spending most of his time in Cleveland. Understanding that team nicknames were largely a newspaper invention in those days, the media and fans often referred to the new Boston team as the “Somersets,” after its owner, though more often as the “Americans.”

The AL owners had agreed to honor National League contracts but not the reserve clause; once a player’s contract (which was almost always one year in duration) ended, the AL considered him available. The top teams in the early years of the AL were therefore the ones best able to entice National League stars to jump to their team. The Americans were fortunate to find a number of disgruntled Beaneaters, and signed Jimmy Collins (who became player-manager), Buck Freeman, Chick Stahl, and Ted Lewis right away. Along with Collins, the Americans landed a second big star with the signing of Cy Young, formerly of the St. Louis Cardinals. Young was 34 but had several great years ahead of him. The Americans finished a strong second in 1901, and (after adding Bill Dinneen from the Beaneaters) third in 1902.

In 1901 the Americans outdrew their National League counterparts by nearly 2 to 1 (289,000 to 146,000), and would beat them at the turnstiles all but seven times in their 52 years sharing the city.2

Henry Killilea

Prior to the 1903 season some momentous changes came to baseball. Most importantly, the AL and NL made peace, agreeing to work together, settling several ongoing contractual disputes and, most importantly, agreeing to honor the reserve clause. There would be no more raiding of talent. Meanwhile, Somers gave up trying to find a Boston buyer for this team and sold his interests to Henry Killilea, a Milwaukee lawyer and Johnson ally. Accounts differ, but it appears that Killilea had bought into the team the year before. In any case, by 1903 he had the whole club.3 Somers reassumed control of the Cleveland club.

Like Somers, Killilea was an absentee owner, making it to Boston only a handful of times a year. He installed Joseph Smart in Boston to run the team. “I am perfectly satisfied to remain in the game in a financial way and let the men who follow the profession more closely attend to the managing end of the sport,” he reasoned. The Boston fans did not seem to mind, especially when the 1903 club, now often called the Puritans, dominated the league, winning the pennant by 14½ games.

Although Pittsburgh’s Barney Dreyfuss is normally credited with the first World Series between the National and American Leagues, it was Killilea who accepted the offer and agreed to a best-of-nine Series — when Killilea asked Johnson his opinion, the league president told him, “If you think you can beat them, play them.”4 By the time October rolled around the great Pirates club was racked with injuries to its vaunted pitching staff, allowing the Red Sox to prevail five games to three. Young and Dinneen pitched 69 of the 71 innings for Boston.

Despite his club’s great triumph, Killilea was mired in controversy before and after Series. The original plan called for the Pirates and Americans clubs to divide the receipts (the winners receiving more) and for each owner to make his own arrangements with his players. As the Americans’ contracts expired on September 30, the players demanded two weeks’ play plus most of the Series pot (Killilea would get a single share). Killilea had planned to keep all the money, treating it the way he treated the in-season exhibitions then in fashion. For a time it seemed the players would not play at all, but just prior to a deadline imposed by Dreyfuss, the Americans agreed on a plan: The players would receive an extra two weeks’ pay, plus half of the team’s World Series pot.

When the Series was over, the Americans learned that Dreyfuss had given his club the entire Pirates share, meaning that his losing players each received more than the winners. This angered the Boston players and brought considerable ridicule down on Killilea. After dealing with this controversy all winter, in the spring of 1904 Killilea decided to sell. On October 19, the sale was announced.

The Taylors

The buyer was General Charles Taylor, the publisher of the Boston Globe, for a price of $145,000. Taylor bought the club for his son, John I., who was 29 years old but hadn’t really found anything to do in the world other than have fun with his father’s money. He had spent a lot of time at the Huntington Avenue Grounds for the past few years, so his dad figured this might be a good fit. He installed John I. as president and let him run the show.

The largely unchanged Americans repeated as pennant winners in 1904, but the New York Giants, still smarting from the American League’s invasion of New York the previous year, refused to play the Americans in a postseason series. It was not until 1905 that the World Series became an official part of the season. No matter — the Americans had promoted themselves as “World Champions” throughout the 1904 season and continued to do so in 1905.

But the John I. Taylor years were largely unsuccessful for the hometown team. Once the core of the 1903 team aged, Taylor showed no skill at finding replacements. The 1905 team dropped to fourth place, and the next year (thanks in part to a 20-game losing streak) fell to last. Jimmy Collins, their popular player-manager, grew so disgusted with Taylor’s inability to make player moves that he left the team a couple of times and was eventually replaced as skipper by his good friend Chick Stahl. The 1907 season was even worse — starting with Stahl’s suicide during spring training, the team went through four additional managers that year before settling in seventh place.5

Taylor did make two significant positive contributions to the history of the team. The first came before the 1908 season, when he helped design new uniforms, which included bright red socks as part of their outfit for home games. The team would now be known, he declared, as the Red Sox. And the team began to improve.6

With the team in such disarray, the parade of managers began playing youngsters. Tris Speaker came aboard in 1907, Bill Carrigan and Larry Gardner in 1908, then Harry Hooper, Duffy Lewis, Joe Wood, and Ray Collins. Gradually these players became the core of the club, which finished over .500 (though not really in contention) from 1909 to 1911.

James McAleer

As the 1911 season drew to a close, the Taylors made their second major contribution to the club. They agreed to sell half the team to a group handpicked by Ban Johnson that included James McAleer, who had enjoyed a long career as player and manager and was currently the manager of the Washington Senators; and Robert McRoy, secretary to the American League and to Johnson personally. The two new owners were personal friends who hunted together in the offseason. Given that the purchase price for the half-interest was $150,000, and neither new frontman had anything like enough money, Johnson rounded up the necessary investors, with McAleer owning about 10 percent of the club and Chicago banker H.W. Mahan likely owning more. Mahan was the father-in-law of first baseman Jake Stahl (no relation to Chick), and Jake Stahl became the new manager.7

With his money from the sale of half the team, General Taylor bought a parcel of land in Boston’s Fenway district for $300,000, got the city to extend a trolley line into the neighborhood, and issued bonds to fund the construction of a new ballpark on the site. The Taylors were no longer the sole owners of the team, but they were its landlords, leasing the brand-new ballpark, Fenway Park, to the club. McAleer became team president, and John I. Taylor remained on the board as vice president in charge of the ballpark, which he leased from his father. General Taylor made out in another way as well — he was a major shareholder in the Fenway Realty Company, which owned much of the land in the neighborhood that would be served by the new trolley line.8

McAleer’s reign started with what was arguably the greatest team in club history. After opening their shiny new ballpark on April 20, the largely unchanged club went on to finish 105-47, 14 games ahead of the second-place Senators, then claimed its second World Series title. The team was led by the extraordinary play of Tris Speaker (who hit .382) and his best friend, Joe Wood (34-5, 1.91 ERA).

But there was a lot of internal dissension on the club, highlighted by a long-festering feud between the team’s Irish Catholics (led by Duffy Lewis) and Protestants (led by Speaker and Wood). McAleer and Stahl also butted heads often, a dispute that reportedly included McAleer insisting that Buck O’Brien, and not Joe Wood, start the sixth game of the World Series. The Red Sox were up 3-1 in the Series, with one tie, and needed one more victory. O’Brien was battered around, and the club lost that game and the next before winning the final game and the title. All’s well that ends well, but after a slow start the next year McAleer fired Stahl (who he feared was angling to supplant him as president) and replaced him with Bill Carrigan.9

McAleer also made a mess of the World Series tickets, moving the Royal Rooters — his most famous and vocal loyalists — far out into the outfield, causing them to boycott the final game. This turned the fans and press against him, joining half of the players. Ban Johnson, also a close friend of Stahl’s, had grown tired of McAleer and was looking for a way out.

After the 1913 season McAleer joined John McGraw and Charles Comiskey on their round-the-world baseball tour. While they were gone, Johnson arranged the sale of the McAleer/McRoy half of the Red Sox to Joseph Lannin, a native of Quebec who had become a New York and Boston real-estate baron, for $200,000.10 Shortly thereafter, Lannin bought Taylor’s stock as well, spending a reported $300,000 on the latter (indicating that the value of the team had increased, or that some additional debt was settled). Lannin became president, and retained Carrigan as manager.

This three-part panorama shows Fenway Park in its inaugural year, 1912. Courtesy of the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.

Joseph Lannin

Lannin inherited a fourth-place team, but one just a year removed from a championship. The 1914 club won 91 games and finished a strong second to the Athletics but went on to win the next two World Series. The principal addition to the club was a tall brash left-handed pitcher named George Ruth, whom everyone soon called Babe. Ruth finished 19-8 his rookie year of 1915, and followed that up the next season by winning 23 with a 1.75 ERA.

The biggest baseball story of the period was the rebel Federal League, which enticed several established players away from Organized Baseball and drove salaries up dramatically. Like most owners, Lannin dealt with this threat by signing his players to big raises and often for multiple years. When the Feds folded after the 1915 season, Lannin and other magnates reversed course and engaged in massive pay cuts. Joe Wood refused to sign at the new terms, and instead went home and sat out the entire 1916 season. Speaker wouldn’t sign either, so Lannin shocked the baseball world by selling his contract to the Cleveland Indians for two young players (one of whom, pitcher Sam Jones, enjoyed a fine career), plus a record sum of $55,000. This deal made Lannin an enemy in Boston, and he never really recovered his stature.

After winning again in 1916, thanks to an extraordinary pitching staff, manager Bill Carrigan bowed to pressure from his wife to retire and move back to Maine. Lannin, finally tiring of all the abuse, also decided to get out and found a buyer that allowed him to turn a handsome profit for his three years (two of them championships) in charge.

Harry Frazee

Harry Frazee, a New York-based theater owner, producer and director, and his theater pal Hugh Ward purchased the Red Sox and Fenway Park in November 1916 from Lannin for a total capital obligation of $1,000,000. The duo paid $662,000 for the club itself: $400,000 in cash to Lannin (of which Lannin used $100,000 to repay outstanding loans to parties from whom he had purchased the club) and a three-year note for $262,000, due November 1919. The team had also issued $150,000 of preferred stock held by Charles Taylor, the owner prior to Lannin; Frazee’s new ownership group was now responsible for both the dividend and the eventual principal repayment of this nonvoting equity interest. Frazee’s personal ownership interest in the franchise was 70 percent.11

Additionally, Frazee assumed a mortgage of $188,000 as part of the Fenway Park acquisition. (This was technically an indenture of trust, which is identical to a mortgage in terms of the loan security.) Frazee technically owned the ballpark through Fenway Realty Trust, and the team leased the facility from this company — a fairly typical arrangement between two sister companies. The stock of the Fenway Realty Trust (i.e., Frazee’s ownership interest in Fenway Park) was pledged as security for the $262,000 note.12 Taylor and a couple of associates held the mortgage on Fenway Park; on the sale from Lannin to Frazee, Lannin also apparently joined the mortgagees.13 The precise nature of Frazee’s capital sources is, of course, impossible to reconstruct at this late date, but it is fairly clear that he also borrowed much of his share of the $400,000 in cash necessary to purchase the team.

The purchase by Frazee from Lannin was the first sale of an American League franchise not vetted and approved by American League President Ban Johnson, and the two strong personalities disliked each other from the start. At the time bookies and organized gamblers operated relatively openly in many ballparks, and it was reputedly most blatant in Boston.14 Johnson seized on this gambling problem in Fenway Park in 1917 as a pretext to condemn Frazee. Frazee’s criticism of Johnson’s handling of the war-shortened 1918 season, and his defiance of Johnson’s order to suspend pitcher Carl Mays in 1919 only heightened their open hostility. Frazee, along with White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Til Huston, formed an anti-Johnson cabal that threatened to pull the league apart.

Although moderately successful with his theater ventures, Frazee was not earning anything close to enough capital to cover the costs of his baseball team, much less to accumulate substantial wealth. Frazee had two principal sources of theater-related income: the Cort Theatre in Chicago and the production of his own plays, and a detailed accounting of his finances reveals that he was struggling to stay afloat. By 1919 he was often borrowing money from the Red Sox corporation to pay his other commitments.15

In November 1919 the $262,000 principal on Lannin’s note came due on top of his existing strained obligations. Magnifying the problem, Frazeee knew Ban Johnson would gladly use his financial distress to try to lever him out of baseball. Furthermore, Frazee was looking to purchase the Harris Theatre on West 42nd Street in New York, which would cost $410,000, later in 1920. Frazee clearly needed fresh funds — and quickly — to support his two businesses.16

With his financial squeeze mounting, on January 5, 1920, Frazee announced the notorious sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. For Ruth, Frazee received the record sum of $100,000: $25,000 up front and three promissory notes of $25,000 each at a 6 percent interest rate, due in November 1920, 1921, and 1922. In addition Ruppert gave Frazee a three-month commitment that he would lend him $300,000 to be secured by a first mortgage on Fenway Park. With Ruth dispatched, the Red Sox would not finish in the first division again until 1934. In the meantime, Frazee immediately began trying to borrow against his three $25,000 notes from the Ruth sale.

The re-mortgage of Fenway Park only prolonged Frazee’s need for a steady influx of cash, and over the next few years he became addicted to financial injections from the Yankees owners. Subsequent to the Ruth sale, Frazee sold the rest of his top players to the Yankees for more than $300,000. When the Yankees won their first World Series, in 1923, four of the eight starting position players and four-fifths of their starting rotation had come from the Red Sox. The Red Sox finished last in the American League, and their skeletal remains would be the doormat of the league for many years.

By 1923, Frazee had no more ballplayers to sell, and he decided to sell the entire team. In July 1923, Frazee sold the team for $1,150,000 — $850,000 for the team plus the assumption of Ruppert’s $300,000 mortgage — to a group led by baseball man Bob Quinn and money partner Palmer Winslow.17 Under the terms in the draft contract available in the Harry Frazee Papers, Quinn’s group paid $350,000 down ($150,000 went to pay off Frazee’s refinanced note to Taylor for his preferred stock) and then $500,000 over the next eight years. The increased value of the team, coupled with all of his player sales, almost certainly provided Frazee with a healthy profit for his tenure as owner of the club.

Robert Quinn

Although Winslow put up the cash, it was Quinn who ran the club. Quinn had a long career running the minor-league Columbus club in the American Association before becoming the general manager of the St. Louis Browns in 1917. Quinn built up this longtime doormat to contention, losing the 1922 American League pennant by just a single game. In 1923, he put together a management team to take over the suddenly terrible Red Sox.

Whatever Quinn’s acumen as a judge of baseball talent, it is clear that he badly underestimated the amount of money he needed to field a competitive team. Winslow took ill in 1924 and stopped contributing money to the club; two years later he was dead. Quinn was forced to redeem much of Winslow’s stock, converting it to debt with Winslow’s widow at 85 cents on the dollar. The 1925 financial statements reflected this new capital structure, with the team’s debt (in addition to the mortgage) jumping from just $25,000 in 1924 to $480,000 in 1925. Moreover, the hapless team drew poorly at the gate and the team lost over $200,000 between 1924 and 1929, money Quinn could only struggle to cover. Quinn’s finances were further strained when the third-base bleachers burned down in 1926. None of Quinn’s other investors were any help, and the 1929 stock-market crash dealt another cruel blow. The long-awaited legalization of Sunday baseball in1929 helped slightly as did having the league’s smallest payroll. The team actually showed a small profit in 1930, but it was not enough, and the Great Depression was about to deepen.18

To stay afloat Quinn began selling players in 1930, including pitcher Red Ruffing to the Yankees for $17,500. He hoped to sell two more hurlers, Ed Morris and Danny MacFayden, to the Bombers for $110,000, but when Morris was tragically killed in a drunken fight around a campfire while hunting and fishing in Alabama, Quinn sold MacFayden for $50,000. The sale of players, though, could do little to stanch the tide of red ink, and the team lost a staggering $155,000 over 1931 and 1932. Quinn’s money had finally run out, and he was forced to try to sell a terrible team with no worthwhile players and a ballpark said to be in disrepair. With the Great Depression in full swing, there were not many men able to spend $1 million on a baseball team.19

Tom Yawkey

Thomas Yawkey Austin was born in Detroit on February 21, 1903, into a family that held substantial timber and mining interests in the Midwest. Tom’s father, Thomas J. Austin, was an insurance executive who married into the wealthy Yawkey family. Tom’s mother, Augusta, was the first child of William Clyman Yawkey, who had diligently expanded the family’s wealth by logging most of Michigan’s remaining pine forests and buying large tracts of timber in Minnesota that eventually were found to contain the world’s largest deposit of iron ore. Augusta and Thomas Austin married in 1893, and Austin soon joined the family business, buying an island of timber in Ontario and settling down on the family’s Detroit estate. Augusta had two children who survived childhood — Emma Marie and Tom — before father Thomas’s sudden death in September 1903, just seven months after the birth of his son.

In 1906, Augusta and her two children moved into the home of her brother Bill in New York City. Unlike his hard-working father, Bill Yawkey lived a life of leisure, and was never particularly interested in growing his family’s sizable fortune. He co-owned the Detroit Tigers for several years, and loved to hunt, attend ballgames, drink, and gamble on horses, often in the company of his players. He bought a 20,000-acre former plantation on the South Carolina coast, where he and his friends could hunt and fish and drink. Young Tom spent his life in posh apartments and huge estates.

In 1912, Tom was sent to the prestigious Irving School in Tarrytown, New York, and spent much of the next eight years there. Tom’s mother, Augusta, died in 1918 from influenza. Fifteen-year-old Tom was formally adopted by Uncle Bill, and his name was changed to Thomas Austin Yawkey. Six months later Bill Yawkey died, leaving behind his wife and adopted son. Suddenly the 16-year-old boy was extremely rich, with a fortune estimated at more than $7 million, and perhaps as much as $20 million. (In twenty-first-century dollars, that was roughly $100 million to $300 million.) All of the money would be overseen by conservators until Tom’s 30th birthday, February 21, 1933.

Tom graduated from the Irving School in 1920, and earned a degree from Yale (studying forestry and mining) in 1925. After leaving Yale, he married Elise Sparrow, a former beauty queen, and began spending some of his time working in the family business. He did not need to do much –Yawkey Enterprises at this point consisted mainly of buying and selling lands and stock. His wealth continued to accumulate. Mainly what he wanted was to own a baseball team. He met the all-time great second baseman Eddie Collins, a fellow Irving alum, at a school function, and asked Collins to let him know if a baseball team came up for sale. During the 1932 World Series, Collins arranged a meeting between Bob Quinn and Yawkey.

The price for the team and Fenway Park was $1.25 million, a lot of money for a struggling franchise in 1933. The sale was announced on February 25, four days after Yawkey’s 30th birthday. Before making the deal, Yawkey persuaded Collins to be the team’s vice president and general manager, running the club’s day-to-day operations. The stories in the local papers played up the role of Collins over the unknown Yawkey. “Eddie Collins and 30-Year-Old New York Millionaire Buy Red Sox Club,” announced one headline.20 Yawkey owned 100 percent of the club until his death 43 years later.

After years of living on a shoestring, suddenly the Red Sox had the wealthiest owner in the game, a man who really didn’t have anything else to spend his money on. To improve the team, Yawkey had to either begin purchasing good prospects from the many independent minor-league teams or try to acquire productive major-league players. With the impatience of a newcomer on the scene, Yawkey chose the latter course. In the meantime, he also completely renovated a crumbling Fenway Park, upgrading all the seats and adding the soon-to-be-famous left-field wall.

Over the next few years, the Red Sox acquired a few of the better players in the American League — notably Lefty Grove, Billy Werber, Rick Ferrell, Wes Ferrell, Joe Cronin, and Jimmie Foxx — to jump-start the sagging club. Cronin, purchased for a record $250,000 in October 1934, was the club’s manager for the next 13 years. The Red Sox also brought in several veterans whose best years were behind them — George Pipgras, Rube Walberg, Max Bishop, Lloyd Brown, Heinie Manush — indications that Yawkey (or Collins) was not as discriminating about spending money as perhaps he could have been. Most of these players were acquired using Yawkey’s money, as the team had little in the way of players to trade.

Armed with these players, many observers thought, unrealistically, the club should vault to the pennant. In fact, most of the star players continued to perform at a high level, but the team still did not have the kind of talent that could contend with the Tigers of the mid-1930s or (especially) the great Yankees of the late 1930s. Yawkey took over a team that finished 43-111 — two years later they were at .500, and by 1938 they were the second best team in the league. The financial losses incurred to rebuild the franchise were shocking: The team lost nearly $1.7 million from 1933 through 1940, significantly more than Yawkey paid to acquire the team in the first place. And this does not include the cost of improvements to Fenway Park, the purchase of players, or other capital items. The financial statements indicate Yawkey must have funded roughly another $3 million to cover these items.21

By the late 1930s, the Red Sox had also begun to acquire promising minor-league players, purchasing Bobby Doerr, Ted Williams, and Dom DiMaggio from the Pacific Coast League. They also established their own farm system, controlling several of their own teams by the mid-1940s. The 1942 team, largely dominated by the three aforementioned youngsters plus rookie Johnny Pesky, finished 93-59 (their best record since 1915) with the youngest core of players in the league, and the club turned its first profits under Yawkey in 1941 and 1942. The next three years saw most major-league rosters severely depleted by service in World War II, and a return to huge losses. But the returning Red Sox stars captured Yawkey’s first pennant in 1946, and the club turned an enormous profit of nearly $500,000 in baseball’s most profitable season to that point. The ’46 team lost the World Series in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals. Four more years of contention followed, helped by Yawkey’s willingness to spend additional money on buying Vern Stephens, Ellis Kinder, and Jack Kramer from the St. Louis Browns, along with the return of financial losses as Yawkey aggressively pursued another pennant.

Eddie Collins’s health forced him to step down after the 1947 season, and Joe Cronin replaced him as general manager. Yawkey continued to defer on player matters, though he apparently personally hired Lou Boudreau to manage the team in 1951. (Cronin wanted to hire Mike Higgins.) During the 1950s, as the club fell out of contention, there was much speculation as to who was making the decisions among Yawkey, Cronin, and the field manager. Yawkey rarely spoke to the press, mainly because of an intense shyness, and never second-guessed Cronin or the manager. He primarily seemed to just provide the money. He also continued to upgrade Fenway Park, spending $500,000 on new lights, box seats, and the press box in 1947, followed by another $175,000 the next year on the “Red Sox Room,” a deluxe hangout for the baseball writers.22

Yawkey had married Elise in the 1920s but they eventually proved a poor match. Tom’s interests were mainly sporting — hunting, fishing, and baseball — while his wife loved the social whirl of New York and Beverly Hills. Tom was a very shy man, who hated parties. They finally divorced in 1944, and within a few weeks Tom married Jean Hiller. This was a great pairing — Jean loved the same things Tom loved, including privacy and quiet evenings, and grew to love baseball and the Red Sox as much as he did. The two divided their summers between New York, where his company was headquartered, and Boston, at a private suite at the Ritz Carlton, and spent most of their winters in South Carolina. Yawkey’s 20,000 acres were really a private preserve where he hunted and fished with his friends. The couple rarely missed a summer Red Sox home game for the rest of their lives, sitting in their private box above the third-base crowd at Fenway Park.

With a sizable fortune and no children (Elise and Tom had adopted a daughter, but Tom was not part of her life after his divorce), Jean and Tom became immersed in charitable causes. In 1953, the Red Sox began a long association with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, with its Jimmy Fund becoming the team’s official charity. Yawkey was a longtime supporter of Georgetown Memorial Hospital in Georgetown, South Carolina, near his winter home. After the tragic death of young Red Sox star Harry Agganis in 1955, Yawkey established the Agganis Foundation, which has given over $1 million in scholarships for student athletes in the Boston area. In 1968, Tom and Jean purchased property in Georgetown and built the Tara Hall Home, a place for troubled or abused boys.

The writer Al Hirshberg, in his 1972 team history, wrote that there was no nicer man in baseball than Yawkey, “no more loyal friend and no one with a more sincere feeling of good will toward his fellow man.”23 The problem, thought Hirshberg, was that Yawkey hired people he liked, and was more concerned with keeping them happy than he was in their performance. Cronin was the general manager for 11 years while the team slowly declined. Mike Higgins was hired to manage in 1955 and spent 11 years as either the manager or general manager. Yawkey liked both men, but kept them long after it was clear that the organization needed a change. The main qualification for employment by the Red Sox, it was charged, was friendship with Yawkey or Cronin. Yawkey apparently liked to drink, and he enjoyed the congenial camaraderie of those who would drink with him.

One of the more unfortunate legacies of the 1950s Red Sox was their failure to field a black player until 1959, the last major-league team to do so. Although the team did make a few attempts to acquire black stars from other teams (notably Larry Doby from the Indians and Charlie Neal from the Dodgers), the club ultimately waited for Pumpsie Green and Earl Wilson, to slowly work their way up through the farm system. Red Sox inaction in this area cost them dearly on the field — as so many black stars entered the game in this period — and the taint of their delay haunted them for decades after.

In 1960, Yawkey named longtime scout Neil Mahoney as farm director, and Dick O’Connell as vice president of the business — in charge of everything aside from major-league personnel. These two promotions might have been the first of Yawkey’s regime that were based solely on the men’s job performance and not on their personal friendships with their bosses. The organization slowly began to recover, especially after O’Connell became general manager in 1965. Two years later, the famous “Impossible Dream” club won Yawkey’s second pennant, before falling in seven games to the Cardinals. The Red Sox have contended almost every year since, and the club has remained a beloved institution in the city.

Yawkey witnessed a third and final pennant in 1975, but once more he watched his team lose a seventh game, this time to the Cincinnati Reds. The organization had never been stronger than it was at that moment, with a great farm system and a team filled with young players sure to bring more pennants.

But there would be no more winning for Yawkey, who succumbed to leukemia on July 9, 1976, after a long battle. He was 73. Walter O’Malley of the Dodgers, a longtime fellow owner, said, “He was a good man and a good friend. I never remember anyone ever saying anything bad about him personally. Things just won’t be the same without him.”24 Bill Veeck, an owner who clashed with Yawkey over the years, said, “Mr. Yawkey stood for genuine class.”25 Ted Williams, on a fishing trip in New Brunswick, said, “No one thought more of Tommie Yawkey than I did. I am really terribly sorry. I can’t put it into words.”26

Jean Yawkey and Friends

Years before his death, Tom Yawkey created a trust to control his charitable donations, and in 1959 he placed the Red Sox and Fenway Park in this trust. Upon Yawkey’s death, he left money to his daughter Julia from his first marriage and money to several employees, with the bulk of his estate shared between his widow and the Yawkey Trust. In any event, the Trust now owned the Red Sox.27 The two surviving trustees were Jean Yawkey and James Curran (the latter had been an accountant in Yawkey’s New York office), and they were soon joined by Joseph LaCour, who had also worked for Yawkey’s office. Jean Yawkey assumed Tom’s former role of team president. To manage the business of the ballclub, the trust appointed a six-member advisory board: Donald L. Miller, an executive vice president at the First National Bank of Boston; Patrick Sullivan, a partner in a New York law firm; Joseph T. Cummiskey, the former Red Sox treasurer; John Harrington, the current club treasurer; Haywood Sullivan, the current vice president; and Dick O’Connell, the current executive vice president and general manager.28 Jean Yawkey announced in September that the club was not for sale.29

It is worth remembering how volatile a time this was for the business of baseball, and how the Red Sox ownership weathered the storm during its own transition. During that summer of 1976 baseball was negotiating a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, which defined a path to free agency for the first time. On June 15, while Yawkey was just weeks from death, the Red Sox purchased outfielder Joe Rudi and pitcher Rollie Fingers, both pending free agents, from the Oakland Athletics for $2 million. These purchases, along with the sale of Vida Blue to the Yankees, were voided by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, but clearly Yawkey was willing to spend money right to the very end of his life.

When the first free-agent “class” became available that fall, the Red Sox signed the very first player — pitcher Bill Campbell, formerly of the Twins — for four years, and $1 million. O’Connell had to go to the board to get permission, which was granted.

The team’s first post-Yawkey financial hiccup occurred with the contract of Luis Tiant. When the star pitcher signed a two-year contract (plus an option) with Tom Yawkey before the 1976 season, Yawkey promised him (Tiant claimed) that he would be the team’s highest-paid pitcher. With Yawkey dead, and the team being run by a board of advisers, Tiant wanted his contract extended to match the salaries of recent signees. The team demurred and Tiant did not report to the club until well into spring training.

Early in the 1977 season the trust decided to put the club up for sale. “In short,” O’Connell announced, “the board has concluded that baseball is a very risky business. And they’re right, it is. But these are not baseball people as such, and they’re only doing what is financially sound.”30

In October the board announced the sale of the club to a 13-person group headed by two general partners: Haywood Sullivan, a longtime executive with the club, and Buddy LeRoux, a longtime team trainer who had made money in real estate. The remaining 11 limited partners included Jean Yawkey, team doctor Arthur Pappas, former basketball star Frank Ramsey, and concessionaire H.M. Stevens, Inc. The purchase price was estimated at $15 million. Haywood Sullivan, the key to the deal, had been close with Tom Yawkey and remained close with Jean.

There were several other bids, including one by ATO, the parent company of Rawlings Sporting Goods, which was reportedly higher than the Sullivan-LeRoux offer. Dom DiMaggio, former Red Sox star who had made millions in business, was one of the bidders. The sale process was highly criticized and speculation began right away that the many American League owners were concerned about the financing of the deal — Sullivan and LeRoux had only about $200,000 invested in the club and comparatively meager resources, and the structure required that the general partners alone would be responsible for any team losses.

On October 24, with the deal awaiting approval from the American League, O’Connell, the popular general manager who had won two pennants and was largely credited with pulling the franchise up from a decade-long slumber, was fired by the executive board and replaced by Sullivan. Although a longtime favorite of Tom Yawkey’s, O’Connell was not friendly with either Jean Yawkey or Sullivan, both of whom reportedly resented the credit he had received for the club’s resurgence.31

O’Connell’s two top assistants, John Claiborne and Gene Kirby, were also fired, coming off a 97-win season. O’Connell, who had been running the baseball operation for 12 years largely unencumbered, had seen the writing on the wall. He had been lobbying other American League clubs not to approve the sale. LeRoux was named the club’s vice president of business affairs.

By early November the sale was in trouble. Word surfaced that State Street Bank and Trust had not only financed much of the purchase price (about $8 million, including a line of credit for operating expenses), but that it would hold the team and ballpark as collateral.

Amid speculation that the pending sale would keep the Red Sox from participating in that fall’s free-agent market, in early December the club signed its top priority, starting pitcher Mike Torrez of the Yankees, for seven years at $350,000 per year. Several smaller deals were similarly carried out with no visible hindrance from above.

The sale of the Red Sox was formally rejected in early December at the baseball winter meetings in Honolulu. The American League cited the financial instability of the proposed management structure of the club. Sullivan and LeRoux were advised to find a general partner with some money.

In March, a new bid was announced. Jean Yawkey had joined as a general partner, and she would also donate Fenway Park to the group. With the park valued at $5.5 million, and the $15 million put up by the limited partners (30 shares at $500,000 each), the purchase price would be $20.5 million, higher than any other previous offer and the highest ever paid for a sports franchise at that time. In addition, the three general partners were putting up $1 million each, and the limited partners $150,000 per share, for operating revenue, giving the club $7.5 million in ready cash. The limited partners would receive 90 percent of the profits until 115 percent of their investment had been paid off, with Yawkey getting 5 percent and LeRoux and Sullivan 2.5 percent each. After that the split would be 60/40 between the limited and general partners.

On May 23, 1978, the American League owners approved the reorganized sale. The deal was all cash — no debt was involved. The three general partners all maintained the titles and roles they had held for the past several months. Somewhat surprisingly, LeRoux had also purchased four of the limited-partner shares, meaning that he put up a total of $3 million in cash. Yawkey bought one of the shares as well. The Yawkey gift of the ballpark was extraordinary, and meant that the limited partners had put up $15 million for an asset that was already worth $20.5 million.32

While the team had not hesitated to spend money during the two years of ownership unrest, once the new ownership was in place they proved unwilling to spend on free agents and struggled to retain the star players from a very good team. After a 99-win club lost a division tiebreaker to the Yankees in 1978, the club lost Luis Tiant to free agency, then traded team favorite Bill Lee for little-known infielder Stan Papi.

Although the club gave a seven-year, $5.3 million deal to Jim Rice in early 1979, a couple of years later it blundered into painful goodbyes to Fred Lynn and Carlton Fisk. When the club failed to mail the two stars 1981 contracts by the required deadline, both players filed grievances asking to become free agents immediately. Sullivan managed to trade Lynn before his case was settled, but Fisk won his case and signed with the White Sox. The fan base had already turned on Sullivan and LeRoux, but this debacle sealed their case forever.

In late 1981 the Red Sox landed one of the five exemptions available for teams that did not wish to participate in free agency. This status meant that the team could not sign a Type A free agent for three years, nor would it lose any players as compensation to other teams (part of the free-agent system that existed at the time). After being one of baseball’s biggest spenders for decades, the team was now behaving like a small-market club.

By this time the general partners, formerly the best of friends, were not getting along. Jean Yawkey wanted to win, and was willing to spend money to do so, to treat the club as her husband had long treated it. LeRoux wanted to make money, and he was angry that he was not getting any profits to pay down his $3 million investment. He offered to buy out Yawkey in late 1982 but was rebuffed. In response, Sullivan and Yawkey tried to buy LeRoux’s share of the team, which was also turned down.

On June 6, 1983, as the team planned an emotional fundraiser game for stricken former star Tony Conigliaro, with most of the 1967 pennant-winning alumni on hand, LeRoux held a press conference to announce that he had found a loophole in the partnership, and that he had cobbled together enough limited-partner shares to take control of the team. Rogers Badgett and Albert Curren, two of the limited partners, were LeRoux’s allies in the coup. Dick O’Connell, who had been out of baseball since being fired in 1977, was named the new general manager. Yawkey and Sullivan quickly went to court to seek a temporary restraining order, which was granted. In August, a Massachusetts judge ruled against LeRoux, returning the ownership to its earlier form. In June 1984, LeRoux’s appeal was denied. With the coup dead, Sullivan was named CEO, and Lou Gorman, brought aboard in the recent offseason, officially became the general manager on June 5, 1984.

An embittered LeRoux vowed to fight on, and insisted that it was Sullivan and Yawkey who should sell out, not he. “We brought [Yawkey] in for window dressing, and she’s been pulling the shade up and down ever since,” he said.33 Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall. In December 1984, an arbitration panel set the value of LeRoux, Blodgett, and Curran’s piece of the team at $16 million, more than twice what they had paid six years earlier, and in 1985 the disgruntled limited partners were bought out. LeRoux remained a vice president with the club for two more years, with Yawkey finally buying his general partnership interest in early 1987 for a reported $7 million.

Jean Yawkey now controlled two-thirds of the general partnership and was in control. With Gorman running the ballclub, Sullivan faded into the background. His place as Yawkey’s senior adviser was taken by John Harrington, who had been the team treasurer in the 1970s before Jean Yawkey lured him back in the late 1980s. The JRY Trust now owned 53 percent of the club.

When Jean Yawkey died in February 1992, Harrington, as the chief executive of the Trust, became Red Sox president and gained control of the franchise. Many assumed Harrington would sell the Trust’s share of the club to Sullivan, but instead in 1993 he bought out Sullivan, giving the Trust full ownership of general partnership interests. Harrington hired Dan Duquette as general manager, and the club made three playoff appearances before the end of the decade. The team also grew its revenue and payroll significantly during the 1990s, and by 2001 the Red Sox ranked fifth in revenue and third in payroll among major-league teams.34 Still, Harrington and Duquette became somewhat divisive figures, blamed for the acrimonious departures of stars Roger Clemens and Mo Vaughn by an increasingly hostile press corps and fan base.

On October 6, 2000, Harrington announced that the JRY Trust’s controlling stake in the team (which included Fenway Park and surrounding real estate and their 80 percent share of New England Sports Network, a regional TV network) was for sale. In an unusual facet of the agreement that defined the 1978 sale, the 23 remaining limited partners — who owned 47 percent of the club — essentially had veto power over who would own the other 53 percent. Harrington planned to conduct the sale as a public auction, with each interested buyer paying $25,000 to see the team’s books. The eventual winner would then need 12 limited-partner votes to get the team, subject, of course, to the approval of Major League Baseball. In addition, because the proceeds of the sale would go to the Yawkey Trust, a public charity, the sale would have to be approved by the Massachusetts attorney general.35

The front-runners were thought to be a group of Bostonians led by Joe O’Donnell and Steve Karp, championed by both city newspapers and most of the local politicians.36

The eventual winning bid came from a partnership of three nonlocals with experience in the game:

• John Henry, the owner of the Florida Marlins, who had made his fortune as a financial trader.
• Tom Werner, a television executive who had been the principal owner of the San Diego Padres a decade earlier.
• Larry Lucchino, who had had successful stints running two teams — the Orioles and the Padres — and had overseen the building of Baltimore’s Camden Yards, ushering in a wave of stadium construction that continued unabated.

Henry had bought the Marlins in 1998 and in many ways had been a model owner. He worked in the community, his players loved him, and the baseball establishment admired him. But he was losing money and had failed in his long quest to get a new ballpark built in order to get out from under a terrible lease he had been saddled with by the previous owner. Commissioner Bud Selig knew he wanted to sell the Marlins but wanted to keep him in the game. He tried to get Henry interested in the Red Sox, but for a time it looked more likely that Henry would buy the Angels. Only when negotiations with the Disney-owned Angels bogged down did Henry turn his attention to the Red Sox.37

The man responsible for creating the winning group was Les Otten, owner of a number of ski resorts in Northern New England. He first suggested the idea of buying the Red Sox to his friend Werner, who had been out of the game for years. Werner then approached Lucchino as an executive who could oversee the team as CEO. For much of 2001 this group tried in vain to come up with the needed capital to put together a bid. When Henry heard about their dilemma, he let them know he could come up with the necessary money, but he was going to want control. All four men got along, but Henry was up-front about his requirements. He would be happy to step aside and let them keep looking. Otten was the most reluctant to surrender control, but he acceded when it was clear that there would be no bid without Henry.38

In early December, the press learned that the highest bid had been submitted by Charles Dolan, who owned Cablevision, at $405 million for the Foundation’s 53 percent of the team. When Dolan heard that some of the limited partners were concerned about his bid — his brother owned the Indians, and Dolan had an ongoing public feud with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner — Dolan let the limiteds know that he was willing to buy their shares too, for as much as $250 million. (This was less per share than the Foundation portion of the bid, but the limited partnerships afforded no operational control.)39

When Harrington heard that Dolan was talking to the limited partners, a violation of the bidding rules, he announced that all bidders would have a chance to rebid. Dolan submitted a new offer, as did Henry’s group and the O’Donnell/Karp group. The newspapers continued their daily hammering of Henry and his team for being outsiders who knew nothing of the city. For several days Henry worked with the locals to see if they could combine their bids, with Henry providing the money and O’Donnell/Karp the political muscle to soothe the locals. The venture fell apart, ultimately because the locals did not have sufficient funds, though they said they could secure the capital once they were awarded the team.40

Ultimately, the Foundation’s representatives chose Henry’s bid of $700 million for 100 percent of the entire package: team, ballpark, and NESN. Henry was chosen because (a) his bid was all cash, with no restrictions on the money or difficulty in getting it, and (b) his group would win speedy approval from Major League Baseball, which knew Henry and his partners well. The newspapers savaged Henry and the process, flatly claiming that Henry was nothing but a stooge of Commissioner Selig, someone who cared nothing for Boston or the Red Sox but was put in place to support the revenue-sharing and non-spending that Selig wanted.

The ultimate price of the franchise highlighted the massive increase in the value of sports franchises occurring at the time. It was more than double the recent record price of $323 million paid by Dolan’s brother Larry for the Cleveland Indians a couple of years before. It also far exceeded the $500 million to $525 million valuation placed on the Yankees in the late 1990s when Charles Dolan was close to acquiring that franchise from George Steinbrenner.41

Dan Shaughnessy, writing in the Boston Globe, was especially, enraged, calling Harrington “a cowardly little accountant,” who had screwed over O’Donnell and Karp. “Selig can be forgiven,” he concluded, “if we become the Kansas City Royals of the East.”42

Tom Reilly, the Massachusetts attorney general, was sufficiently concerned that he launched an investigation. O’Donnell and Karp fanned the flames, suggesting they had been wronged, and warning Henry that things would be difficult for them in Boston without political friends. Dolan and Miles Prentice (another bidder) each raised their bids above Henry’s. Reilly eventually came to realize that the process had been aboveboard, but because he was protecting a public charity, and because Dolan had now submitted a higher bid, Reilly worked out a deal with the Henry group to create a new charity, the Red Sox Foundation, that would be funded by enough to offset the new $30 million shortfall. Some of this funding came from Henry, some from the former limited partners.43

Not everyone was happy. “We are deeply disappointed by today’s events,” said Charles Dolan. “We agree with the previous statement of the attorney general of Massachusetts that the bidding process for the sale of the Boston Red Sox was fatally flawed. All of those associated with the process clearly know that to be the case.”44

On January 29, 2002, Major League Baseball approved the sale of the Red Sox by a vote of 29 to 0 — Henry, as owner of the Marlins, abstained. Within a few weeks he sold the Marlins to Jeff Loria, who in turn sold the Expos to Major League Baseball. Although Tom Yawkey had been dead for 26 years and Jean Yawkey for 10, it could finally be said that the 69-year reign of the Yawkey family over the Red Sox had come to an end.

John Henry

The new Red Sox ownership group, organized as New England Sports Ventures, was publicly represented by three men: John Henry, as principal owner; Tom Werner, as chairman, largely concerned with the team’s 80 percent ownership of the New England Sports Network; and Larry Lucchino, president and CEO, who ran the club day-to-day. Although many in the media fanned the fear that the new group would run the team on the cheap to make profits, this proved not to be the case.

One of the things that distinguished Henry’s group from its competitors for the team was that the others all wanted to build a new ballpark, while the new ownership, especially Lucchino, believed that Fenway Park could be refurbished and restored. Lucchino hired ballpark architect Janet Marie Smith, who had worked with him in Baltimore (when Camden Yards was built) and San Diego, and spent the next several years overseeing the remodeling of Fenway.

A new section of seats above the left-field wall was added, and other improvements included a roof deck above the right-field stands, new or refurbished seats throughout the park, a reinforcement of all the concrete and steel in the park, wider concourses, new restrooms, new clubhouses and batting cages, and new luxury seats. The seating capacity, just over 33,000 for decades, was eventually expanded to 37,949. The team and ballpark also became much more fan-friendly, with major initiatives to recognize past players and teams. This was not an act of charity — in 2003, the club started a sellout streak that lasted nine years despite maintaining the highest ticket prices in the game. The ballpark was thought to be falling apart when Henry’s group took over, but within a few years it was one of the city’s crown jewels.45

A view of Fenway Park during its 100th season in 2012. (COURTESY OF BILL NOWLIN)

Henry’s team also maintained high payrolls, regularly one of the highest in the game. Fears that the Red Sox would behave like a small-market team quickly faded away as free-agent signings became a regular occurrence.

Most importantly for the fans, the team on the field excelled. Although the Red Sox had contended often in the 35 years before Henry’s group bought the team, it had not won a World Series title since 1918. A key turning point can be marked in November 2002 when Lucchino hired 28-year-old Theo Epstein, a Yale-educated local kid who had worked for Lucchino in Baltimore and San Diego, to be his general manager.46

Epstein proved a wise choice. The farm system was soon thriving, and he made enough savvy acquisitions to help the club win World Series in 2004 and 2007. They won again in 2013 after Epstein had left for the Chicago Cubs.

As of this writing, the Red Sox ownership has been stable since 2002. The parent company has been renamed Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Red Sox, NESN, Roush Fenway Racing (a NASCAR racing team), Fenway Sports Marketing (a marketing firm), and Liverpool FC (a soccer team in the English Premier League). As of 2012, Henry owned about 40 percent of the company, and a relative newcomer to the ownership circle, Michael Gordon, a Milwaukee native and friend of ex-Commissioner Selig, owned 12 percent, among many other stockholders.47

John Henry has been the principal owner since 2002, and Tom Werner has remained the chairman. In 2014, Larry Lucchino stepped aside from running the day-to-day operations and Sam Kennedy (who joined the organization in 2002) was named president. A year later Dave Dombrowski, recently let go by the Tigers and the GM under Henry in Miami, became president of baseball operations, assuming many of the duties Lucchino had while running the team.

When the Red Sox captured the 2013World Series, they were one of the most valuable franchises in baseball: According to the Forbes annual team valuation in March 2014, the team was worth $1.5 billion, behind only the Yankees and Dodgers. The team boasted revenue estimated by Forbes at $357 million, second only to the Yankees. Henry willingly spent this bounty to put the best team on the field: The team’s 2013 payroll of $175 million was third, behind only the Yankees and Dodgers.48

As of 2017, the organization looked to be financially stable and in fine working order.

Last updated: December 13, 2017

Notes

Steve Gromek, left and Larry Doby celebrate after Cleveland’s win in Game Four of the 1948 World Series. Cleveland would go on to win the championship in six games, and the franchise is still looking for its first World Series title since. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

Introduction

Cleveland had a history of major-league franchises long before the American League club now known as the Guardians was moved there in 1900.

The Cleveland Forest Citys were one of the original teams in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871, though the club folded after the 1872 season. While not a part of the original National League, the Cleveland franchise was established in 1879 when the league expanded. The Blues were to last six years in the NL, folding after the 1884 season. A new franchise was established in the American Association in 1887, lasting two seasons and departing only two years before the Association itself ended. In 1890, two new franchises emerged in the Forest City, the Spiders name returning as a National League entry and the Infants representing the ill-fated Players League. The latter team, along with the league, lasted only one season. The Spiders were one of the better teams in the what now was a 12-team National League, finishing second three times and almost always ending up in the first division — until 1899. In possession of two NL franchises, the Spiders owners decided to strengthen the St. Louis team at the expense of Cleveland, causing the weakened club to finish with a 20-134 record — the worst in major-league baseball history. Not surprisingly, the team was one of four eliminated in the National League before the start of the 1900 season.

It was into this vacuum that Ban Johnson, president of the Western League, moved his Grand Rapids team to Cleveland in 1900. Johnson renamed his minor-league circuit the American League. That same year, he relocated his St. Paul franchise to Chicago, striking a deal with the owners of the NL Chicago club. His league was still “Western,” with franchises from Buffalo to Kansas City. The Chicago and Cleveland moves had not changed that regional designation, but they had placed in league in two of the seven largest cities in the country, foreshadowing Johnson’s intent to compete with the NL monopoly. A year later, he moved into four major Eastern markets and officially declared the Americans a major league, directly taking on its National counterpart.

The early positioning of the Cleveland and Chicago clubs did little to benefit those two original American League franchises, at least as far as long-term success was concerned. Of the eight initial teams, Cleveland has won the fewest World Series, only two. While the Chicago franchise has won three, only one of those successes has come in the last 90 years and Cleveland has actually appeared one more time in the Series (6) than has Chicago. They are, in that regard, the two least successful original American League clubs.

At the same time, Cleveland has had some notable accomplishments in its American League history. Twice the franchise has established major-league attendance records, first for a single season and later for consecutive sellouts. The fans have witnessed some of the game’s superstars, including Napoleon Lajoie, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige. Then known as the Indians, they were the first club to integrate the American League, in 1947. And later, Cleveland fans also witnessed one of the longest droughts — 35 years — during which the team was never in serious contention for the pennant. Over the history of the franchise, there have been 12 different owners or syndicates that have shaped the history — notable or not — of the American League baseball club in Cleveland.

Charles W. Somers, 1900-1915

Ban Johnson’s Chicago move positioned the league in the country’s second largest city, but it was the Cleveland relocation that proved to be far more instrumental to Johnson’s ultimate success in becoming an equal of the National League. Johnson initially approached Davis Hawley, who had been one of the local owners of the Spiders, to see if he had any interest in purchasing the Grand Rapid Rustlers and moving them to his city. Hawley declined interest but set up a meeting for Johnson with Charles Somers, owner of a large coal company, and Jack Kilfoyl, owner of a popular downtown men’s clothing store and a major investor in Cleveland-area real estate. That meeting not only secured Somers’ and Kilfoyl’s investment; it also led to the purchase of League Park, the last home of the Spiders, for $10,000.1 The new Cleveland team would not only have owners, but also a place to play ball, located at the end of an established streetcar line at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 66th Street on the east side.

Somers, born in Newark, Ohio, in 1868, quickly proved to be the more important partner. His family moved to Cleveland in 1884. His father owned a major coal-mining and -distribution company that Charles took over and grew.2

Even more instrumental to Johnson and his league, however, was the enthusiasm and financial support that Somers provided. Essentially, Somers helped to finance the move of Charles Comiskey’s team to Chicago. He also provided monetary support to Connie Mack’s team in Philadelphia when it was established in 1901 and was the primary investor in setting up the new franchise in Boston that same year. In fact, the early Boston club was called the “Somersets” after him, the local paper declaring that Somers “is amply able to finance a club here.”3 On his trip to Cleveland, Johnson had found someone “eager to throw his all into the fight to make the American League’s ambitious dreams become actual realities.” Somers put hundreds of thousands, likely well over a million, dollars at the league’s disposal.4 In fact, Johnson’s main biographer has concluded that if Somers “had not financed several of the clubs in the first few years, the loop’s history would have been brief.”5 In Charles Somers, Johnson had the gold mine that ensured the longevity of the American League. His move of a team to Cleveland proved far more beneficial than he had initially expected.

Ironically, Somers’ investments in other teams proved to be more fruitful than was his backing of the Cleveland club. In the first five years of the American League, from 1901 to 1905, Somers’ three major investments besides Cleveland — Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago — were the only pennant winners in the league. Cleveland during that period never finished higher than third place. That pattern was to hold true throughout Somers’ ownership of the club; the team came close only in the 1908 season when it finished a half-game game behind the Detroit Tigers. One can only wonder what might have been in 1908 had Somers agreed a year earlier to trade outfielder and future Hall of Famer Elmer Flick, near the end of his career, for a young Ty Cobb. The Cleveland magnate asserted after he had rejected the offer that “maybe (Flick) isn’t quite as good a batter as Cobb, but he’s much nicer to have on the team.”6 Further, had the club been able to make up a game that had been rained out that season, it may well have tied the Tigers and faced them in a playoff game. The club was a victim of now-defunct rules in the AL, along with Somers’ own reservations on Cobb.7

While Somers never had the success in Cleveland that he did with the other clubs he had financed, he did receive some early payback for his broader support. In 1902, in the midst of the battle between the NL and the still upstart AL, Napoleon Lajoie jumped from the NL’s Philadelphia Phillies to the Athletics. A Pennsylvania judge banned Lajoie from playing any games for the A’s in that state, which would have caused him to miss half the season. To prevent that, Johnson transferred Lajoie to the Cleveland club, with little compensation in return, so he would only have to miss the 11 games the team played in Pennsylvania.8 The deal would give Cleveland its first player inducted into the Hall of Fame and its manager for part of his tenure in Cleveland, as well as the longest continuous club nickname — the Naps — until they were renamed the Indians after Lajoie was sold.

In fact, it was during Somers’ ownership that that club had been given all six of its nicknames, the last one, Indians, enduring until the present. When the team first arrived from Grand Rapids, the sportswriters referred to it as the Lake Shores, perhaps reflecting the city’s proximity to Lake Erie. The name was somewhat ironic since the actual ballpark was more than a mile from the lake. They then became the Bluebirds in 1901, for their blue uniforms, quickly shortened to the Blues, perhaps reflecting the nickname given to the original National League club from 1879-1884. The name was again changed in 1902 to the Broncos, for no apparent reason, until the writers again changed it to the Naps in 1904, playing off the first name of their star second baseman. After Somers sold Lajoie, the writers came up with the Indians, perhaps remembering and honoring Louis Sockalexis, the first Native American to play in the major leagues (Spiders, late 1890s.)9 It’s equally possible both writers and front office thought the name presented a more warrior-like image. In either case, they have remained the Indians since.

While Somers did not have any involvement with any of the team’s nicknames, he was instrumental in upgrading the ballpark he had purchased in 1900. League Park was built for the NL Spiders in 1890 and, as was common at the time, wood was used for much of the edifice, including its support beams. Such ballparks were fire hazards. Between the 1909 and 1910 season, League Park was essentially rebuilt, using concrete and steel in place of the wooden beams and other supports. The dimensions of the old park, with its unique contours, were largely maintained. The new park had a seating capacity of 19,200, although up to 20,000 could be accommodated with standing-room areas. Ernest S. Barnard, at the time secretary/treasurer of the Naps and much later the president of the American League, played a major role in renovating the park.10 The new structure was, from all indications, financed entirely by Somers. It would remain the primary home of the ballclub for another 36 years.

Somers was solely responsible for that financing largely because Jack Kilfoyl decided to sell his interest in the ballclub. There is no evidence to indicate that the new ballpark precipitated the departure, but the timing would suggest that the added cost may have been a factor in his decision. Whatever the reason, Somers bought out Kilfoyl’s interest around the time the construction began and later named Barnard the club’s vice president, perhaps rewarding him for his efforts and success in overseeing the renovation of the ballpark.11

Along with the renovation, the 1910 season also saw the arrival of one of Cleveland’s best-known players. Joseph Jefferson Jackson — Shoeless Joe — was traded by the Athletics to Cleveland in midseason, after two failed efforts on his part to make the club in Philadelphia. Having rejected the deal for baseball’s greatest hitter in 1907, Somers now brought to the Naps the player who would produce the third highest batting average of all time. In his first full season in Cleveland, 1911, Jackson batted .408, the best average of his career. He quickly became an idol of fans during his five-year tenure with the Naps.12

Jackson’s success and fan admiration, however, could not alone produce a successful team, let alone help Somers’ other business investments. After a competitive season in 1913 in which the team drew a record 500,000-plus fans, last-place and seventh-place finishes in 1914 and 1915 brought fewer than 200,000 to League Park in each of those years. A wealthy Charles Somers could have readily survived the struggling ballclub, but his coal-delivery business was in serious decline as more Cleveland homes converted to electricity. He attempted to maneuver out of the situation by selling some of his players, including dealing Jackson to the White Sox for $31,500.13 But that did little to offset Somers’ financial woes, with his business debts now estimated to be as large as $2 million.14 He was forced to turn to Ban Johnson for assistance in selling the ballclub.

While Somers was never successful in producing a Cleveland pennant winner, he was instrumental in the survival of the American League. His money had enabled the establishment of franchises in Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia. He was even able to help fund the creation of a franchise in New York, the Highlanders, in 1903. Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia all won pennants quickly. For whatever reason, perhaps because Somers was too much a micromanager, his own club never produced such results.15 At the same time, beyond ensuring the success of the American League through his money, he also helped negotiate the National Agreement, which brought peace to major-league baseball in 1903, and served for most of his ownership as a vice president of the league.16 While he may have been too much of a micromanager to produce a winning ballclub in his hometown, his macro involvement, especially his money, unquestionably enabled the American League to survive and prosper. Somers lived into the 1930s. He recovered some of his wealth. When he died at his summer home on a Lake Erie island in June of 1934, during the thick of the Great Depression, he was worth over $2 million. He remained a fan of the Indians, witnessing their first championship in 1920 and following them until his death.17

James C. “Sunny Jim” Dunn, 1916-1927

Somers’ need to sell the Cleveland club in late 1915 came at a convenient time for Ban Johnson. For a variety of reasons, the Federal League folded at the end of the 1915 season. The owners of the eight clubs in the “outlaw” league were all prospective buyers of major-league teams, if available, and at least two besides the Indians — the Cubs and the Browns — were purchased by Federal League magnates. Supposedly the owners of the Pittsburgh Rebels were interested in purchasing the Indians, but along with a Cleveland group they were rejected in their effort to acquire the team.18 Instead, Johnson chose to award the franchise to a fellow Chicago businessman already well known to him, Jim Dunn. The deal did not go through until March, but was completed before the start of the 1916 season.

There is no record to indicate why Johnson rejected both the local offer and that from a Federal League owner, especially since the offers from Charles Weeghman and Philip Ball to buy the Cubs and Browns were accepted. Johnson was at the time in some difficulty with some of the magnates after he negotiated the deal to end the Federal League, largely because it would cost the 16 owners collectively hundreds of thousands to buy out the league’s investors. Perhaps he rejected the first two offers because he could not be assured of support from the potential buyers that he had received from Somers, not so much financially as in the assurance that they would back his decisions. It was clear that some of Johnson’s strength was beginning to erode after the Federal League deal. Awarding the franchise to Dunn, a close friend, would ensure that Johnson had another owner as supportive as Somers had been. According to The Sporting News, Dunn also seemed suited for the job. “He is a big person, physically and mentally, and his disposition can best be indicated by the fact that he likes to have everyone call him Jim.” That informality, while notable, was probably the least important reason for the turnaround Dunn generated with the team.19

Dunn had made his money in the railroad construction business. A native of Marshalltown, Iowa, he had moved to Chicago to take advantage of the larger opportunities afforded by the booming city.20 Even with his personal wealth, he either could not afford or would not pay the Indians’ price tag of $500,000 by himself. After bringing in other Chicago businessmen, Dunn was still dependent upon $100,000 loans from both Johnson and Charles Comiskey.21 Those loans would cause some problems later, especially during the Carl Mays controversy, but did not in any way impede the operation of the franchise, which Dunn quickly rebuilt and promoted, largely making the decisions on his own.

One of Dunn’s earliest moves was to rehire most of the front-office staff and meet personally with Charles Somers for his input, assuring a smooth transition. Somers was certainly impressed. He gave his support to Dunn, calling him “a real live wire (who) will … give Cleveland a good ball club.”22 His most significant early move was the acquisition of Tris Speaker, star center fielder for the Boston Red Sox. The deal was expensive, costing the Indians two players, including a solid pitcher, as well as $55,000 in cash. Dunn asserted: “A tail-ender will not pay in Cleveland, but a first division team will draw big. … I would not have thought of entering baseball if I had intended to be content with a second division outfit.”23 It is likely the deal was motivated in part to replace the loss of local hero Shoeless Joe in a salary-dump trade by Somers in late 1915. During his first season in Cleveland, Speaker led the league in hits, doubles, and batting average. While it did not move the team up much in the standings — the Indians finished in sixth place — his overall efforts did restore fan interest. With the acquisition, Dunn claimed that “the purchase of Speaker will, I believe, show fans that I am making good on my promise to give them a good ball club.”24 He clearly succeeded. Dunn more than tripled attendance from the previous season with his efforts at rebuilding and marketing the ballclub.

The team continued to improve during the next two seasons, finishing third in 1917 and second in 1918. The latter season was plagued by the entry of the United States into World War I. Some players were lost to the draft and others were seeking jobs in war-related industries to avoid being sent to the front lines. Dunn became one of the first advocates among the owners of ending the 1918 season early, believing that with the loss of players he could not give Cleveland fans the brand of baseball they deserved.25 Both leagues did agree, under pressure from the federal government, to end the season early, beginning the World Series soon after Labor Day. Dunn demonstrated his concern for his players by giving them notice of the decision before it was officially announced so they could quickly move to find war-related jobs.26 A drop in attendance during the season may also have encouraged Dunn to advocate its early end, though the team still fared better than it had during the last two years of the Somers regime.

While the 1919 season started late, again due to the war, the Indians drew over 500,000 for only the second time in its history and again finished in second place. While the team was profitable, Dunn had yet to deliver on his early promise of a championship in Cleveland. During the season manager Lee Fohl was fired and was replaced by Speaker. Equally notable during the season was the Carl Mays issue, which demonstrated, more than a year before the Black Sox scandal became public, the extent of the rift between American League owners.

Carl Mays, who had helped the Red Sox win the World Series in 1918, was dissatisfied and asked to be traded. Boston obliged with a late July 1919 deal with the Yankees. At the time, Mays had been suspended from baseball by Ban Johnson, who for that reason attempted to block the deal. He was supported by five of the AL owners, including Dunn. However, the league’s Executive Committee that year was made up of Dunn and the three owners who now opposed Johnson and his control over baseball. Those three, Charles Comiskey of the White Sox, Harry Frazee of the Red Sox, and Jacob Ruppert of the Yankees, overruled the league president and allowed Mays to return to baseball and report to the Yankees.27 It was the first time Johnson had been rejected on a major decision, but Dunn, by his support, had provided the payback Johnson had hoped for when he recruited him to purchase the Indians. The fact that Johnson still held stock in the club sullied Dunn’s backing and may have hampered his effectiveness with the other owners for the rest of his time in baseball.28

There was a further irony to the Mays deal during the 1920 season when the Indians met the Yankees in New York in August. Mays was the pitcher and Ray Chapman the batter when an errant pitch struck Chapman in the temple. He died later that evening, the only fatality caused directly by an incident during a major-league game. Dunn must have wondered at the time how history might have been different had the majority of AL owners had had their way on the Mays trade to New York. That wasn’t the only somber event of the season. Ace pitcher Stan Coveleski’s wife died earlier in the year, producing what was unquestionably a remorseful year for the organization.29

In spite of those tragedies, 1920 also proved to be the season Dunn had promised Cleveland fans when he purchased the club, delivering its first pennant, followed by a World Series championship. The club finished two games ahead of the White Sox and three ahead of the Yankees in a close pennant race, largely aided by the exposure and suspension for the last week of the season of seven White Sox players accused of fixing the 1919 World Series. When the Indians clinched the pennant, Dunn sought and quickly gained approval to flip the games in the Series. The first three of the best-of-nine Series were supposed to be played in Cleveland, as well as the final two if necessary. Instead, Dunn requested that the Series open in Brooklyn so he would have time to add more good seats in League Park.30 The risky move paid off, both in success on the field and at the box office. After losing two of the first three games in Brooklyn, Cleveland won the last four to win the Series in seven games. In a ballpark that usually accommodated 20,000 fans, the Indians drew over 107,000 for the four games in Cleveland.31 A crowning touch was provided before the players scattered after the final game. Dunn signed each of them to a 1921 contact, providing all with a 10 percent increase over the previous season’s salary.32

That generosity was not out of character for Dunn. He was an unusual magnate in the way he cultivated relations with his players. As Henry Edwards, a sportswriter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, observed, “Jim Dunn does not regard his players as employees. They are his boys, his pals. Neither do the players regard Dunn merely as an employer. To them, he is … their colleague.”33 When Dunn died, Smoky Joe Wood, one of his players, referred to him as “the brightest man who was ever owner of a baseball club … a great man.”34 That level of praise from a player toward an owner was and even now remains relatively uncommon.

There was little time for Dunn to bask in the glory of the Series results, however. The Black Sox Scandal brought demands from many magnates to restructure the game, particularly at its top, as a way to bring gambling under control. Major emphasis was placed on naming an independent commissioner who would not be tied to either league or to the owners in any fashion. The most popular proposal, the Lasker Plan, essentially created an independent commissioner. Ban Johnson was adamantly opposed to the plan and Dunn remained one of five AL owners loyal to Johnson until outside pressure as well as internal strife forced Johnson to agree to the appointment of Kenesaw Mountain Landis as commissioner.35 Dunn was likely not happy with the result, but it did prevent the possible breakup of the American League, and the 1921 season was thus guaranteed to begin as usual.

League Park in Cleveland, circa 1910s. (DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

The 1921 season was another good one for Cleveland. The team was only four games off its 1920 performance and League Park, now named Dunn Park, drew almost 750,000 fans.36 That did not match the 900,000-plus fans of the season before and the team’s performance was not good enough to prevent the beginning of the first Yankees dynasty, featuring Babe Ruth in his second year in New York. Cleveland finished second, 4½ games removed from another pennant.

The 1921 season was also Dunn’s last full one as owner of the Indians. He fell ill with influenza shortly after the 1922 season started and succumbed on June 9. His will left the team to his widow, Edith. She thus became one of the rare women who owned a baseball team of any kind, although she had virtually no involvement in the day-to-day operation of the club. That responsibility fell to Ernest Barnard, whom Dunn had named president of the team in his will. Speaker remained manager until an alleged gambling scandal that also involved Ty Cobb forced his departure from the team in 1927. The club reached as high as second only once after Dunn’s death and finished in the second division three times. The major reason for the decline in performance was that money to invest in players and marketing was less plentiful after Dunn’s death. His estate was far less willing to provide resources to the club than Dunn himself had been. When Edith Dunn remarried, the team was put up for sale after the 1927 season and was purchased by a Cleveland syndicate headed by Alva Bradley.37

It is, of course, difficult to surmise how well the Indians would have done had Dunn not died. He was obviously successful at promoting baseball to the city of Cleveland, not the least because he was able and willing to invest in player talent. Overall, Somers’ teams had played just under .500 baseball and managed only one season as high as second place. Dunn’s squads produced a .545 percentage, finished second four times and won a pennant and World Series. His teams averaged 550,000 fans a year — a 76 percent increase over Somers’ clubs. The 912,000 fans who crossed through the turnstiles in 1920 remained an attendance record until Bill Veeck purchased the team. Part of that success certainly seemed to stem from Dunn’s relationship with his players. It’s clear they liked playing for Dunn and probably were more committed to the team’s success as a result. It’s also clear that although Dunn was part of a syndicate, he had full control over his ballclub, on matters of both personnel and finances. As we will see with future owners, especially Alva Bradley, that did not always happen. Dunn may have been an outsider to Cleveland, but he brought a level of success to the ballclub that fans wouldn’t see again for more than two decades.

Alva Bradley II, 1928-1946

Cleveland fans had reason for optimism in 1928. The sale of the Indians was consummated and the new owners prepared for the coming season. After the death of Jim Dunn, the team had languished under the ownership of his estate. There was little new investment and the results, only one second-place finish, demonstrated that lack of support. Even worse, popular manager Tris Speaker had resigned and then was forced to leave the team. The sixth-place finish in 1927 seemed to show how far removed the glory days of 1920 were.

The new syndicate that purchased the Indians for $1 million, however, gave reason for the city to be optimistic. Unlike Dunn’s group, all of the partners were Clevelanders with deep business interests in the city. Alva Bradley, whose investments included banking, real estate, and transportation, quickly emerged as the leading partner. The other major investors included Alva’s brother, Charles, along with bankers Joseph Krause and John Sherwin.38 Bradley gave more reason for encouragement by stating that his group “believed that a winning baseball team was a big asset to the development of a city.” He added that the syndicate would “make every endeavor to put (the team) into the winning class.”39 There was good reason to take Bradley’s words at face value since the syndicate was thought to be the wealthiest owner group in the American League.40 Before the year ended, Bradley named Billy Evans as vice president of the team. For many years Evans had been an umpire in the American League and was, Bradley declared, “one of the best-informed baseball men in the business.”41 Bradley also indicated that the club would establish a farm system, a new trend in the major leagues, looking seriously at New Orleans and Terre Haute as locations and also inviting offers from other cities.42

Finally, there was serious talk in the city about building a new ballpark, far larger than League Park, which came to fruition in November of 1928 when the proposal received strong approval in a referendum. While often thought to have been an effort to attract the Olympics, in fact it was part of a major effort to upgrade Cleveland’s lakefront.43 Even though the 1928 team fared worse than the year before, there was reason for fans to be upbeat. The reality with the syndicate, however, proved to be considerably different than those expectations.

Although the 1929 season, which produced a much improved third-place finish, gave further reason for optimism, the onset of the Depression in October would prove to be a major setback. Members of the syndicate no longer had the extensive wealth they had possessed when they purchased the Indians, and became far more conservative in their willingness or ability to put money in the club. The partners’ reactions were reinforced by a decline in attendance from 1931 through 1935, even though the Indians continued to finish in the first division. Even the new ballpark failed to generate much additional fan interest during the depths of the Depression.

Municipal Stadium in Cleveland opened in 1932; a crowd of more than 80,000 watched the Indians’ first game there on July 31. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

The new ballpark, in fact, would prove to be an ongoing issue, at times even an albatross, for as long as the syndicate owned the team. Troubles began even before the ballpark, capable of seating over 80,000, was finished in 1931.44 Plans had been made and tickets sold for a gala opening in July, but all of that came to a screeching halt when the city and the club were unable to reach a deal on a lease. Bradley expressed his frustration in The Sporting News, saying, “[W]e have made one concession after another to the city, until now we come to the point where we can go no further.” The club had to refund $20,000 received from the advance sale of tickets for the grand opening.45 The Sporting News followed two weeks later with an editorial stating, “Now we have the spectacle of the city of Cleveland turning down a good offer from a responsible tenant that would reflect credit on the city and give it a permanent and profitable revenue.”46 As negotiations dragged on well into 1932, Bradley demonstrated further frustration by saying negotiations had been hampered “by the fact that too many city officials have the power to disrupt the result of weeks of careful thought and business-like dealings.”47 A deal was finally reached with the city and the new stadium opened to a crowd of more than 80,000 on July 31, 1932, a year after originally planned. Fans witnessed a 1-0 loss to the Athletics in a pitching duel between Lefty Grove and Mel Harder.48

That explosion of fans was short-lived, and even with the cavernous ballpark and the massive turnout for the opening game, the club failed to achieve the previous year’s attendance for the season. That caused Bradley to reconsider using Municipal Stadium at all. The Indians still owned League Park and paid no rent for any games played there. They began to play all their games at League Park in 1935, with the exception of the All-Star Game, which drew over 65,000 fans at Municipal Stadium.49 Otherwise, the new ballpark sat vacant for the baseball season.

In spite of the All-Star Game draw, 1935 was another bad year financially for the Indians. For the third year in a row, attendance fell under 400,000, even though the team finished in the first division in each season. General manager Billy Evans resigned after having his salary cut twice, a decision that was made not by Bradley but by his syndicate partners.50 Shortly after Evans’s departure, Bradley indicated that in the eight years he had been president of the Indians, the team had lost a total of $241,000.51

As the losses continued, the club began to play more games at Municipal Stadium, even with its obvious shortcomings: rental cost, fewer home runs and a lack of intimacy. The center-field fence was almost 500 feet away and, with extensive foul territory, fans were further removed from the playing field.52 In spite of those drawbacks, Bradley began to increase the number of games played at Municipal Stadium during the rest of his tenure. Opening Day, with its huge crowd, was a natural, as were Sundays and holidays. Bradley was also one of the first in the AL to receive approval for night games, so the seven allowed were also played there. No lights were installed at League Park. By the 1940s, close to half of the season schedule was played at the larger park.53 Only with the arrival of Bill Veeck, however, was League Park rendered obsolete.

On the issue of night games, Bradley proved to be a pioneer in the American League, though he was hardly a pacesetter in that regard for major-league baseball overall. As late as 1935 both Bradley and Evans declared that there would never be night baseball in Cleveland since there was already too much competition in the evening.54 The success of night baseball for Ohio’s other major-league club, Cincinnati, apparently caused Bradley to reassess his thinking, and he petitioned the other owners at the winter meetings in 1937 to allow the team to play seven games under the lights. They rejected his request by 5 to 2, with Clark Griffith of the Washington Senators leading the opposition, claiming there was “no emergency financial status” demonstrated and thus no reason to allow such games. The Tribe president was bitter over the refusal.55 He was not deterred, however, coming back the next year at the owners’ meeting and getting approval for seven night games in 1939. The club had to incur the cost of installing lights at Municipal Stadium, but the investment paid dividends for the first game, when 55,000 fans came to witness the new feature.56 In spite of that huge crowd, however, attendance overall declined for the 1939 season, ending up almost 100,000 lower than in 1938, even though the team finished in third place in both seasons.

Night baseball was not the only area when Bradley spoke in favor of innovation. In 1933 William Veeck Sr., then president of the Chicago Cubs, came out strongly in favor of interleague play, largely as a way to increase fan interest and attendance during the height of the Depression. Bradley gave Veeck strong support on the American League side. Like Veeck in the National League, however, both were in the minority.57 Implementation of interleague play was still more than five decades away.

While Bradley was somewhat progressive on lights and interleague play, he was totally the opposite on radio broadcasts and the development of a farm system. As early as 1931, when many clubs were experimenting with broadcasts as a means of increasing fan interest, Bradley was adamantly opposed, even though he charged for broadcasting rights. In effect, he was rejecting another potential revenue source.58 When Bill Veeck Jr. purchased the Indians during the 1946 season, there were still no radio broadcasts of Indian games in Northern Ohio.59 Bradley was also reluctant to build a farm system. Even though he claimed to have spent $128,000 on the minors, new talent, and scouting in 1938, he was actually lobbying Commissioner Landis, whom he strongly supported, to eliminate the farm system. When Landis decided not to abolish major-league team control of minor-league clubs, Bradley negotiated an agreement with Baltimore for the 1942 season. However, the lack of such arrangements earlier with lower-level teams was and would continue to be detrimental to the ballclub.60 It cannot be determined, of course, how much better Cleveland might have been with a richer farm system, or how much more interest radio might have generated, but there is little doubt that both decisions were detrimental to the team before the club was sold.

Even without a farm system, however, Bradley was responsible for two highly significant player signings that shaped the team’s history in important ways. Bob Feller was signed in 1936 and made his major-league debut that year at age 17. He proved to be a sensation, striking out 17 batters in his last game before returning for his senior year in high school in Iowa. Perhaps he was too successful, for other teams questioned whether his signing was legitimate and appealed to Landis to nullify his contract. If the commissioner had followed the pattern on other rulings he had made, Feller could have readily been declared a free agent. Instead, thanks in part to a direct appeal by Feller’s father, Landis allowed him to remain with the Indians and instead fined the club $7,500. In the aftermath, Bradley asserted, “Our rights to his services probably never would have been challenged if we had kept him in the minors instead of rushing him straight to the big leagues.”61 The other significant player move came as an indirect byproduct of the 1940 team revolt, which led to the firing of the manager at the end of the season. After an interim manager for a year, Bradley named Lou Boudreau, age 24, the player-manager. Boudreau had signed with the Indians out of college and had played three full seasons when he became the youngest manager in baseball history.62 He grew to be very popular with Cleveland fans, and as of 2018 remained the last manager to win a World Series for the Indians.

As mentioned, the major event leading to Boudreau’s hiring was the player revolt of 1940. During the 19 years of Bradley’s tenure, 1940 was the only year the Indians came close to winning the pennant. Oscar Vitt had managed the team for two full seasons before and there already were rumblings among some players who felt he was autocratic and uncaring. Bradley, although aware of the complaints, didn’t take them too seriously until well into the 1940 season, when things came to a head. On June 16, the majority of players, including Mel Harder and Feller, presented Bradley with a petition demanding that Vitt be fired immediately. The petition stated that “Vitt ridiculed them publicly … that he had been insincere in his dealings with them … that his words and actions in the dugout were of such a nature that the manager’s own jitters were transferred to the players, making it impossible to play their best ball.” Even Vitt admitted that he may have been too severe with the team.63 Bradley persuaded the players to rescind the petition, and the season continued, albeit with considerable friction. The Indians stayed in contention, but fell off near the end of the season, leading one sportswriter to refer to the players as “crybabies” and criticizing Bradley for interfering and undermining his manager.64 The team finished a game out of first and Vitt was fired in October. It was generally thought that Bradley had overstepped his bounds with the players and that as a result the revolt had cost the team a pennant.

Cleveland Indians star Bob Feller, center, signs his 1941 contract as general manager Cy Slapnicka, left, and owner Alva Bradley look on. It would be Feller’s last contract until he returned from military service in World War II four years later. (CLEVELAND PRESS COLLECTION, CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY)

Shortly after the 1941 season ended, Bradley faced his next major challenge. Just days after Boudreau had been named manager, the bombing of Pearl Harbor plunged the country into World War II. Bradley’s first response was to organize an all-star game during the coming season between major leaguers already in the service and the winner of the annual All-Star Game. The event drew over 62,000, with all proceeds going to assist the war effort. It was perhaps small consolation to a club that would have one of the lowest attendance levels during the 1942 season. Beyond attracting fans, Bradley was also challenged with keeping enough players to maintain a team. To do so, he encouraged them to seek war-related jobs during the offseason, to keep them from being drafted. As the war continued and the number of talented players decreased even further, he advocated that the ballparks be padlocked for the remainder of the war rather than sell “below standard baseball.”65 While Bradley made his views known publicly, he never pushed his idea at the annual meeting in December and it’s likely it would not have been well received had he done so.

For the most part, in fact, Bradley was not a major force in the major-league meetings. Often attorney Joseph Hostettler, a minor partner, was the main spokesman for the club. Bradley did play one very important role during his years in baseball, however, in the selection of a replacement for Landis after his sudden death in November 1944. Bradley was one of four owners named to the search committee, joining Don Barnes of the Browns, Phil Wrigley of the Cubs, and Sam Breadon of the Cardinals. Bradley and Barnes were strongly opposed to Ford Frick, the National League president, who initially had been considered the leading candidate to replace Landis. They were joined by Wrigley in preferring to hire an outsider. Bradley chaired the session that offered the name of US Senator Albert Benjamin “Happy” Chandler but made no official recommendation to the full meeting of the magnates on who should be chosen.66 The owners did, in fact, select Chandler as the new commissioner.

Bradley’s involvement with the naming of Chandler was the zenith of his tenure with Cleveland. The team continued to languish, finishing in the second division in 1945 and heading for the same the next year. Attendance was lackluster. Rumors of a sale had been floating around since early 1944, but Bradley denied them. They grew stronger in June of 1946, when one article even mentioned Bill Veeck Jr. as the buyer. Bradley again denied the rumors, even giving detailed reasons why such a deal would never happen.67 In fact, a number of owners in the ownership syndicate, especially John and Francis Sherwin, the largest investors and sons of an original partner, had grown tired of cash calls to keep the team afloat, along with little, if any, expectation of profits. Bradley was the only partner who still remained from the original syndicate. Many of the newer members had limited interest, if any, in baseball as a business and thus were less willing to pour more of their money into the team. As a consequence, Bradley was one of the last to learn that a group led by Veeck was buying the Indians. The deal was closed on June 22, 1946, for $1,539,000, only a short time after Bradley had learned about it.68 There wasn’t even time for him to form a group to purchase the club on his own.

The fans of Cleveland, and much of the baseball world for that matter, were excited by the deal, as was usually the case when a new buyer emerged for a weak club. Ed McAuley of the Cleveland News summarized the reaction succinctly in The Sporting News: “The former owners and stockholders were conservative, calm, patient and backwards when it came to innovations in the game. (Veeck) is the direct contrast — a glad hander, a congenial guy, an extrovert who has what the people would term ‘the common touch’!’” In the same issue of The Sporting News, J.G. Taylor Spink, the editor, summed up the change by saying: “It may be expected that the hitherto sedate club by the shores of Lake Erie will undergo quite a face lifting. … Veeck hadn’t been in charge two hours before the customers had accepted him unreservedly as a bright hope for better days. … The A.L (with) its lack of showboat tactics and the offering of baseball as 100% of its daily attraction, is due for a seasoning with tabasco.”69 Cleveland fans did not have to be patient this time. They would immediately witness a new and very different era of leadership in running the club. The tabasco seasoning would begin!

By almost any standard, Alva Bradley’s tenure with the Indians would be considered at best a mediocre one. Only a single second-place finish, numerous managers until Boudreau, a lack of publicity, including no broadcast of games, and lackluster attendance were the main characteristics of his time overseeing the club. The team did play better than .500 ball under his ownership, but attendance averaged 50,000 a season below that of the Dunn era. Born in February 1884, Bradley was, for the most part, a fairly typical businessman of his generation — somewhat aloof, leaning to the status quo, not wanting to make waves. He lived a fairly typical lifestyle of the well-to-do — golf, tennis, bridge, and horseback riding, reflecting his upbringing as well as his Ivy League education at Cornell. His wealth had come from coal and real estate, not from owning the Indians. He was generally hesitant to innovate. He also wanted deeply to be liked, even being known to fire his managers on “the friendliest of terms.”70 Even had he been more innovative, he may well have been hampered by a syndicate that tightly controlled the financial side of the business, in which he had little input. Bradley may have lacked imagination, but he also had limited access to the resources needed to innovate during the Depression and World War II, a problem that was not unique to the Indians. After the sale, he rarely attended a baseball game, even though he remained a fan of the Indians. He died in Delray Beach, Florida, in 1953.71

Bill Veeck Jr., 1946-1949

The new owner of the Indians was a hurricane compared with the previous management, as The Sporting News had forecast. In what J.G. Taylor Spink referred to as “a stiff workout — or a talk with Bill Veeck,” the new Cleveland owner summed up his philosophy: “Baseball has to be promoted, it has to be sold. …” As Ed McAuley summed up in the same issue, the Indians were “sadly in need of the hypodermic needle with which Veeck and his associates have stabbed it.”72 It was, indeed, to be a true shot in the arm for Cleveland baseball fans. Born in Chicago in February 1914, Veeck had grown up around baseball as his father was president of the Chicago Cubs until his death in 1933. His son spent countless hours at the ballpark, doing numerous jobs. Between his experience at Wrigley and his ownership of the Milwaukee minor-league team in the early 1940s, Veeck had gained considerable experience in building and promoting a ballclub.

Veeck undertook numerous strategies to draw fans to the ballpark. Promotions were a huge part of it. He immediately signed a contract with a local radio station to broadcast all home and away games. He re-established Ladies Day on a regular basis. He purchased new uniforms for 150 ushers and raised the number of night games to 21 from 14. He talked with cab drivers and bartenders, both of whom he would frequently encounter, to get a sense of what was wrong with the team. He carried that over to games, at which he mingled with fans to get their sense of how to improve the experience while watching the teams play. One of his early promotions was a highly publicized event to honor trainer Lefty Weisman, who had been with the Indians for 25 years. To add entertainment and comedy to the experience of the game itself, he hired Max Patkin as a coach and Jackie Price as a player. While both knew baseball, they were far better known as comedians. When not playing, which was most of the time, Price would entertain fans between innings with numerous bat and ball tricks. Patkin, while coaching, would go through a variety of gyrations, once even getting on the nerves of Red Sox manager Joe Cronin. Veeck’s efforts paid huge dividends. While the 1946 team finished in sixth place, it drew over a million fans, breaking the attendance record set by the 1920 pennant winners.73 At the time Veeck took control of the team in June, it had drawn 289,000 fans. For the remainder of the season, a little over half of the remaining 77 home games, his promotions brought in almost 800,000.74

Veeck almost got in the way of his efforts, however. Rumors began shortly after his syndicate gained ownership that the new magnate was looking to remove Boudreau as manager at the end of the season. Veeck later claimed to have Casey Stengel waiting in the wings to take over as soon as Boudreau was removed or traded.75 Local sportswriters responded with a highly publicized campaign to keep the popular manager, drumming up huge support from fans and forcing Veeck to back down from any managerial change. He concluded that “Lou was so popular that if I traded him away, I would have the whole city down my neck.”76 Instead, the owner hosted a night for Boudreau, drawing another large crowd and rewarding the manager with a raise and a new contract that would carry through the 1948 season.77 In the end, Boudreau remained as manager of the Indians longer than Veeck owned the team.

While both Price and Patkin had proved to be part of the attraction at home games, neither would return in 1947. A small part of the problem was that Price was a shortstop like Boudreau, though he certainly was no competition for the future Hall of Famer. The larger issue came in spring training in 1947, the club’s first year in the new Tucson, Arizona, facility, chosen so Veeck could be close to his ranch and family during that time. On a train with the rest of the team, Price walked through a car where a number of women were seated, carrying a number of snakes. The obviously disturbed women complained to the conductor, who was told by the Indians’ players, intending a practical joke, that it was Boudreau who was carrying the snakes. The accused manager had to explain his way out of the mess, which he did not find particularly humorous. He turned on Price and Patkin, exclaiming that he “was hired to manage a ball team and not a circus.”78 At the manager’s insistence, there would be no more appearances in Cleveland of either entertainer. But Veeck quickly found other ways to attract the fans.

Among his many tactics, Veeck became his own personal speaker’s bureau. He traveled to any community in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or New York considered in the Indians drawing area to speak. Veeck estimated that he gave up to 500 such speeches a year.79 While that number seems unlikely, he also added little gimmicks to make his appearances even bigger draws. At a Jaycee meeting in Ashland, Ohio, where he was to speak, the required uniform for admission was a sport shirt like the ones Veeck wore.80 He also found other ways to make the games more attractive to fans in outlying communities. The Indians now played all of their home games in cavernous Municipal Stadium with its exceptionally deep outfield stands. Recognizing that fans wanted more home runs, he installed temporary fences to bring the home-run distance closer to that of other major-league ballparks, shortening much of the outfield by up to 70 feet.81 He continued his special attractions, the most notable a celebration of Cy Young’s 80th birthday on June 11, at which Young’s entire community of Newcomerstown, Ohio — population 4,564 — was hosted for free.82 With all of his efforts, Veeck was well on his way to increasing attendance in 1947 by almost 50 percent, smashing the record set the previous year.

Veeck had another major promotional trick up his sleeve in 1947, although he denied it was such, and subsequent years would demonstrate that it was far more than a short-term stunt. After watching both the success of Jackie Robinson with the Dodgers and noting the larger crowds that Brooklyn was drawing both at home and on the road, Veeck signed Larry Doby to a contract, paying Effa Manley’s Newark Negro League club $5,000. Doby became the first black player in the American League. Veeck told The Sporting News that “Robinson has proved to be a real big leaguer, so I wanted to get the best Negro boy while the getting was good.” He added, “I am operating under the belief that the war advanced us in regard to racial tolerance.”83 Veeck also asserted that Doby was signed to build a stronger, pennant-contending team, not as a publicity stunt.84 Unlike Rickey with Robinson, Veeck had done nothing to prepare either Doby or his teammates for his arrival. While Doby’s first season in the majors was not successful, he was still generally well received by the club. His biographer has attributed that largely to Boudreau, the coaches, the players, and traveling secretary Spud Goldstein rather than to the owner.85 In any case, the American League was now integrated like the National. That unquestionably also helped draw fans to the ballpark in 1947.

Veeck was encouraged when Doby got off to a strong start in 1948 and by July, with the team in the thick of a pennant race, he made a roster change that garnered even more publicity. Satchel Paige, the best known pitcher in the Negro Leagues, was signed in July, when Veeck became convinced the club had a chance to win the pennant.86 The signing was costly, totaling $55,000, of which $25,000 went to Paige, $15,000 to the Kansas City Monarchs, and $15,000 to Abe Saperstein, with whom Veeck had contracted to help recruit black talent.87 The signing was not well received by sportswriters. Dan Daniel claimed Paige was already 50 and he found little excitement in New York about the pitcher joining the majors.88 Spink was even more vocal in his editorial, stating, “To sign a hurler at Paige’s age is to demean the standards of baseball in the big circuits. Further complicating the situation is the suspicion that if Satchell were white, he would not have drawn a second thought from Veeck. Will Harridge … would have been well within his rights if he refused to approve the Paige contract.”89

Paige quickly proved the skeptics wrong. He was hardly a travesty who generated little interest or failed to help the team. The Indians won the pennant in 1948, winning a tiebreaking game with the Red Sox. They were unquestionably helped by Paige’s 6-1 record, mostly as a starting pitcher. He drew huge crowds at home and on the road when he pitched, including more than 72,000 in Washington who came to see him win a game.90 Paige’s performances and his draw as a gate attraction prompted Veeck to telegraph J.G. Taylor Spink with his response to the earlier editorial: “Paige pitching — no runs, three hits. Definitely in line for TSN rookie of the year award.”91 Paige did not become rookie of the year, but he certainly made a major impact on the Indians and baseball in his rookie season.

While Paige, at 42 not 50, was near the end of his career, Doby was just beginning. And their success prompted Veeck to recruit even more black ballplayers. By the end of the next season, Veeck had 14 such players under contract, scattered throughout the minors.92 They included Minnie Miñoso, Al Smith, and Luke Easter, two of whom contributed directly to the success of the Indians in the 1950s. The aggressive signing of black talent was one of the ways Veeck laid the groundwork for the continued success of the team on the field long after he sold the Indians after the 1949 season.

Along with the aggressive effort to bring in new talent, Veeck also fortified both the minor-league organizations controlled by the team and the scouting of prospective players. He signed affiliation contracts with Triple-A San Diego and Double-A Oklahoma City.93 San Diego was especially important since it provided a city where the newly signed black players would not face the racial issues encountered in many Southern communities.

Veeck also brought in new front-office management that would help the Indians well after he sold the team. Hank Greenberg was ready to retire from his Hall of Fame career after one season with the Pirates in 1947. Cleveland’s owner offered Greenberg $50,000 to play and $25,000 to coach.94 The former star opted for the latter, thinking his playing days were over, but instead of coaching, he became an assistant to Veeck, enabling him to learn the front-office side of the business. After the 1948 season ended with the club’s second World Series win, Veeck put him in charge of the team’s minor-league system. At the time, the team had 16 minor-league teams and over 400 players in the system.95 It would be a natural transition for Greenberg to become the club’s general manager after Veeck departed, a job he would end up holding through the 1957 season.

While Greenberg would prove to be successful as the Indians’ general manager, he would be no match for Veeck’s ability to relate to the players. Perhaps that simply reflected Veeck’s generosity. He negotiated attendance-related contracts with Bob Feller, making him close to the highest-paid player in the majors, if not the highest.96 By 1949, the club had the highest player payroll in baseball, perhaps reflecting its success both on the field and at the ticket office.97 Years later, Veeck acknowledged that he preferred to be generous with his players, saying, “I would just as soon give a player what he thinks he deserves if I can afford it.”98 Clearly, he could afford it with the Indians. He also added a personal touch, often spending time in the dugout after games and giving out bonuses when players were signed. He was even known to give newly acquired players cash so they could purchase new suits.99 Larry Doby went so far to call Veeck “the greatest humanitarian that I have ever known,” adding, “The man wasn’t a hypocrite. He didn’t have one set of values in the church and another outside the church.”100 Many of his players would have agreed with Doby’s assessment.

The largess of the Tribe’s owner did not carry over to the 1949 season’s outcome, however, at least not in terms of the team’s ability to again make it to the World Series. For a variety of reasons, the team could finish no better than third. That did not stop Veeck, always looking for publicity, from capitalizing on the team’s decline in performance. When the Indians were mathematically eliminated from the pennant race, he promoted the next home game as a wake. The 1948 Series pennant was placed in a casket and driven in a hearse around Municipal Stadium by Veeck. The casket was then buried beyond the left-field fence.101 Ironically, the event would also serve to symbolize the end of the owner’s time with the Indians. The writing on the wall came even before the 1949 season had started, when Veeck’s first wife, Eleanor, filed for divorce in February.102 It is unclear how quickly Veeck realized he needed to sell his interest in the team to achieve a settlement, but he announced the sale in late October.103 The ultimate sale would return the club to local ownership, but without the continuous fanfare that had been generated by Veeck during his 3½ years in the city. Veeck would prove to be a very tough act to follow.

His achievements were certainly not limited to the ball field. Many of his promotions went beyond luring fans in to watch games. Some were actual fundraisers meant to benefit the community. He made a deal with Branch Rickey to have the Indians and Dodgers play two exhibition games during the 1948 season, one in each city, with the proceeds going to the sandlot baseball programs in both towns. In late July, Veeck presented a check for almost $80,000 to the Cleveland Baseball Federation from the game played in Municipal Stadium.104 Once the club had passed a record 2.5 million in attendance in 1948, Veeck announced that the take from the last home game of the season would be donated to the Community Chest, the forerunner of the United Way. It raised over $55,000 for the agency, which was right in the middle of its campaign.105 Nor were his fundraisers limited to organizations. During the championship season, Don Black, one of the team’s starting pitchers, collapsed on the mound, stricken with a brain hemorrhage that hospitalized him for weeks and ended his baseball career. Veeck held a night in honor of the recovering pitcher and awarded his family over $40,000 in proceeds from the gate.106 The citizens of Cleveland, as well as the Indians players, were true beneficiaries of Veeck’s promotions.

So was the front office of the club. The finances of any privately held baseball club are difficult to obtain, but there were enough hints provided from the time of Veeck’s tenure to obtain a general sense of the profitability or the organization. An article in The Sporting News in early 1948 indicated that the team needed to draw a million fans at home to break even. The article then mentioned that the club had 782 people on its payroll: 179 ticket takers,187 ushers, 132 special police, 20 office workers, 5 dining room employees, 117 scorecard boys, 28 scouts, 58 players and 56 ground crew.107 A later issue reported that the club made a profit of $1.5 million in 1947 when the team drew 1,521,978 paid admissions.108 Since the team drew over 2.6 million in 1948 and over 2.2 million in 1949, it is reasonable to assume both years were also extraordinarily profitable, even with normal increases in expenses. As an example of costs, the 1948 payroll was announced to be $400,000 for player salaries.109 At the same time, Veeck announced that profits from the first season and a half he had owned the club had already paid off his investment.110 It is likely the Indians were baseball’s best-performing club financially during Veeck’s tenure, even with his generosity to players and to local charities. Unlike with the previous syndicate, there were no cash calls during the entire period Veeck owned the team, not surprising given the owner’s ability to draw crowds to the Stadium.

The club was sold by Veeck for $2.2 million to a Cleveland syndicate headed by Ellis W. Ryan, CEO of the W.F. Ryan insurance company. Veeck and his Chicago partners sold their interest, but some Cleveland members of the earlier syndicate, including comedian Bob Hope, had maintained their partial ownership in the club. Veeck netted $700,000 before taxes and it’s fair to assume the other investors profited equally as well from the deal.111 The magnate summed up his success both operationally and financially by saying, “My philosophy as a baseball operator … is to create the greatest enjoyment for the greatest number of people … draw people to the park and make fans out of them.”112 He certainly succeeded during his short stay in Cleveland.

The Indians were certainly not Veeck’s last baseball endeavor. He remarried and purchased the St. Louis Browns in 1951, continuing to conduct outrageous promotions in an attempt to revive the franchise. He later twice owned the White Sox, again making a name with his innovations and ways to bring fans to the ballpark. He died in Chicago on January 2, 1986, less than five years after selling the White Sox for the second time. He is the only major owner of the Indians to be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ellis W. Ryan, 1950-1952

Ellis Ryan was certainly not a Bill Veeck. In public, Ryan was always immaculately dressed. Veeck wouldn’t be caught dead in a suit. Veeck loved to take part in the many promotions he used to bring fans to the ballpark. Ryan was less enthralled with promotions and always remained behind the scenes when they were done. Most importantly, Veeck grew up around baseball, his father having been the president of the Chicago Cubs for two decades. He had also operated a very successful minor-league franchise in Milwaukee before purchasing the Indians in 1946. Ryan, on the other hand, was a casual baseball fan, his expertise and money coming from the insurance business. He had actually been more involved with football and hockey in Cleveland than he had baseball before heading the group that purchased the Indians.113 His lack of background in the sport empowered Hank Greenberg, giving him more latitude to run baseball operations. While he was no longer officially a vice president in the new regime, Greenberg was named general manager and was given basic control over the day-to-day operations of the ballclub as well as player personnel. For the most part, Ryan stayed out of the limelight as well as the general operations.

Like Alva Bradley, Ryan was a native Clevelander, born in the city in June 1904. He graduated from The Ohio State University in Columbus and went into the insurance business after graduation. By the time he became the major partner in the purchase of the Indians from Veeck, his owned one of the more successful insurance companies in the Cleveland area.114

The syndicate Ryan headed, with his 20 percent ownership, did have three partners who would play important roles in the ballclub well past the tenure of Ryan. John Hornbeck, a partner in the Miller and Hornbeck law firm, was strong on legal matters and political connections. George A. Medinger, president of Fostoria Industrial Service, was named a vice president and director of the Indians. He would remain with the club long after Ryan had departed and frequently represented the team at league meetings. He had major authority over radio and television contracts, which would prove to be a significant revenue source. Nate Dolin, manager of the Cleveland Arena box office, would, like Medinger, remain with the club into the next decade. He was placed in charge of the box office and named operations chief, and also approved player salaries and daily promotions.115 His major contribution, however, was the introduction of a new accounting procedure that would have a major impact on the finances of sports franchises. Essentially, Dolin devised a method that enabled a major-league club to depreciate players over a five-year period. The new ownership had to possess 75 percent ownership of the club and assign most of the purchase price to the player contracts. The club also had to reorganize as a completely new business or else the previous book value of the team would be applied. If such a procedure were implemented, the earnings of the team could often actually be reduced to a loss on the books, which could in turn eliminate or at least reduce the need to pay taxes by a franchise.116 The new depreciation procedure would ultimately save numerous sports franchises a considerable amount of money in the future and had immediate benefits to the Indians’ organization.

Ryan did make a contribution during his three years of directing the Indians that turned out to have a major impact on the club’s remaining in Cleveland. Early in his tenure, he negotiated a 25-year deal with the city to lease Municipal Stadium. The city would receive 7 percent of the gate, up from the previous 3 to 5 percent. The club would get 55 percent of the concession sales and would agree to spend $300,000 on improvements. The city would be responsible for the maintenance of the facility while the club would tend to the upkeep of the field. The city agreed to purchase League Park from the club with the intent of tearing down the stands and converting it to a city park. The Indians would continue to have sole control over its radio and television contracts.117 While it did not appear to have much significance at the time to either the club or the city, the long-term lease of the ballpark was likely the decision most responsible for the franchise remaining in Cleveland.

Ryan’s tenure as president was not without controversy. Popular players, including Satchel Paige, were let go before the start of the 1950 season. When the team dropped from third to fourth place in the 1950 season, Lou Boudreau, still very popular as manager, was fired, creating a negative reaction from many fans. While Greenberg was largely responsible for the firing, Ryan supported him on the decision and took much of the heat. The announcement was coupled with the introduction of the new manager, Al Lopez, who had been managing the Indianapolis farm team. Ryan said, “[W]e would not consider replacing Lou Boudreau unless we were able to obtain the services of a man who we felt might do a better job. … That man is Al Lopez.”118 While the firing brought many violently-worded threats from Indians fans, Ryan was to prove prophetic in his statement. In Lopez’s five years with Cleveland, the Indians never finished below second place. No other manager has produced such consistent results for the Indians.

Although the firing of Boudreau was not solely related to the team’s performance, the drop in the standings was coupled with a decrease in attendance of almost 500,000 from 1949. The club was still profitable, reporting a net income of $460,000 after expenses of $3,427,000, including $550,000 of player and coach salaries.119 Obviously unknown at the time, the attendance in 1950 of 1,727,464 fans would actually end up being the largest single-season draw by the franchise until 1993. In all likelihood, the decline in attendance had less to do with the performance of the team than other changes going on in the country, including suburbanization, the increasing use of the automobile, and the rapidly growing prevalence of television as a major entertainment source in the household. The competitive performances of the Indians over the next five years on the field could not offset those societal and demographic trends.

While Ryan noted that the team was profitable, the decline in attendance did have an impact on the club’s overall operations. Initially, Ryan was optimistic about building on the momentum Veeck had created in fortifying the scouting and minor-league affiliations of the franchise. Shortly after the purchase, he declared that the team needed to spend money to make money, including higher salaries and the hiring of 12 new scouts.120 During the 1951 season, he announced the purchase of the Triple-A franchise in Indianapolis, the first such franchise ever owned outright by the Indians. In the aftermath of the 1952 season, however, in which attendance dropped over 250,000 from the previous year, even though the team again finished in second place, Ryan changed direction. The club cut costs, reducing its minor-league affiliates from 13 to 8 and laying off three scouts.121 Ryan and Greenberg had already argued over the acquisition of the Indianapolis franchise, and their dispute grew stronger with these cutbacks. In response to those disagreements, Ryan began to assert even more control over the team, with the intention of firing Greenberg and his $60,000 salary and assuming the general manager duties for himself, just as Veeck had done before him.122

Unfortunately for Ryan, the key members of his board of directors did not support his effort to gain more control of the club. Medinger, Hornbeck, and Dolin led the opposition to Ryan and attempted to gain control of the board by bringing in other investors. Part of their opposition stemmed from not being consulted on the Indianapolis purchase, but their larger concern was the possible removal of Greenberg. None of the three felt Ryan was capable of running the club. Initially when approached by the three, Ryan agreed to sell his stock, but he soon changed his mind and offered to buy out their interests at $500 a share. The three directors rejected his offer and took the issue of control of the organization to the entire board. Ryan lost the battle by a very slim 62-vote margin with all shares of stock cast, and thus agreed to sell his interest in the club at $600 a share. Having bought in at $100 a share in 1949, Ryan netted $200,000 to $250,000 on his initial investment of $55,0000. As 1952 ended, the Indians would again be under new ownership.123 In reality, since Greenberg remained as general manager and Medinger, Hornbeck, and Dolin continued on the board, there would be little noticeable change in how the club was run. If anything, Greenberg was now even more empowered than before.

For the short period in which Ryan was in charge of the Indians, he did have some impact on both the club and on baseball. As the leading partner, he attended all of the owners meetings and was directly involved in the controversy over not renewing the contract of Happy Chandler as commissioner. Initially, Ryan voted against renewing Chandler, then switched his vote in favor, enabling the commissioner to get a 9-to-7 majority of the owners behind him. But Chandler needed support from 12 owners to be retained. Ryan was then named to the search committee for a new commissioner along with Del Webb, Phil Wrigley, and Lou Perini. After some resistance from American League owners, including Ryan, National League President Ford Frick was named the new commissioner.124 While his role in Chandler’s dismissal and Frick’s selection was at best indecisive and vacillating, he had been given a major role of responsibility by the other owners rather quickly during in his short time with the Indians. On the local level, the team reported a profit after each of the three years Ryan was in charge and won over 60 percent of its games, things that would be looked back upon with admiration and envy by later owners. Ryan did not leave the Cleveland sports scene, investing in the Browns after his sale of Indians stock was accomplished. He died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in August 1966.

The Baxter Brothers and Myron Wilson, 1953-1956

Myron H. Wilson is often listed as the lead owner of the Indians after Ryan’s interest in the team was bought out. In fact, Wilson owned only 3 percent of the stock in the team and was mostly uninvolved in the club’s operations during his tenure as the titular head. His selection was actually an effort to placate Ryan. While Wilson had voted against Ryan, the two had been and were to remain good friends. Wilson’s title as president was merely a way to keep the peace internally after the deal was consummated.125 Like Ryan, Wilson was a native Clevelander who made his money in the insurance business. Unlike Ryan, he possessed an Ivy League education from Yale.126 The primary owners of the team were actually the Baxter brothers, Charles “Wing” and Andy, who had made their fortune in investment banking. Little is known about them although it is clear their interests remained on the investment side as neither took any kind of a role in managing the club.127 They may have viewed the Indians as a short-term investment since they sold most of their stock less than three years later. The major players on the board remained Medinger, Hornbeck, and Dolin, but in reality the Indians were largely directed by Hank Greenberg, who had even more control in running the club than he had before.

While Medinger, Hornbeck, and Dolin appear to have continued to conduct their previous duties with the club, it was definitely Greenberg who gained greater prominence with the ouster of Ryan. He now joined Medinger at the owners’ meetings. Before 1953 was over, he was named, along with owner John Galbreath of the Pirates, to negotiate a new player pension plan. Ballplayers had been upset, feeling that they weren’t being treated fairly under the existing plan, and were convinced the commissioner was only looking out for the interests of the owners. They hired J. Norman Lewis, a New York attorney, to represent them, fostering what appeared to Frick and the magnates to be a hostile situation. Ralph Kiner and Allie Reynolds were the elected representatives of the players and some believed Greenberg was chosen partly due to his friendship with Kiner. Whether or not that was the case, within two months the two sides were able to negotiate an agreement. The players were guaranteed a 60/40 split of All-Star Game and World Series television revenues and gained equal representation on the committee that oversaw administration of the pension. The commissioner retained exclusive authority over the negotiation of broadcasting rights for both the All-Star Game and the World Series.128 The deal would provide close to a decade of peace between the two sides and Greenberg and Galbreath were commended for their “speed and dignity” in conducting the pension negotiations.129

Greenberg also put forth some other reform proposals at the owners meetings that would improve the game on the field and make it more interesting. He advocated and supported the ruling of Commissioner Frick to prohibit players from leaving their gloves on the field after a half-inning. He felt there were too many minor leagues and thus a serious need for consolidation. He strongly believed that the two major leagues should institute interleague play, felt the leagues should expand to 10 teams, and urged the American League to expand to the West Coast.130 On these three points, Greenberg was well ahead of his time, six years on expansion, slightly more on minor-league consolidation, and over four decades on interleague play. The majority of owners remained unreceptive to his recommendations.

Greenberg also proved to be creative on the home front. With Cleveland’s Public Hall closed during the summer of 1953 to install air-conditioning, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra was left with no place to perform. Greenberg arranged to have the orchestra play at 7 P.M. before 12 home games during the summer, with the starting time of the games pushed back to 8. The club and the city each agreed to pay $15,000 to have the orchestra appear. The first concert at Municipal Stadium brought a “chorus of approval.”131 While this promotion lacked the popular appeal of Veeck’s, it did serve to draw some new fans to the ballpark and gave the orchestra opportunities to perform in public that they would not have had otherwise. Even with that promotion, almost 400,000 fewer fans came through the turnstiles during the 1953 season.

The general manager also continued to provide Northeastern Ohio with a winning product. In the years under Wilson’s titular leadership, the Indians finished second twice, in 1953 and 1955. More importantly for the city of Cleveland, the team won the pennant in 1954, with 111 victories. That team’s.721 winning percentage remains (as of 2017) the best ever in the American League. The success came in spite of some discontent when Greenberg required all players to wear a plastic helmet for protection or face a $50 fine, another way in which he was somewhat ahead of the curve in baseball.132 The pennant-winning season did restore attendance to the 1952 level, attracting almost a half-million more fans.

For all three years, the team was profitable. The club’s net income was over $150,000 in 1953, almost $600,000 in the pennant year, and almost $100,000 with another second-place finish in 1955. Even with the long-term gradual decline in attendance, the Indians remained one of the three most successful major-league franchises financially. As had been the case under Ryan, the team again won over 60 percent of its games. While attendance fluctuated, dropping again in 1955, any decline in box-office money was offset by the growth in broadcast revenues, which went from under $500,000 in 1953 to almost $1 million in 1956.133That financial success made the club a more attractive potential acquisition, ultimately leading to a sale in early 1956.

With all of Greenberg’s success and all of his contributions both to baseball and Cleveland with his innovative ideas and financial returns, there were signs of trouble brewing. Early in his tenure he had run into trouble with the fans, first for cutting players like Satchel Paige and a year later for firing popular manager Lou Boudreau. In spite of the team’s performance, many fans still held a grudge against Greenberg for those dismissals. He created major contract disputes with the club’s stars, including Al Rosen and Larry Doby. That led to Rosen’s retiring early and the popular Doby being traded. Greenberg’s relations with the press were also prickly and Al Lopez, the only Cleveland manager who had never finished below second place, had almost quit, claiming that Greenberg was too involved in the day-to-day decisions on the field. Myron Wilson had to intervene to persuade Lopez to stay.134 The results on the field and in the financial books helped obscure the problems that would soon surface under the new ownership group.

William Daley, 1956-1966

The largest irony associated with the problems that led to Greenberg’s demise was that with the sale of the club in early 1956, he was, for the first time, a part-owner of the team. The Baxter brothers, as mentioned, had never been that interested in the operations of a baseball franchise, and saw an opportunity with an early offer from William Daley, to cash in on their investment. In 1954 the directors turned down two offers from Cleveland groups to purchase the team for $3.5 million, the brothers likely feeling the offers were too low, especially coming off a pennant-winning season.135 Whether Daley was part of either offer is unknown. In 1956, however, after another second-place finish and a decline in both attendance and profits, the Baxters were ready to sell, especially since the offer of $3,961,800 was almost $500,000 higher than the earlier ones. Daley, a native Clevelander, purchased 55 percent of the stock in the club, bringing in two minority partners — Greenberg and Ignatius A. O’Shaughnessy, of St. Paul, Minnesota.136

In spite of the change in majority ownership, in many ways the deal once again signified stability rather than change. Daley and O’Shaughnessy indicated that they would not be involved in the day-to-day operation of the club and Greenberg, while now an owner, remained the general manager, in control of all baseball decisions. Equally important, the three mainstays still around from the 1949 purchase — Medinger, Hornbeck, and Dolin — all remained investors and directors.

It helped that Daley was well ensconced in the Cleveland community. He was born in September 1892 in Ashtabula, Ohio, northeast of Cleveland, and was a graduate of Western Reserve University. When he bought the majority interest, he was president of Otis & Company, a highly regarded investment-banking house. He was also a major investor with renowned industrialist Cyrus Eaton in Republic Steel and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, both headquartered in Cleveland. At a time when many growing cities were pursuing a major-league franchise, the sale seemed to ensure that the Tribe would remain an integral part of the city.137

The subsequent two baseball seasons would change that scenario. While the team finished second again in 1956, attendance dropped to well under a million fans for the first time since 1945. Lopez quit after the season ended, citing irreconcilable differences with Greenberg. To make matters worse, he jumped to the rival White Sox for the same salary he had earned with the Indians. The following season, 1957, the team dropped below .500 for the first time in a decade and finished in the second division. Attendance declined by another 130,000, to less than 750,000. The club still had a profit in 1956 and 1957, thanks to Dolin’s depreciation accounting method that benefited a new owner like Daley. But at a directors’ meeting after the 1957 season ended, Greenberg was ousted as GM by a 10-to-2 vote. Daley claimed that “this team really belongs to the people and that’s what they wanted us to do.” Greenberg asserted that his resignation was requested “in order to satisfy a hostile press.” While he remained an investor, Greenberg would no longer be in charge of the club, even though during his tenure the Indians had finished behind only the Yankees in winning percentage, attendance, and financial results.138 No one had any idea at the time that this was the beginning of a long drought for the franchise.

There was a brief glimmer of hope, however, after the hiring of the new general manager, Frank Lane. Lane had been general manager of the White Sox for almost a decade and had rebuilt the club, still recovering from the Black Sox Scandal, into a formidable and competitive team. He had been hired away by August Busch of the Cardinals after the 1956 season, but had worn out his welcome in less than two years, partly due to overtures he had made to trade St. Louis icon Stan Musial. He jumped at the opportunity to join the Indians. He was unanimously approved by the Tribe directors, including Greenberg, and signed a three-year contract for $60,000 a year, matching the salary of his predecessor. Like Greenberg, he was given a free hand in running the club.139 Although no one could foresee it at the time, Lane would wear out his welcome with Cleveland fans before his contract ended.

Expectations reached their high point during Lane’s second season with the Indians, when the team remained in contention for the pennant through mid-August and drew almost 1.5 million fans. The resurgence of interest was not only profitable for the owners, but for Lane as well. His contract stipulated a 5-cent bonus for every person crossing the turnstiles beyond 800,000, providing him with an additional $35,000.140 Lane had a similar clause for the 1960 season, but he would receive a much smaller bonus, largely because attendance had dropped by over a half-million, with the team finishing the season just under .500. By that time, the directors were likely pleased to have Charlie Finley woo Lane away with a $100,000 contract before they had to reach any decision on his renewal. In the three years with the Tribe, Lane had made 55 trades involving 82 players, including dealing away fan favorites like Rocky Colavito and Roger Maris. He also executed the major leagues’ first swap of managers. Only two players were left on the Tribe roster who had been there when Lane began his three-year stay.141

At the same time, Lane, like Greenberg before him, represented the club at major-league meetings and advocated a rather progressive agenda that was definitely ahead of its time. He was a strong opponent of the bonus-baby rule, proposing a general draft for first-year players. He was a major supporter of the American League expanding to 10 teams. Like Veeck before him, he was a strong advocate for the visiting team receiving half of the local television revenue, essentially saying that all TV money should be split equally among the eight teams.142 Like Bill Veeck, however, his influence with other owners was rather limited, although two of his pet projects, expansion and the draft, would be implemented during the next decade.

After his first season, in which the team still struggled with attendance and results, Lane, who was not an investor, watched from the sideline as Hank Greenberg attempted to buy out Daley’s interest in the club, with support from the Baxter brothers. The brothers had still maintained a minority interest in the club. Together, the three owned 35 percent of the team. While Greenberg promised to keep the team in Cleveland, he argued that there needed to be a change in management, perhaps with the intention of returning as general manager. He had offered the other owners $450 a share, but instead Daley, Dolin, Medinger, Hornbeck, and one other director bought out Greenberg and the Baxters for $400 a share. In the end, Greenberg made almost $400,000 by selling his interest in the Indians.143 He subsequently joined Veeck with the White Sox for a short time and also attempted to gain the expansion franchise in Los Angeles, but the sale of his interest in the Tribe marked the beginning of the end of his involvement in baseball.

It was clear by August of 1958 that the team was going to have another poor year at the gate, prompting Daley to announce that this could be the last season in Cleveland. He indicated that both Houston and Toronto were options, but there was also mention behind the scenes that Minneapolis was in the picture as well.144 Civic leaders responded quickly to the threatened move, promoting a “Back the Indians Night” in September that drew over 50,000 fans on a “cold and dreary night.” After the game, Daley said, “This crowd will not be the decisive factor, but it certainly will have a favorable influence.” The event also led to a concerted effort over the winter to sell season tickets.145 After the season, the directors voted unanimously to keep the club in Cleveland indefinitely. Daley exclaimed, “The club is here to stay,” while noting that the directors had rejected a $6 million offer from Houston and a million attendance guarantee from Minneapolis.146 While the subject of relocation was placed on a back burner for the time being, it would be considered numerous times again over the next three decades.

While the club would remain in Cleveland “indefinitely,” Frank Lane would not, departing to Kansas City for a very short, tumultuous tenure with Charlie Finley. Initially the Indians announced that they would not hire a general manager, perhaps burned out by the endless wheeling and dealing experienced under Lane. In March, Nate Dolin even announced that the organization was happy without a GM, with Walter “Hoot” Evers running player personnel and Bob Kennedy overseeing the farm system. A month later, Dolin added, “[T]he more we watched Evers work, the more we realized he filled our needs impressively. … We thought it was time the spotlight left the front office and concentrated on the players.147 Apparently, the directors didn’t like the spotlight on the players for too long, however. Two weeks later, the club announced that Gabe Paul, at the time with the newly established Houston Colt .45s organization and previously the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, was officially named as the new GM of the Indians. A dinner at Toots Shor’s in New York between Dolin and Paul, at which Paul indicated his dissatisfaction the Houston job and his interest in Cleveland, led to the surprise announcement.148 It marked the beginning of a relationship for Paul that would last for almost 20 years, interrupted only by a five-year hiatus with the Yankees in the 1970s. The experiment of not having a general manager ended quickly, not to be tried again.

Paul soon became a part-owner of the club. In fact, his 20 percent interest in the team made him appear to be the partner with the most shares in the club. Daley and a group of Clevelanders remained in control of 70 percent of the stock.149 Paul purchased his stock from two members who had played important roles with the club since it was purchased from Veeck back in 1949. Nate Dolin and George Medinger both decided to sell their interest in the club and retire from the board of directors, and Ignatius O’Shaughnessy, who came in with Daley in 1956, also decided to depart. Paul now owned 20 percent of the stock and two of his associates had another 10 percent, making him appear to be the largest shareholder. While Paul appeared on paper to be in control, Daley had actually recruited new investors with major ties to Cleveland, all of whom looked to him as the chairman, the man in charge. They included Thomas A. Burke, former mayor of Cleveland and former US senator, F.J. “Steve” O’Neill of Leaseway Transportation and Vernon Stouffer of Stouffer Corporation. The last two would come to play prominent roles in the future of the Tribe. Daley also recruited other important investors from local grocery and department stores, assuring that he would maintain his control over the club, with 70 percent of the stock owned by him and his allies.150

Unlike most of the other directors, Gabe Paul was not a Clevelander. He had grown up in Rochester, New York, and went to work at a young age for the local minor-league club. His boss in Rochester was Warren Giles, who in the 1930s joined Larry MacPhail in the effort to rebuild the Cincinnati Reds. When MacPhail was fired abruptly in 1937, Giles was named the new general manager of the Reds and hired Paul to be the team’s traveling secretary. After serving in World War II, Paul became a vice president of the team and when Giles was named the new president of the National League in 1951, Paul was promoted to general manager. He left to join Houston shortly before the Reds won the pennant in 1961, intrigued with the challenge of building a whole new team, but soon experienced major differences with majority owner Roy Hofheinz.151 Whether Paul had intended to join Cleveland before his dinner with Dolin is unknown, but the outcome of his meeting would lead to a long and generally frustrating relationship with a ballclub that languished during his tenure, never seriously competing for the pennant.

Part of the reason for that lack of success, at least during the period when Paul worked with Daley, was the board’s decision to limit investment in the basic building blocks of a baseball team. When Daley acquired control of the Indians in 1956, the club had nine minor-league teams under its control, either through direct ownership or by an affiliation agreement. After the 1963 season, there were only four minor-league teams under such control.152 The number of scouts working directly for the club was also cut back. Instead, Paul announced after the 1964 season that the team would become part of a scouting combine with four other clubs. He said the creation of a player draft in 1965 would reduce the need for scouts, but with losses from the previous three seasons and attendance between 550,000 and 725,000 for the previous four years, the scouting combine was an obvious means to save money.153 All four of those years, the team played under .500 baseball. Almost desperate, especially given the renewed threats to relocate the club, the organization undertook a more concerted effort to sell season tickets. At the same time, Paul traded two talented young players to bring back former star and idol Rocky Colavito to generate more fan interest.154 In the short run, those two efforts appeared to assure the team’s remaining in Cleveland.

That had not been the case during the 1963 season, however, when there were again serious threats to move the club to another city. This time, the interest by the directors was substantial enough that Daley and Paul were charged with visiting some of the prospective cities to report back on the opportunities. At least four cities, Atlanta, Dallas, Oakland, and Seattle, were expressing serious interest in the Tribe. One article even asserted that there were actually 10 to 12 interested cities. The lease for the stadium negotiated by Ellis Ryan was also expiring, which caused Mayor Ralph Locher to lead an all-out effort to save the team for Cleveland, bringing in the support of the two local newspapers and a number of civic groups. The investors in the team, however, had been faced with losses of well over $2 million over the previous four years and there had been numerous cash calls to keep the ballclub afloat.155 Of the interested cities, Seattle was by far the most aggressive in pursuing the Indians, its only weakness being the lack of a ballpark that could accommodate more than 25,000. Daley seemed supportive of the move, and he and Paul traveled to Seattle to learn more about the opportunity. After deliberating for over 4½ hours on the proposed move, the directors voted in favor of staying in Cleveland, agreeing to a new 10-year lease on Municipal Stadium.156 Once again, the threat of major-league baseball leaving Cleveland had been rejected. Especially with the 10-year lease, it looked as though the Indians were secure for at least another decade.

That security seemed to be cemented further by two events during the coming seasons. In the short run, what was more important was the investors’ satisfaction with the 1965 season. Good ticket sales, the return of Colavito and some other trades made by Paul during the offseason helped the team finish 12 games over .500 and bring in over 900,000 fans. While nowhere close to the attendance generated during the early 1950s, it was a considerable gain over the previous four years. Equally important was the sale of the team by William Daley in August 1966 to one of the other investors, Vernon Stouffer, for $8 million. All owners would be bought out for $300 a share, totaling $5.5 million along with the assumption of a bank loan for $2.5 million. The deal was also contingent on Gabe Paul remaining as general manager for the next 10 years.157 By the end of the 1966 season, especially with the Stouffer purchase, it clearly looked as though happier days were ahead for Cleveland. It was not the end for Daley, who provided the major capital for the expansion Seattle Pilots. When that ill-fated club was sold and moved to Milwaukee in 1970, his baseball involvement ended. He died in Cleveland a year later.

Vernon Stouffer, 1966-1972

There were plenty of reasons for high expectations with Stouffer’s purchase. The son of a very successful restaurateur in Cleveland, he inherited the business and grew it into a national chain of restaurants and hotels. He was also a pioneer in the frozen-food industry and some of the products he created are still available in grocery stores. He was also an innovator in microwavable food. Less than a year after buying the Indians, Stouffer’s merged with Litton Industries. At the time, Stouffer’s was valued at $21.5 million. It was certainly enough that he was able to afford to purchase 80 percent of the team with $5.5 million in cash and the ability to take out a short-term loan for the other $2.5 million.158 The club now had a wealthy owner whose company had merged with an even larger corporation. With strong ties to the city, where he had been born in August 1901, and with the apparent availability of almost unlimited cash, there was hope that money would quickly be invested to rebuild a badly weakened organization in both scouting and the minors.

Indeed, that was the direction initially taken by the new regime. Newly hired manager Joe Adcock, at 39 the youngest manager in the majors, announced that the club was hiring six new scouts, increasing that number to 25. Hoot Evers was named a special assistant to the president and Hank Peters, who would years later play a major role in rebuilding the Indians organization, was named vice president of player personnel and minor-league operations. A minor-league club was also added, raising that number to five, and the team re-entered the Florida Instructional League, after having dropped out under Daley. Stouffer, thanks to Hank Peters’ recommendation, also withdrew from the scouting combine. With some good initial player signings, it looked as if the new leadership was off to a great start and local interest grew accordingly.159

That early optimism soon proved unfounded. The merger with Litton Industries, a conglomerate that included the manufacturing of microwave ovens, seemed like a natural to Stouffer when he agreed to the merger, especially given his own innovations in microwavable frozen food. But Litton fell on hard times rapidly after the merger. Litton stock, which peaked at $120 near the end of 1967, lost almost half its value three months later. By 1971, the stock was trading at less than one-sixth of its peak. Making matters even worse, Stouffer had agreed in the merger deal to hold on to the Litton stock over a long period of time. The capital he supposedly had to rebuild a badly underinvested ball club was gone.160 While the decline was gradual, by 1970, four years into his ownership, the club was at least as badly underfunded as it had been during the Daley regime.

The lack of funding created other problems that caused Stouffer to get increasingly more involved in the day-to-day operations of the Indians. Adcock’s first year as manager was a bust, the team dropping well under.500 and finishing in eighth place. Alvin Dark was hired to replace him, having taken the Giants to a World Series in 1962. The result in 1968 was an immediate and surprising turnaround, with the Indians finishing in third place, their highest standing in almost a decade. While it was the last time the club finished in the first division until 1994, Stouffer decided it was the start of a bright future. He became enamored with Dark’s results, rewarding the new manager by adding to his responsibilities, at Gabe Paul’s expense, and even attempting to give him equity in the franchise. First, in January of 1969 Stouffer signed Dark to a five-year contract worth $300,000. Halfway through the 1969 season, the owner announced a major shift in duties. Effectively, Paul was no longer the general manager. Dark now had responsibility for player salaries and signings. He also gained more oversight of the farm system, an area Stouffer felt was not developing quickly enough. Paul was now to focus on policy rather that salary negotiations and deals. All of this was poorly communicated to Paul, Dark, and Peters, creating greater confusion and even tension between the three. Stouffer also gave more authority to his son, Jim, who knew little about baseball operations. All of this was done at a time when Dark’s team was deeply ensconced in last place, 5½ games behind the fifth-place team in the newly created AL East Division.161 It did not seem like the best time to be increasing the authority of a manager whose team was struggling.

When Stouffer took it a step further, by offering Dark an opportunity to purchase stock in the club, the backlash escalated. Major-league baseball, specifically acting Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, had problems with a manager directly purchasing stock in the club that employed him. Instead, Stouffer was forced to convert the stock to future options. Later, Dark discovered that managing players on a day-to-day basis, along with negotiating their salaries during the offseason, created a lot of friction between him and the players.162 It proved to be highly contradictory to criticize a player’s performance during salary negotiations and then attempt to lift his spirits during the season. With little money to offer increases, Dark was left with considerable player discontent. His problems increased in June of 1971 when Commissioner Kuhn announced an investigation into the team’s contracts with at least three players. The Indians had apparently agreed to pay them performance bonuses at the end of the season, an arrangement prohibited by the major leagues.163 Dark was fired at the end of July, but the bonus problems came to a head, with Ken Harrelson retiring and Sam McDowell, their ace pitcher, quitting the team, claiming to be a free agent. New contracts ultimately had to be negotiated with the affected players.164 In the aftermath of his dismissal, Dark realized that Stouffer’s experiment in giving the manager higher administrative duties had been a disaster for the club and for him.165 It had essentially doomed Dark to failure, if the crisis of Stouffer’s finances hadn’t done so already. In the aftermath, Paul resumed the normal duties of a general manager.

That resumption of duties didn’t change the club’s financial situation. By the end of 1970 the club’s minor-league teams had been reduced from five to four. The scouting staff was also cut back. Paul assured the directors that the 35 minor-league players released in the reduction were not major-league material. Both the trainer and the traveling secretary were terminated, their duties reassigned to one of the coaches. Jim Stouffer assured the public that the team was “trying to be more business-like. … Our theme is quality rather than quantity.” Quoting Paul, young Stouffer added “[Y]ou can cut the fat from a steak without detracting from the flavor.”166 Unfortunately for Indians fans, the flavor they tasted was that of a poor second-division team. Even worse were the departures of two talented members of the organization. Hoot Evers left before the end of the 1970 season to take a front-office job with Detroit. Close to a year later, Hank Peters departed to become president of the National Association, the minor leagues’ umbrella organization. In his parting, he let Stouffer know that if he planned to keep ownership of the Indians, he was doing the club serious damage by cutting back on the minors and on scouts.167 On the field and financially, Cleveland’s baseball team was clearly in a tailspin.

However, Vernon Stouffer felt he had found a way out of the doldrums as the season ended in 1971, coming in the form of an offer from New Orleans for the club to begin playing 30 games there upon completion of its Superdome in 1974. New Orleans investors would put $2.5 million into the club now in return for the 30-game agreement in the future. Both Stouffer and Paul jumped at the offer, especially since it would provide the club with a badly needed infusion of cash and avoid having to ask the other investors for more. It was definitely welcome news coming a week after the club’s Double-A affiliate, Jacksonville, severed relations with the Indians.168 The American League owners threw a monkeywrench into Stouffer’s plans, however, voting down the New Orleans deal pending a study of its consequences. Charlie Finley, owner of the Oakland A’s, led the opposition, stating, “If you move 30 games to New Orleans, you’re going to alienate the people in Cleveland and make a bad situation worse. I don’t want to come into Cleveland and not even be able to make carfare.”169 While not completely rejected outright, the team-sharing idea with a second city appeared to face a major uphill battle to be approved, although Stouffer was not inclined to back down on the proposal.

There was a more immediate hope for better prospects in Cleveland without losing 30 games a season. A local group of investors, supposedly led by former star Al Rosen, but actually headed by shipbuilding magnate George Steinbrenner, offered to purchase the Indians outright with cash for $8.6 million plus repayment of a $300,000 loan Stouffer had taken using the team’s television contract as collateral. The group also included Ted Bonda and F.L. “Steve” O’Neill, who already was a part-owner. Both would soon play prominent roles with the Indians. Steinbrenner and Jim Stouffer had attended Culver Military Academy together and secretly met to hammer out the agreement, with knowledge that the purchasing group could go no higher than what was offered. When the proposed deal was presented to Vernon Stouffer on a conference call, he rejected it, exclaiming to Rosen that “you and your friends are trying to steal my team. … I know I can get at least $10 million for it. … I’m not selling to you.”170 While there was speculation at the time that Stouffer was intoxicated when he rejected the offer, it is also likely that the New Orleans deal caused him to value the club at more than $10 million, especially since a Washington, D.C., group had offered over $12 million to purchase the club.171 With the rejection, it looked as though the only hope to salvage the situation was the New Orleans deal, even though it was viewed with considerable skepticism.

Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get more dismal for the financially strapped ballclub, they did. Russell Means, the director of the Cleveland American Indian Center, brought a lawsuit for $9 million against Stouffer seeking to stop the use of Chief Wahoo, the cartoon caricature of a Native American that symbolized the team. A Native American himself, Means asserted “If they’re going to call the team the Indians, at least they could use a proud image, not that grinning clown.”172 While the suit was eventually dismissed, it provided another headache for the struggling, underfinanced organization.

There was soon reason for hope, however. By early March of 1972 a new syndicate, headed by Nick Mileti, offered Stouffer $9.75 million to buy the club and keep it in Cleveland. While the initial offer was rejected by American League owners for being too short on cash and dependent upon a public sale of stock, which they prohibited at the time, Mileti placated the league by bringing in more partners to both increase the cash component and eliminate the need for the sale of stock.173 The deal was approved and transacted in late March. Mileti was already deeply involved with other local endeavors, owning both the NBA Cavaliers and the AHL Barons. He also owned the Cleveland Arena and a major radio station and had begun the process of building a new basketball arena between Cleveland and Akron. He also brought in other local investors, including Alva T. “Ted” Bonda and Howard Metzenbaum, founders of Airport Parking Corporation, which they had sold in 1966 for $30 million. Shortly after the purchase, Mileti announced that the deal with New Orleans was terminated.174 The Indians would continue to play all their home games in Cleveland. It certainly looked like renewed life for the club.

The Vernon Stouffer era had begun with high hopes that finally the team had an owner with sufficient money and a willingness to invest it in the ballclub. But the severe decline in the value of Litton Industries stock dashed those expectations. His tenure began with the intention of being an uninvolved owner, letting Gabe Paul and others run the day-to-day operations. He expressed full confidence in Paul, signing him to a 10-year contract. With Stouffer’s decline in fortunes, however, Stouffer became a micromanager, getting involved in many day-to-day decisions. He emasculated Paul and gave many of the general manager’s duties to Alvin Dark. He involved his son in the day-to-day operations as well, even though neither he nor his father had much baseball experience. It’s not surprising that the team had the worst collective performance and the worst showing in attendance of any postwar owner. Stouffer had diminished both the scouting staff and the minor-league operations, losing two experienced and capable front-office employees in the process. In doing so, he ensured that the near future would not produce any influx of young talent. While Stouffer had turned down lucrative deals that would have moved the team elsewhere, he received little credit for keeping the team in Cleveland. Stouffer died in July 1974, less than three years after the sale. Meanwhile, sportswriters and fans received Mileti with open arms and high expectations.175

Nick Mileti/Ted Bonda, 1972-77

Nick Mileti was certainly good at fanning the optimism that came with his acquisition of the Indians. At 41, he was young, similar to Bill Veeck when Veeck took control of the team almost 30 years earlier. Mileti was a native Clevelander, born in April 1931. He had long hair, fitting for the time but out of character with the older, more conservative set who preceded him. He was “charming, outlandish, and the consummate promoter.”176 An attorney, alumnus of Bowling Green and Ohio State law school, he had also built his sports empire on his own devices, using both his sales skills and creativity. Given his ownership of two other teams, the most powerful radio station in Cleveland, and the arena that housed both the Cavaliers and Barons, and his plans to build a new facility to house the basketball franchise, there was good reason to harbor high expectations for the baseball club. After his first season as chief owner and president, he announced the hiring of five new scouts, doubling the number employed when he acquired the Indians. He proclaimed: “The foundation of every successful organization is its scouting system and I’m confident we will have the type of men capable of piping new vitality in the Cleveland Indians in years to come.”177 Almost no one, including the sportswriters, was aware of the soft underbelly of his empire. Mileti was heavily in debt. While he owned 51 percent of the Indians, he had invested only $500,000 of his own money in the club. The construction of the new basketball arena, while ultimately accomplished, was entangled in numerous lawsuits. Worse, the cost of its construction would double from the original estimate.178 It would not take long before the banks that invested in the Indians deal realized that the main partner — Mileti — was like the emperor who had no clothes.

That realization came in early 1973 when it was announced that George Steinbrenner had purchased the New York Yankees and would include in his investment group both Gabe Paul and Steve O’Neill. Paul had actually helped broker the Yankees deal and already was having major conflicts with Mileti. Their Yankees investment automatically required that Paul and O’Neill divest their holdings in the Indians. Paul would also assume similar general-manager duties with Steinbrenner’s new club, eventually becoming its president. While Mileti was able to find other investors to replace Paul and O’Neill, he lost the confidence of the banks, which no longer thought he was financially able to run the baseball team.179 They quickly turned to minority partner Ted Bonda as the logical choice to head the partnership. Mileti slowly drifted to the back bench in overseeing the club. He remained president of the club for a short period, but Bonda, as chairman, was clearly in charge. No official announcement was made of the shift in control, but Mileti was bought out by the partnership in 1975.

In one way, Alva “Ted” Bonda seemed destined to be president of the Indians. He was named after Alva Bradley, who had owned the building in Cleveland where his father was employed.180 Given his namesake’s lack of success over 19 years, the name itself offered no guarantee that Bonda would have better fortunes. It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part, however. The most notorious of his club’s promotions came in June of 1974, known as “Ten cent beer night.” The promotion was not new for the Indians, having been done without incident earlier. This time, however, it was done for a game involving the Texas Rangers, and there had been bad blood between the teams when they had played in Arlington a week earlier. There were a couple of incidents earlier in the fateful game, but it wasn’t until the Indians rallied to tie the score in the bottom of the ninth that things unraveled, resulting in hundreds of inebriated fans taking the field, some armed with knives or parts of the stadium seats. The result was a forfeited loss for the Tribe. In the aftermath, it was agreed that any future promotion would limit the purchase of beer to two at a time, not the six that had been allowed that night. When it was done again in July, there was no turmoil.181 Along with Disco Demolition Night by the White Sox a few years later, the beer-night forfeit has lived on as a major failed promotion.

The more noble effort to promote the ballclub came after the 1974 season, when the team bought the contract of Frank Robinson and announced that he would become the new manager of the team. Robinson would be the major-leagues’ first black manager, with a $180,000 contract, reflecting that he would continue to play. At Opening Day in 1975 both Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s widow, were there, Rachel wishing Jackie were still alive to witness it. It became even more notable when Robinson hit a home run in his first at-bat. Most importantly for Bonda, the promotion drew a crowd of over 56,000. He was clearly pleased with the positive publicity.182 Three years later, in 1977, however, when the club was well under.500 after two .500 seasons, Robinson became the first black manager to be fired. His dismissal stemmed in part from feuds with some of his players and, most particularly, differences with general manager Phil Seghi, who had replaced Gabe Paul. It had been Bonda, not Seghi, who had suggested and pushed to hire Robinson in the first place, making the termination that much easier for the general manager.

Bonda’s efforts at promotion, including Robinson, did pay some dividends at the gate. In 1974, his first full year of running the club, attendance almost doubled from the previous year. Promotions such as 10 cent Beer Night were certainly helpful, but so too was a team that remained in contention until mid-August. That improvement didn’t stop Bonda from replacing the manager with Robinson. While the team improved in the win column the next two years, attendance declined, dropping by over 200,000 in 1977 from each of the three seasons earlier. Between 1972 and 1977, the club had lost over $5 million but Bonda had been able to maintain solvency and the flow of cash by bringing in other partners.183 While operations could be maintained, no improvements were made in scouting or the minors. The club still operated with only nine scouts and four minor-league teams.184 Bonda was frequently approached by other major cities seeking a major-league team, but consistently resisted their offers, largely because of his ability to bring in new cash to keep the operation afloat. Yet he was actively looking to sell the club, likely stemming from pressure by some of his partners, who were growing impatient with the lack of improvement in the team as well as the lack of ability to show a profit. As a loyal native of Cleveland, Bonda was actively seeking someone who would commit to keeping the team in the city.

The most obvious choice, and one Bonda courted extensively, was Edward J. DeBartolo, a Youngstown, Ohio, native who had made his fortune in shopping malls. Art Modell, owner of the NFL Cleveland Browns, introduced the two men, having known and worked with DeBartolo’s son, who owned the San Francisco 49ers. There was certainly strong interest, enough to produce an offer for 80 percent of the club for $10 million in 1977. The only stumbling block to completion of the deal came from the American League owners and the commissioner. Both Bowie Kuhn and a majority of the owners blocked the deal, concerned about DeBartolo’s ownership of racetracks in three states. There was also a suggestion that DeBartolo had ties to organized crime, although Kuhn denied that such rumors had anything to do with the rejection. New York real-estate tycoon Donald Trump also expressed an interest in buying the Indians and Bonda even flew to New York to meet with him. Bonda ultimately rejected Trump as a legitimate buyer since he would not provide a commitment that the club would permanently remain in Cleveland. In fact, Bonda suspected Trump would move the team to New Jersey to compete directly with the Yankees and Mets.185 When the 1977 season ended, Bonda was still actively looking for a buyer.

He would find one closer to home than either Trump or DeBartolo. F.J. “Steve” O’Neill, who had been a longtime investor in the ballclub until he joined Steinbrenner and Paul in the Yankees partnership, was persuaded to return to his hometown as the primary owner of the Indians. Art Modell was responsible for bringing O’Neill and Bonda together and even helping to broker the deal. O’Neill and his brothers were multimillionaires from their Cleveland-based trucking business and his primary motivation for buying the club was to keep the team in Cleveland. At 78, it was unlikely he harbored any thoughts of a short turnaround. Indeed, he said, “[W]hen I saw the sad situation with the team here, I wanted to help. It’s that simple.”186 It’s unclear whether he persuaded Paul to join him or vice-versa, although O’Neill’s comment suggested that he was the driving force behind the deal. In any case, O’Neill became the majority owner. Paul was a minor investor, as were Bonda and the Blossom brothers, who were major Cleveland philanthropists. All had been part of the Mileti partnership. The total value of the transaction was $11 million, $6 million in cash and $5 million covering the assumption of debts incurred by the Bonda group. Phil Seghi would become a vice president and have “additional authority” on player personnel, while Paul would assume the position of president, with a promise to beef up the team’s scouting. Once again there seemed to be reason in Cleveland to think favorably about the Indians’ future, if for no other reason than that the transaction had likely saved the club from bankruptcy, at least for the short term.187

Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium in the late 1980s. (BALLPARKS OF BASEBALL)

F.J. “Steve” O’Neill and his estate, 1978-1986

It was doubly ironic that Art Modell had brokered a deal with Steve O’Neill meant to keep the Indians in Cleveland. Perhaps the greatest irony was that less than two decades later Modell would move the beloved and popular football Browns out of Cleveland. A somewhat smaller irony, but more rapid in its development, was the battle that developed between Modell and O’Neill over the contract to lease Municipal Stadium. It took five years after O’Neill had purchased the team for the conflict to come to a head, but as the stadium lease was about to expire in 1983, the Tribe owner was convinced Modell had been ripping off his club. Modell had gained control over Municipal Stadium in a deal he made with the city 10 years earlier. After threatening a move to the suburbs, Modell agreed to sign a 25-year lease. He invested over $10 million in improvements, including 108 luxury loges. In return, he reached agreement with the city on rather favorable rent payments and then entered into a 10-year contract with the Indians while Mileti was still in charge during the summer of 1973. Between fees paid for the rental of the luxury loges, concessions, advertising, and parking, O’Neill believed his club had lost out on almost $3 million a year in revenue from those services. At the same time, his club, since the acquisition, was facing almost $20 million in losses. While O’Neill had deep pockets, both through his investments and his shares in the company he owned with his brothers, the cost of the stadium lease nagged at him. His contention put in motion events that eventually led to a new ballpark in Cleveland.188

Steve O’Neill was another owner who was native to Cleveland, born in September 1899. A Notre Dame graduate, he and his brothers had built Leaseway into one of the nation’s most profitable trucking operations.189 While O’Neill had deep pockets, it was the annual losses of the club that created his frustration. After his first season of ownership, the team was estimated to have lost almost $2 million. While fans may have been upbeat about the change at the top, they didn’t show it at the gate. Attendance at the stadium dropped by 100,000 in 1978 and the investment group had to cover the losses.190 Those losses would continue. The organization was in the red an estimated $1.2 million in 1979, even as attendance surpassed a million.191 Another million passed through the turnstiles a year later, but even then the club lost money. That was only compounded in 1981 when the players went on strike during the season and drove attendance down by over 350,000. Even with baseball back to normal over the following two seasons, the Indians still lost almost another $8 million.192 Deep pockets or not, O’Neill was not used to losing that kind of money and thought the lease with Modell provided a good avenue to help lower his costs and improve his revenue stream over the long run.

In the short run, however, there continued to be offers to purchase the club, some that would have moved the team, others that promised to keep them in Cleveland. The first serious offer came from Detroit resident and theater magnate James Nederlander and Los Angeles attorney Neil Papiano. With a commitment to keep the club in Cleveland, they agreed in principle to purchase 58 percent of the organization for $8.7 million, along with debt assumption of $2.27 million. Both O’Neill and Paul would maintain minority interests and the latter would remain president. The deal had progressed far enough that Nederlander supported Paul’s effort to sign Dave Winfield with the promise to the player of “a multimillion-dollar Hollywood movie contract and the possibility of an acting career on the legitimate stage”and further “offered to produce benefit shows for the David Winfield Foundation for underprivileged children.” Winfield rejected the offer and soon after O’Neill rejected the deal, objecting to his group having to pay $500,000 of the debt.193 Both potential owners were surprised that O’Neill refused to accept their offer but decided bow out. Near the end of the 1982 season, Edward D. DeBartolo again emerged as a buyer, offering $12 million for 80 percent of the club, along with assumption of $4 million of the debt. Once again, his race-track interests, coupled with the AL owners’ rejection of an earlier attempt to purchase the White Sox, squelched the offer before it was presented to the league for approval.194 Two serious offers emerged after the next season, both coming shortly after the sudden death of Steve O’Neill. A wealthy Denver man offered $32 million for the club outright, but only if the team would move to Denver.195 Weeks later, Donald Trump resurfaced as a bidder, supposedly offering $30 million for the club, but providing a commitment of only five years to keep the team in Cleveland. It was rumored that he ultimately intended to move the club to the Meadowlands in New Jersey. His offer was also viewed with skepticism given Trump’s casino interests, with the expectation that the AL owners would reject the deal.196 In the aftermath of O’Neill’s death, even with the many rejections, it seemed even more likely that the club would be sold.

The most serious offer to buy the Indians once the club was transferred to O’Neill’s estate came from New York attorney David LeFevre during the 1984 season. LeFevre, the grandson of Cleveland industrialist Cyrus Eaton, offered $16 million to purchase O’Neill’s 53 percent interest and another $14 million to buy out the other interests. Baseball executive Tal Smith joined LeFevre in the venture, with the intention of replacing Paul as president. LeFevre, however, quickly encountered two major stumbling blocks. The first was the Municipal Stadium rental deal with Modell, an agreement LeFevre seemingly opposed even more strongly than had O’Neill. The second involved snags in concluding the deal. If he merely bought O’Neill’s interests, LeFevre would be unable to take advantage of the ability to depreciate player value over five years. If he offered to purchase all of the other interests, as he seemed intent to do, he had, by Ohio law, to gain unanimous approval of all investors, including the 55 partners who held limited-liability interests. He came close to pulling it off. Three of the limited investors rejected his offer, however, causing LeFevre to back off and buy only the 5 percent of the stock owned by Gabe Paul, who was preparing to retire.197 While an outright purchase of the club seemed to be the most attractive, the requirement to obtain 100 percent of the investors was a huge inhibitor for LeFevre. The estate of Steve O’Neill appeared to be left with a difficult challenge of trying to keep the club in Cleveland on the one hand and of dealing with Art Modell’s stadium arrangement on the other.

The conflict over the lease of Municipal Stadium remained an albatross for both sides, with neither showing much desire to budge. The controversy had already extracted a high price on both sides. Art Modell suffered a massive heart attack in the summer of 1983, caused in part by the stresses over the lease and the suit and countersuits it had produced. Things were not much better on the side of the Indians’ board. Ted Bonda, opposing O’Neill, led an effort to make peace with Modell, with only minor changes made to the agreement. O’Neill responded by packing the board with more investors who supported his cause. Bonda found himself even more removed from the other board members. The stress was ultimately even more tragic for O’Neill. In October, on the morning of the funeral of his younger brother, Steve O’Neill’s heart gave out. The ballclub that had been losing money every year since he bought it in 1977 was now left in the hands of his estate with an ownership structure that made any effort to sell it a major challenge.198 Making matters worse, in May of 1984 the voters of Cleveland rejected a property-tax increase that would have enabled construction of a $150 million domed stadium downtown, voting it down by 2 to 1.199 The club seemed destined to remain stuck in an antiquated stadium with an unfavorable lease, along with a poor performing team that offered little attraction to the fans.

Not surprisingly, the sportswriters and Indian fans were well aware of the dilemma and willing to vent their frustrations, largely directed at Gabe Paul and Phil Seghi. Led by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the morning newspaper, and a local radio station, a concerted effort was begun in 1983 to clean house in the executive office. Much of the campaign was aimed at Paul and Seghi, both of whom had long been associated with the underperforming team. A Voice of the Fan column in The Sporting News in August of that year offered, “The solution to the myriad of problems of the Cleveland Indians is to put Gabe Paul and Phil Seghi on waivers for the purpose of giving them their unconditional release.” Another column the next summer added, “With the track record these two have compiled, Cleveland fans can count on many more years with a last-place dynasty.”200 The frustration was understandable. Since Paul had returned in 1978 and Seghi’s duties were expanded, the team had finished in last place or next to last every season, and the most visible demonstration was at the turnstiles, where only 750,000 fans a year on average were coming to see the games. Unknown to the sportswriters and fans, though, was the recognition by Patrick O’Neill, the nephew left in charge of the estate after Steve’s death, that major changes would have to be made to the front office.

The initial catalyst for those changes was the younger O’Neill’s decision to hire Peter Bavasi to replace Gabe Paul as president of the Indians. Not only was Bavasi an experienced baseball operator for someone still in his 30s, but he had also been raised in a baseball family. His father, Buzzie, had been general manager of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, as well as president of the Padres and Angels. The younger Bavasi had worked in the Dodgers and Padres organizations and later was named president of the expansion Toronto Blue Jays before being forced out in a power play. Immediately before taking the Cleveland job, he had been a consultant for Tampa-St. Petersburg and Indianapolis in their efforts to attract a major-league franchise. For that reason, many Cleveland sportswriters thought Bavasi had been hired to relocate the club.201 Whether that had been his intent or had even been discussed with Pat O’Neill, it didn’t happen during his two-plus years with the Tribe. Instead, he began a turnaround process that laid the foundation for the Jacobs brothers when they acquired the franchise.

Perhaps Bavasi’s largest contribution to the turnaround was his effort to modernize the organization to reflect the growing complexity of the sport. He divided the operation into four components, baseball operations, revenue production, finance, and administration. Initially, Seghi was put in charge of baseball operations. Bavasi announced that he would focus on the farm system as the best way to build the franchise and denied rumors that the club would move.202 Two months later, to demonstrate his seriousness about changing the direction and culture of the club, he fired Seghi and minor-league director Bob Quinn, replacing them with baseball veterans Dan O’Brien and Joe Klein. By doing so, he hoped to convince Tribe fans that a brighter future was on the way.203 Bavasi summed up his challenges in attempting to improve the club’s image and prospects, stating that it’s “like taking over a restaurant with a “D” rating from the health department.”204 For good measure, he even achieved a modest improvement in the stadium contract and, in doing so, made peace with Art Modell.205 Once again, it certainly appeared to be a new era in Cleveland.

That new start was most evident in Bavasi’s second year of running the club. While the 1986 team still finished in fifth place, it was only 11½ games out of first place, the closest finish for the team in almost 30 years. The club drew almost 1.5 million fans to Municipal Stadium, within 20,000 of the attendance level reached by the last truly competitive team, in 1959. The team also had its best won-lost percentage since 1968. At least part of the team’s success — along with the fan support — was attributed to Bavasi’s own gung-ho attitude. As he explained to The Sporting News: “The players are involved in what we’re trying to do. We need a rah-rah approach and the players who didn’t feel that way were sent packing.”206 The club even turned a small profit from the season, something that had not happened since O’Neill purchased them almost nine years before.207 Once again, Tribe fans were finding reason to be hopeful.

For the first time in decades, there was substance behind the optimism for better baseball in Cleveland, although Peter Bavasi would not be a part of the resurgence. The O’Neill estate finally found a local buyer who could win support of all the limited partners and thus take advantage of player depreciation. The new buyers of the Indians were Richard E. and David H. Jacobs, brothers from the Cleveland area. Born in Akron, Ohio, David in May 1921, Dick in June 1925, they moved to Cleveland and started the real-estate development business together after both finished college at Indiana. Together with a third partner, they had run a firm that owned more than 40 shopping malls in 14 states, including some in greater Cleveland. The purchase price was $35.5 million, with the two brothers buying out the other owners and assuming all debts of the organization. The brothers put up $18 million of their own money, $12 million in borrowed capital and $2.5 million in subordinated debentures. The other $3 million was a loan from the Steve O’Neill estate.208 Dick Jacobs, who quickly emerged as both the spokesman and person most involved with the club said, “I look at it as a civic responsibility but also as a way to have a little fun. … I think we can make some money, too.” He added, “We have a management team in place and we are comfortable with their decisions. My brother and I will not be on the front lines.” As for Bavasi, Jacobs said in December 1986, “He is very important part of the team, one of the assets of this club.”209 He was not to be a long-term asset, however. A month later Bavasi announced his resignation to become president of Telerate Sports, departing the club by the end of March.210 He didn’t give his reasons for leaving, whether it was the new opportunity or because his authority in running the club might be limited. Regardless of his reasons and his short-term success, many were not disappointed with Bavasi’s departure. He had raised ticket prices and closed the bleachers for night games. He also disagreed with Gabe Paul’s claim that Cleveland was a “sleeping giant,” keeping open the possibility of a move. In many ways, he was not regarded as being considerate of the fan.211 His departure opened the door for the Jacobs brothers to build their own management team.

In many ways, the Jacobs brothers’ purchase would mark an important turning point for the Indians, but at least some of that credit belongs to Steve O’Neill and his nephew Patrick. In spite of continuous losses until the last season, the family had accomplished its most important goal, keeping the Indians in Cleveland. In spite of numerous rumors, the Tribe was still around. The fight O’Neill picked with Modell had serious repercussions for both men, fatal for the 83-year-old O’Neill. At the same time, it laid the groundwork for a new ballpark in Cleveland. It convinced many, most importantly, the Jacob brothers, that Municipal Stadium was no longer adequate to house a baseball team. In particular, the dispute convinced both old and new owners that sharing a stadium with the Browns would not work. The groundwork was laid for a new ballpark, although there would still be a long road ahead. While the years under O’Neill still provided many frustrations for Indians fans, Bavasi generated some renewed interest that would remain, even as the team continued to struggle while undertaking the rebuilding effort led by the Jacobses. Notably, attendance would never again fall below a million fans. Overall, the O’Neill group did not have different results on the field or at the gate than had the previous three owner groups, but unlike their predecessors, they put in motion the process that would lead to future success.

Richard and David Jacobs, 1987-1999

Many Indians followers would consider the era of Jacobs ownership the most successful period in the history of the club. While the team never won a World Series during their tenure, attendance initially remained stable, always over a million fans, and ultimately grew substantially when the club became competitive. For six straight years, the team played before more than 3 million fans, at the time breaking the record for consecutive sellout games at 455. The team won its division five years in a row, from 1995 through 1999, and made it to the World Series twice. The club had never come close to achieving that level of success before Dick Jacobs bought the club. Part of what contributed to the success was the move to a new ballpark in 1994, which corresponded with the first year the club had become seriously competitive since 1959. In fact, the Jacobses’ first years owning the ballclub were largely focused on two things: Constructing a stadium built only for baseball, and remaking the team’s roster. Both efforts were to produce impressive results.

It took almost a year to replace Bavasi at the top of the organization, but when Dick Jacobs, who quickly became the more involved of the brothers, persuaded Hank Peters to rejoin the Indians, they found the person well suited to rebuild the club. Peters had a long history in baseball, working in scouting for the St. Louis Browns and then joining the Athletics as director of scouting and the minor-league system. In that position, he helped lay the groundwork for the successful A’s of the 1970s. He joined the Indians in 1966 as director of player personnel and assistant general manager, but left when it became clear Vernon Stouffer could not sustain the commitment to talent development. He was named general manager of the Baltimore Orioles in 1975 and helped produce two pennant-winning clubs and a World Series championship in 1983. When the team faltered for two years in 1986 and 1987, he was fired by owner Edward Bennett Williams. A month later, in November 1987, Jacobs persuaded Peters to rejoin the Indians.212 One sportswriter called the hiring “a major step toward respectability.”213 Over the long run, that would prove to be a major underestimation of what would be accomplished.

For the next four years, Peters focused on strengthening both the scouting and the minor-league organization, areas that had been profoundly neglected for decades. The results would not become evident by the time Peters retired in 1991, but he had instituted a strategy that would produce results both on the field and at the box office, and effect positive financial results. The number of scouts was increased from 18 to 29 by the time Peters retired and the number of minor-league clubs was raised from four to six. Peters also noted that the club had been woefully negligent in developing Latin American talent, so he oversaw establishment of a baseball school in the talent-rich Dominican Republic.214 He also developed a plan to trade higher-paid players heading toward free agency in return for younger talent. While not all of his trades were successful, some provided the nucleus that would become the division-winning clubs of the late 1990s.215 Much of the talent with those clubs was either traded for or signed while Peters was in charge. When he retired for good in 1991, the club was still a second-division team, finishing the 1991 season with a club record 105 losses. By then, the talent that had been developed, along with the general manager and manager, both of whom he hired, were in place to carry out Peters’ long-term vision.

Perhaps the most instrumental part of that vision was general manager John Hart, who had worked under Peters in Baltimore and was recruited by him to join the Indians. Hart had been the third-base coach for the Orioles, but Peters saw his potential better utilized in the front office. Jacobs did not immediately replace Peters with Hart, however. Instead, he hired Rick Bay, athletic director at the University of Minnesota, to be the new president of the club. Hart was promoted to general manager and would be responsible for all decisions involving player personnel.2116 Both would begin their duties at the start of 1992. Bay did not last long, departing less than a year later, largely over differences with Jacobs. Upon his departure, Hart was named executive vice president of baseball and Dennis Lehman executive vice president of business, which included marketing, sales, stadium operations, media relations, and promotions.217 Hart had already adopted the Peters philosophy of building the scouting and minor-league system, but took it a step further by signing the best of the young talent to long-term contracts, thus avoiding arbitration and, in some cases, postponing free agency. Hart explained: “We came to the conclusion a while ago that this is the only way a small-market club like ours can survive. It’s basically our solution to a very bad system, because arbitration is like a gun at a team’s head.”218 While the team finished in sixth place in 1993, it drew over 2 million fans for only the third time, thanks in large part to a marketing campaign built around saying farewell to Municipal Stadium. As the Indians prepared to move into a brand-new ballpark, the renewed interest in the city was best reflected in The Sporting News: “General Manager John Hart and the Jacobs ownership have built a foundation of exciting young talent that seems ready to contend. The city’s downtown has undergone a revival that will be crowned this spring with the opening of a new stadium. As a result, Cleveland is no longer a place to avoid.”219 Hart had even managed to gain Jacobs’ approval to sign free agents, announcing contracts with three significant veterans before the 1994 season began.220 It certainly appeared that Hart was moving closer to bringing Peters’ vision to full fruition.

While Hart had done much to generate new excitement in Cleveland, much of it also revolved around the anticipation of a brand-new ballpark. The park, to be called Jacobs Field after the owner bought the naming rights, had been on the wish list of local officials as far back as when Vernon Stouffer proposed a domed stadium.221 Such a ballpark was even brought to a referendum in 1984, but its funding, a property tax, had been rejected resoundingly. In the aftermath, numerous politicians, including the governor of Ohio, mayor of Cleveland, and Cuyahoga County Commissioners, helped put together a new effort, known as the Gateway Project. Land was acquired just south of the downtown center where an open market had existed since the 1850s. Originally, a domed stadium had been envisioned to accommodate baseball, football, and basketball. Jacobs, however, well aware of the previous battles with Art Modell, argued convincingly for an outdoor, baseball-only ballpark. A separate arena would be built for the Cavaliers and a football stadium was offered to Modell as part of the project. He opted to keep the Browns in Municipal Stadium. This time, a 15-year sin tax on tobacco and alcohol would be proposed rather than an increase in the property tax, and the vote would encompass all of Cuyahoga County, including the suburbs, not just city residents. Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent added some immediacy to the issue, stating that if a new ballpark did not pass, he would give Jacobs permission to pursue moving the team.222 The matter was placed on the ballot in May of 1990 during the Ohio primary, which would usually generate a lower turnout. In this case, however, almost 50 percent of the eligible voters went to the polls and approved the proposal by a slim 51 percent to 49 percent. Construction started a year later with the intent of having the park ready for Opening Day of 1994.223 Between the rebuilding of the team and the opening of the new ballpark, the 1994 season was now anticipated with keen interest.

Getting to that point came with a price, however. For the first five years they owned the club, the Jacobs brothers were estimated to have lost $14 million, even though by that time they also had the lowest payroll in the majors — $8.1 million.224 To cut costs further, they began negotiating a new spring-training agreement to move from Arizona to Florida. They first reached a deal with the city of Homestead, Florida, only to have that agreement wiped out by a major hurricane. They then reached a temporary arrangement with Winter Haven for a year as they continued to explore other options. All seemed to work out well with the new location until three of the players were involved in a tragic boating accident that killed two of them and badly injured the third. It was one of the worst tragedies ever incurred by a major-league baseball team.225 The accident likely affected the team’s performance in 1993, as the club finished in sixth place out of seven. A year later, however, with a new ballpark as well as the Indians now playing in the five-team Central Division, the poor results of the previous year did not dampen the anticipation.

Without question, the 1994 season lived up to expectations until it ended abruptly with the players strike in August. At that point, the Indians were one game out of first in the Central Division and would have qualified for the newly created wild-card spot. While the attendance for the season did not quite match that of the year before, it would have soared past the 2 million mark had the season been completed. When baseball resumed in 1995, the club drew over 2.8 million fans, even though only 144 games were played, again due to the strike. From then through 2001, the club drew over 3 million each year, which certainly equated to significant profits for the organization, estimated at over $60 million between 1994 and 1998.226 At the same time, the club was also incurring a rapid increase in payroll, from $18 million in 1993 to $61 million in 1997. That increase, with no foreseeable end in sight, was likely what made Jacobs decide first to sell public stock in the club and then, a year and a half later, to put the club on the market.227

When Nick Mileti purchased the Indians in 1972, he had been prohibited from selling public stock in the club, but that ruling had been changed by Major League Baseball by 1998. Jacobs saw the public sale of stock as a means of raising cash to be used to support the rapid increase in player salaries. On June 3, 1998, the club did an initial public offering of 4 million shares of stock for $15 a share, thus raising $60 million in cash that could be used to help fund operations. Many investment analysts recommended against the purchase, but the local enthusiasm over the club’s success outweighed any skepticism over the potential return. In structuring the deal, Jacobs relinquished none of his control over the team, as the stock granted no power to the shareholders. While the team continued to perform well, winning the Central Division in both seasons, the stock actually dropped in value, at one point reaching a low of $6. That changed, however, when Jacobs decided to sell the team after the 1999 season, in what was at the time a record price for a major-league team. The deal included a buyback of all the outstanding shares of stock, at a price of $22.61. Any original investors who had held on to their stock would thus receive a return of over 50 percent for an 18-month investment, by most standards a very good return.228 Regardless of how the stock performed during those 18 months, Jacobs had the cash infusion that would help the team remain competitive as salaries escalated. Further, when the team was sold, the outside shareholders were certainly pleased with the return.

Escalating player salaries were also a major reason why Jacobs decided to sell the club in 1999. He had never intended to pass the team on to the next generation, nor had he planned to remain as owner for the rest of his life. He reached an agreement with another local man, Larry Dolan, who purchased the club for $320 million, including buying back the outstanding stock. That price was even higher than what Fox Entertainment had paid for the Dodgers a year earlier. In effect, Jacobs was selling the club for almost 10 times what he had paid for it 13 years before and was providing a decent return for his shareholders as well. Dolan, a Cleveland area lawyer, was utilizing his personal assets and four family trusts to finance the deal. Dolan had been jilted three times before, in attempts to buy the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Reds, along with an earlier offer for the Indians. This time, Dolan had a deal. A lifelong fan of the Indians, he was elated, saying, “I don’t want one World Series for the Indians, I want a string of them. I want to reach the Holy Grail.” He also emphasized that his brother Charles, owner of Cablevision, a major East Coast cable company, along with Madison Square Garden and two sports teams, was not a part of the deal in any way.229 While Dolan as of 2017 had yet to achieve his goal of a World Series championship for his hometown, he was close to being the longest continuous owner of the club.

The pending sale in 1999 did result in one major loss for the team. Manager Mike Hargrove, who had been the skipper since midseason in 1991, was fired by John Hart, even though the team had once again won its division. For some time, Hart had not been convinced of Hargrove’s skills as a manager. Losing in the first round of the playoffs in 1999, along with the departure of Jacobs, who had talked Hart out of terminating Hargrove earlier, was enough to result in the firing.230 Lou Boudreau is listed as the Tribe’s most successful manager, as he surpasses Hargrove in total wins for Indian teams by seven games. However, only Al Lopez and Terry Francona, of those who have skippered the team for at least four seasons, have produced better won-lost percentages than has Hargrove. Along with Jacobs, Peters, and Hart, Hargrove, too, deserves some of the credit for the golden era of the late 1990s.

Dick Jacobs stepped aside from baseball after the deal with Dolan was consummated, although his surname remained attached to the ballpark until the naming rights expired in 2008. Jacobs died a year later, in June. His legacy remains. Many fans still call the ballpark Jacobs Field. Many also look back on his tenure as the golden era for the Indians, even though the team never won a World Series. Its dominance of the Central Division during his tenure is matched by only the Atlanta Braves in the NL East. Moreover, only one team, organization, the Boston Red Sox, has surpassed the Indians in consecutive sellouts. Even the teams from the early to mid-1950s failed to match the continuous success both on the field and at the gate. Upon taking control of the club, Dick Jacobs had developed a long-term strategy, which was carried out and strengthened by both Hank Peters and John Hart. Those efforts resulted in a highly successful franchise by any standard. While the team has had some degree of success since, Jacobs’ tenure as owner would prove to be a tough act to follow.

Larry Dolan, 2000-present

The challenge facing Larry Dolan was in many ways insurmountable. Not only had Dolan paid the highest price at the time for the franchise, but also the upside was limited at best. The club was in the midst of consecutive sellouts, meaning there was no room for growth other than to raise ticket and concession prices. The team had just won five straight Central Division titles, meaning there was no place to go further in making the team more successful except by winning a World Series. Further, the payroll was escalating dramatically, largely driven by the decision to sign free agents to remain competitive, in part to replace players who had signed with other teams. It was a habit the club had avoided like the plague in the early years of Dick Jacobs, but changed when the team finally opened the new ballpark and was competitive enough to contest in their new division and lucrative enough to afford to do so.

When Dolan, another Cleveland area native born in February 1931 in suburban Cleveland Heights, took control before the 2000 season, he also inherited John Hart as president and general manager. While Hart had subscribed fully to the model for rebuilding designed by Hank Peters and Dick Jacobs, the success of the last five years had revamped his approach. As the club needed to replace players who went elsewhere through free agency and as the team drew continuous sellouts, the mode of operation changed. Without any specific announcement, the focus was now on signing free agents or trading for established players by utilizing the talent generated in the minors. The new process remained profitable for Jacobs, but produced a continuously escalating payroll that by 2001 was the third highest among the 30 clubs. It also meant that in his first two years of owning the Indians, Dolan had to pay over $25 million in luxury taxes, a large component of a $40 million loss incurred in those initial two years.231 Further, after the team dropped to second place in 2000, the 455-game sellout streak came to an end. Attendance still remained above 3 million for the next year, but season-ticket as well as loge sales were both declining significantly. John Hart had been rumored for years to be heading elsewhere, to undertake new challenges, and he officially left for the Texas Rangers in November of 2001.232 Whether Larry and Paul Dolan, Larry’s son, who got involved in club operations and ultimately became its chairman, were disappointed to see him depart, there is no question that they set out to institute major changes upon his departure.

While the changes were dramatic, especially in the reduction of payroll, the front office was hardly affected. Hart had been grooming his successor, Mark Shapiro, to be his replacement and he was already designated to do so before the start of the 2001 season. At the same time, it was announced early that the club would start cutting payroll at the end of the season.233It was difficult enough to follow in the shoes of a general manager who had generated the results Hart had, but it became especially challenging when Shapiro’s main mission was not to pay out huge salaries to improve the team but rather to slash payroll by $20 million. As Shapiro put it, “We’re out of the business of collecting talent and in the business of building a team.”234 The goal was reached over the next two years, when the team payroll was reduced by over 65 percent, dropping to $45 million.235 Not surprisingly, the team also fell well below .500 in each of the next two seasons and attendance was also fell to half of what it had been in the glory years. As of 2017, attendance has not reached 3 million since 2001 and has hit the 2 million mark only three times since 2002. It was indeed a new era for Cleveland baseball, one to which the fans did not react well.

However, the Dolans did have a longer-term plan and, with the limitation of tight budget constraints established, were more than willing to empower Shapiro to execute it. The emphasis was again on rebuilding the minor-league organization and the scouting system. Along with that strategy, there was also an emphasis on trading higher-paid talent for young minor-league prospects, again similar to the early years under Jacobs. Many of those deals proved to be successful, in large part because the Dolans increased the investment in scouting and the minors by 50 percent from 1999 to 2002. In fact, between 2002 and 2005 they were one of the top three clubs in funding those operations.236

This was a dramatic change from the last years under Jacobs and Hart when the focus was much more on winning today rather than building the organization for the tomorrow.237 The efforts actually paid some fairly quick dividends. The team just missed a wild-card slot in 2005 and won the Central Division in 2007, just missing a World Series appearance that season after losing the AL Championship Series to the Red Sox in seven games.

The success that year and expectations for the subsequent season stimulated fan interest even more. Attendance exceeded 2 million in 2007 and 2008. However, a combination of free agency for some of the top players, coupled with injuries and slower results in player development, kept the team below .500 for the next four years. In spite of slower than hoped-for achievements, the club stuck to the game plan developed when Shapiro became general manager. Top players heading into their free-agent year were traded for young, emerging talent. Resources continued to be committed to scouting and the minors. Those plans would again prove to pay dividends.

By that time, Shapiro had been promoted to president of baseball operations and Christopher Antonetti, who had joined the organization in 1999, stepped into his slot as general manager. Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of the Dolan ownership has been the continuity in top management. Shapiro had been groomed to replace Hart in 2001 and Antonetti had been similarly groomed to replace Shapiro when he moved up the organizational ladder in 2010. When Shapiro left in 2015 to assume a similar position with Toronto, Antonetti became president and Michael Chernoff, who joined the club as an intern right out of college in 2003, was promoted to general manager.238

It is clear that the Dolans have been strong supporters of developing front-office management from within the organization and place a high premium on maintaining a level of stability at the top. They have also had good results in maintaining most of their staff, even when some have been offered positions elsewhere. Perhaps that is because they have also believed in staying out of the baseball side of the organization, letting their top management make the decisions on how to build the club. They have set guidelines, especially in the form of tight budgets, which in turn shape the decisions, and especially the limitations of the baseball side of the business, but within those guidelines, Shapiro, Antonetti, and Chenoff have been provided considerable latitude. As the senior vice president of finance said a decade ago, “The goal is not to overspend in a manner that puts the franchise at risk.” When the team has made a profit, the Dolans have plowed it right back into the ballclub.239 While that philosophy has caused many Cleveland fans to consider the Dolans to be cheap, it has also maintained constancy at the top level of the organization.

The club seemed to reach a significant turning point in 2012, brought about by an infusion of outside money as well as by the hiring of an experienced, well-regarded field manager. The money came from two separate deals, the sale of the regional sports network the Dolans had established in 2006 to carry all Indians games, and a new contract with Major League Baseball, to carry all of the games on the MLB subscription package. The sale of the regional network to Fox Sports Ohio netted the Dolans $230 million for the purchase, along with a 10-year contract at $40 million a year to carry all the games exclusively in the region. The new carriage agreement netted the club $7 million a year over what it had been paid by the Dolan-owned network. The MLB agreement to carry all Indians games, along with those of the other 29 teams, on a subscription TV package, was estimated to provide the club with another $25 million a year.240 The infusion of cash into the organization enabled the baseball side of the business to sign some major free agents for the first time in over a decade.

Just before the two deals were announced, the Tribe had hired a new manager, Terry Francona. Francona had already had spent 12 years as a big-league manager, four with Philadelphia and eight with Boston. While his record with the Phillies was undistinguished, with the Red Sox he produced world champions, in 2004 and 2007, something that had not been accomplished by the organization since 1918. He was fired by the Red Sox in 2011. Francona’s father had been a popular player for the Indians, so in some ways it was like coming home for the new manager. The combination of the cash infusion and Francona’s arrival seemed to make a difference in the performance of the club under the Dolans. In the 13 years the family had owned the club prior to the 2013 season, the team had won the Central Division twice, and one of those was a carryover from the Jacobs/Hart era.

In Francona’s first five years as manager, the team won the division twice along with achieving a wild-card slot in his first year as manager. The team also made it to the World Series for the first time under the Dolans, losing to the Cubs in seven games in 2016. During those five years, the team achieved the best won/lost record in the American League, in spite of having a below-average payroll.241

Even with that success, Cleveland fans have been slow to respond. For the first four years, including the first division title under Francona, the gate was not appreciably different from the years in which the team played below-.500 ball. Attendance averaged roughly 1.5 million a year for those four years, almost identical to the previous four. Only during the 2017 season, when the team won over 100 games for the first time since 1995, did attendance pass the 2 million mark. For that entire period, Cleveland was at the low end, the bottom five in attendance, of all 30 MLB clubs.

In 2019, the Dolans surpassed the Alva Bradley syndicate as the longest tenured owners in the history of the club. Simply by winning one pennant, they have been more successful than the Bradley group was. Another World Series appearance would match the accomplishment under Jacobs, although the team has won the Series only twice, once under Jim Dunn and again during Bill Veeck’s tenure.

Regardless of what transpires going forward, the Dolans have generated some decent results. More importantly, they have maintained a stable front office, largely developed from within, and have executed a philosophy of running a small-market ballclub that has generated a level of consistency, if not the incredible results both in performance and attendance that were produced by Dick Jacobs. In any case, the last three decades years of Cleveland ownership have been a much more productive era than the three decades that preceded it. Unlike those earlier 30 years, there have been no further threats of Cleveland losing its team to another city.

Progressive Field in Cleveland, 2017; photograph by Erik Drost at Flickr.com. (CC BY 2.0).

Summary

If there is any conclusion to draw from those periods that have been more successful for the Guardians franchise, it is the importance of how the ownership is structured. Under Somers, Dunn, Veeck, Jacobs, and Dolan, there was one final person who was capable of making decisions, both for financial matters as well as for baseball operations. While both Dunn and Veeck had other investors, both were fully empowered to make decisions on all matters associated with the organization. The other three had full ownership control of the club.

For all of the team’s other major owners, they were dependent upon the other investors in the syndicate to make final decisions, especially on the financial side. While there may have been one person able to make the baseball decisions, even they were dependent upon the investors to allocate the funds necessary to run a ballclub. The buck did not stop with Alva Bradley or Gabe Paul, even if they were engaged in all the activities associated with an owner.

In essence, those in charge were handcuffed by the investors, even when they were supposedly possessing full authority. It’s not surprising that some of the best front-office talent during these eras, such as Hank Peters, decided to go elsewhere. It is also not surprising that the organization produced the best results when one person has had the ultimate control over the direction of the club. That has led not only to the best outcomes on the field, but also, not surprisingly, to the best results in bringing fans to the ballpark.

There are a couple of interesting ironies when one looks at the history of the Guardians. The team has won the fewest World Series of any original American League franchise. The only two wins came on the only two occasions when the club was owned by an outsider, someone who did not reside or originate in Cleveland. Both Dunn and Veeck were either adopted or native Chicagoans.

During the only period in which the club was in serious jeopardy of being moved to another city, the various owners — Daley, Stouffer, Mileti, Bonda, and O’Neill, were all native to either Cleveland or Northeastern Ohio. During the tenure of both Jacobs and Dolan, the club has seemed again to be well ensconced in Cleveland, with no threats of a move, in spite of the fact that in recent years the club has languished behind most other teams in attendance. For now, the Guardians seem to be a stable, well-run organization.

DAVID BOHMER is Director Emeritus, Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media and Media Fellows Program, DePauw University. Formerly a telecommunications executive, he has been teaching and researching baseball history for more than a decade.

Last updated: January 2, 2022

Notes

Over its first five decades, the Kansas City Royals have had only three ownership regimes. Pharmaceutical entrepreneur Ewing Kauffman landed the Royals expansion franchise for the 1969 season and believed that the team could and should be competitive in a previously unprecedented time frame. He was willing to innovate and spend to boost the Royals chances of swiftly building a championship squad, and while it took longer than expected to win that first pennant, the Royals were soon recognized as a model franchise. Twenty-four years later, when he couldn’t find a local buyer, Kauffman set in motion an arrangement that upon his death contributed the team to a local charitable foundation to make sure it remained in Kansas City.

A board named by Kauffman ran the franchise — unsuccessfully on the field — for roughly six years before David Glass, the head of the board, purchased the team outright. For the first decade of his ownership, the on-field woes and meager payroll generally lingered, and Glass remained a strident spokesman on behalf the of small-market teams. Eventually, the youth movement that had moved forward in fits and starts was reinforced with higher-priced veteran talent, and the Royals won back-to-back pennants in 2014 and 2015.

The Royals came into existence as the American sports landscape was shifting. After decades of stability, the 1950s and ’60s saw a flurry of long-standing baseball teams moving to new cities and baseball expanded three times, adding two AL teams in 1961, two NL teams in 1962, and two in each league in 1969. The 1969 expansion was precipitated when Charlie Finley moved the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland in October 1967. Facing legal pressure, the American League responded by awarding franchises to Kansas City and later Seattle. Unlike more recent expansions in the 1990s, baseball chose the cities first, and then searched for ownership groups.

Four groups presented to the American League’s owners at the December 1967 winter meetings. Alex Barket, president of Civic Plaza National Bank, proposed individual ownership, with Tudie Patti, vice president of the Metropolitan Construction company, in a subordinate role. Another bidder was a syndicate headed by John Latshaw, vice president of E.F. Hutton & Co., who offered two different possible ownership structures, depending upon the owners’ preference. A third group was led by Richard Stern, president of Stern Brothers, an investment bank, and Crosby Kemper, retired chairman of City National Bank. Stern and Kemper planned to sell up to 75 percent of the team’s ownership to the public. The fourth entry and putative favorite was Ewing Kauffman, founder and head of Marion Laboratories, a Kansas City-based pharmaceutical company.1

On January 11, 1968, the league announced that it was awarding the team to Kauffman. “I’ve always said it was the greatest trade in the history of baseball [getting Kauffman instead of Finley as the city’s franchise owner],” said sportswriter Joe McGuff.2 The Royals initially cost Kauffman roughly $6 million: $5,250,000 for the players taken in the expansion draft, $50,000 for the franchise rights, and roughly $600,000 to the players pension fund. Of course, there were also many other costs associated with starting a franchise. Kauffman estimated that he would spend $200,000 to $300,000 operating the club in 1968 without any incoming revenue. Overall, “We expect tax losses of $1.8 million,” Kauffman said, “but once we get in the new stadium I anticipate we will improve our operation.”4

Kauffman’s earlier lobbying and natural sales skills helped him in winning over the owners. More important, perhaps, were his demonstrated financial capabilities and his stated intention to own the franchise himself. When asked about his connection with gambling due to his racehorses, Kauffman stated that he never bet on baseball or football, and earned a chuckle when he said he would continue to gamble but only at golf and cards.

Kauffman had both the net worth and the liquidity necessary to purchase and bankroll an expansion franchise. Marion Laboratories had a market value of roughly $156 million, and Kauffman and his family owned 31 percent of the company.5 Moreover, he had become a sportsman in the old-fashioned sense of the word, owning a stable of several racehorses and enjoying the associated lifestyle. Sportswriter and local booster Ernie Mehl had pushed Kauffman to pursue the franchise, telling him, “We need to show the American League there is somebody in Kansas City that is somewhat interested in baseball and financially can afford it.”6 With encouragement from his wife, Muriel, Kauffman entered the sweepstakes to own Kansas City’s expansion team.

With his typical forethought, Kauffman had traveled to Anaheim to meet with California Angels owner Gene Autry and team President Bob Reynolds, who had been through the process with their 1961 expansion team. While on the trip, Kauffman also met Cedric Tallis, an Angels executive who greatly impressed him. As Kauffman finalized his bid for his team, he invited Tallis to join his group as its general manager. Kauffman not only thought Tallis a smart baseball man, but liked that he had been the principal executive overseeing the creation of the Angels’ new ballpark.

Like many successful owners, Kauffman could be highly demanding, both publicly and privately. Yet he was one of the few also celebrated by the community and his players for his generosity and obvious care for their well-being. His compelling personality along with his ability to connect with a diverse range of individuals made him one of baseball’s more beloved owners.7

Kauffman grew up on a farm just southeast of Garden City, Missouri. After some tough years farming, the family moved to Kansas City, where his father’s sisters and parents helped them buy a house. When he was 11, Kauffman was diagnosed with endocarditis, a heart ailment, for which the treatment at the time was absolute bed rest for an entire year. As awful as this must have been for a young boy, Kauffman read up to 20 books a week and learned to quickly perform complicated mathematical calculations in his head. He recovered fully and later played football in high school. Kauffman also exhibited an early aptitude for sales. During World War II, Kauffman joined the US Navy, where he excelled as a navigation officer. His service time was also extremely profitable. Over his enlistment he won roughly $90,000 playing poker and would often send a large percentage to his wife to save for after the war.8

By this point Kauffman had matured into an interesting, complex individual. He was extremely competitive, hardworking, and driven, and very much believed in people having to earn their rewards. But he also was generous and caring. His extraordinary sales skills came from the former tempered by his obvious openness and genuineness in wanting to help the clients he was selling to.

After taking a job as a pharmaceutical salesman after the war, Kauffman decided to strike out on his own. In June 1950 he took what remained of his savings and launched Marion Laboratories. Though it didn’t have any research capabilities at the time, Kauffman imagined that “Laboratories” added a gravitas to the corporate name. He built a solid management team to support his sales staff, and the company prospered throughout the 1950s: By 1959 Marion achieved $1 million in annual sales. In February 1962 Kauffman married for a second time, tying the knot with Muriel McBrien. Muriel would become a force in her own right in the Kansas City community.

As the company flourished in the early 1960s, Kauffman wanted to take it public to bring in additional capital and create liquidity for his shares and those of many of his longtime employees. By 1965 company revenues were almost $5 million and net income had surpassed the $500,000 target set by his investment bankers. Initially, the company went public as over-the-counter stock, eventually listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 1969.

While pursuing the franchise, Kauffman told the owners he would bring in professional management, just as in his pharmaceutical business. Tallis, awarded a four-year contract and with a new major-league team to build, received the same memo. “Outside of finances, he will run the club,” Kauffman told reporters.9

“Kauffman did not dabble in day-to-day team management,” wrote his biographer. “He had decided early in his involvement with baseball that he would either have to trust the executives he hired or fire them. That had been his policy at Marion Laboratories, where he understood the pharmaceutical business.”10 That said, Kauffman would get involved if he felt he needed to. To increase ticket sales, he mirrored his Marion sales-recognition programs on the baseball side, creating an exclusive booster club with high-test perks for local businessmen who sold at least 75 season tickets.

At the ballpark he was equally attentive. “I’d have taken out the kid [Hedlund] and brought in Moe [Drabowsky] a little sooner than [manager] Joe [Gordon] did,” Kauffman remarked after one game in 1969. After learning that Drabowsky wasn’t “completely warmed up,” Kauffman backpedaled, “That’s why he’s the manager and I’m the owner.”11 But he remained attentive and unafraid to demand explanations from his senior management.

Though Kauffman allowed his baseball men to build his team, he was unafraid to think unconventionally and push to implement his ideas. He kept a copy of Earnshaw Cook’s Percentage Baseball on his desk, the first serious statistical look at the game written by an outsider. He even followed up by meeting with Cook to discuss his concepts. Kauffman also introduced one of baseball’s first computer systems, which by the end of the 1971 season contained statistics like “the nature of every pitch thrown by a Royal … what happened to every ball hit … [and] even the humidity.” One writer who witnessed Tallis and his staff reviewing some of this information exclaimed: “I felt I had walked in on a conclave of madmen. Here were six or seven grown men around a table piled high with computer cards, mulling over every pitch thrown and every ball hit in what is supposed to be a game.” This information was fed to the manager so that it could be applied. Thirty years before Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball, Kauffman believed that statistical analysis could provide a competitive advantage when added to traditional evaluation methods.12

Kauffman also had new ideas on how the team should find talent. He had publicly stated that he wanted a pennant within five years, a wildly aggressive prediction given the history of the four previous expansion franchises. To accomplish this goal, Kauffman realized that the usual methods of finding young players would not be sufficient: The amateur draft offered all teams equal access to top prospects, Latin and Caribbean countries were being scouted (though untapped opportunity was later to be uncovered there), and Japan was not yet considered a source for major-league players.13

Kauffman’s brainstorm was to create the Kansas City Baseball Academy, a school operating outside the traditional farm system at which undrafted athletes with little baseball background could learn the game. Kauffman’s academy applied a scientific approach to scouting and training: Figure out which raw skills best translated into baseball success and then how to best develop and hone those skills to create ballplayers. To house it, Kauffman purchased a 121-acre site in Sarasota, Florida. The complex cost roughly $1.5 million and required a further $600,000 or so in annual operating expenses.

Kauffman took a direct, personal interest in the Academy. When he heard that prospective prospects were not given an eyesight test, he went out and brought in specialists to help develop tests.14 Kauffman took special interest in what skills were needed to make a great hitter and how to enhance those skills. After testing established players in his own organization and a few other stars such as Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, and Tony Perez, Kauffman said, “We have boys in the academy who have faster reaction times than Bench, but his ability to track a moving object is the most tremendous that any of us have ever seen. … I think the ability to track an object can be taught and improved on and we will have classes to teach this.15

In mid-June 1971 the Academy faced its first public test when a team of its cadets was placed in the seven-team, rookie-level Gulf Coast League, pitting the recruits against drafted ballplayers in other organizations. The team finished 40-13 and led the league in batting average and ERA. This early validation of his concept was one of Kauffman’s greatest thrills in baseball.

Jim Lemon demonstrates bunting at the Kansas City Royals Baseball Academy in the late 1960s. (THE SPORTING NEWS)

Yet the Academy had detractors within the organization, as many in the front office begrudged the huge allocation of resources to something outside of their traditional farm system, which in tandem had built a first-rate scouting and development system. By 1973, while the Academy had produced several prospects, it had become clear that Kauffman’s brainchild needed to be revamped. The Royals’ original thesis — that great young athletes with little baseball background could be molded into major-league baseball players — had not proven out. Despite all its creative ideas and intense testing, the Academy could not create enough ballplayers from raw, unskilled athletes. The top prospect in the Academy, infielder Frank White, had significant previous baseball experience. The other noteworthy problem with the Academy was the huge cost. When Marion Laboratories stock collapsed during 1974 due to the recession and concerns over forthcoming FDA approval for a new drug (between February and August the stock price dropped from $52 per share to $11), Kauffman decided to shutter the academy and integrate its facilities into the overall minor-league system.16

Nevertheless, Kauffman felt that the Academy was to some degree succeeding at its mission and grew nostalgic over time that it could have offered a fresh source of players. He would later say his greatest regret in baseball was closing the Academy. “If I knew then what I know now,” Kauffman later lamented, “I would have kept it going. And we would have had a dynasty here. It really worked.”

That the Academy did not succeed in turning multiple-sport athletes into major-league-quality baseball players testified to the fact that traditional scouting was already finding most — though not all — of the potential major leaguers in the US. However, Kauffman’s philosophy of always looking for new sources of talent is one of the foundations of successful organizations. Of the Academy’s innovations in scouting and player development, some were transferred to the Royals farm system and many others were carried by the Academy’s coaches and trainers as they migrated within the organization and to other teams. Like most successful organizations, Kauffman’s Royals showed a sincere willingness to experiment with new ideas and methods. As a result, they found a few valuable players and learned useful player development and scouting lessons.

Kauffman had benefited from one of Finley’s constant complaints, an inadequate municipal stadium, a complaint echoed by football’s Kansas City Chiefs. By the mid-1960s, the civic leadership recognized that they would need something better than Municipal Stadium to house the football Chiefs and a major-league baseball team. With the fanfare over the Astrodome in Houston, initial designs contemplated a multipurpose domed stadium. As concerns about the design and costs grew, however, the current layout of two stadiums within one complex began to take shape, and in 1967 a bond issue was approved to finance their construction. The original plans included a rolling roof, which eventually was dropped due to cost overruns and construction delays.18 The $43 million sports complex was scheduled to open in 1972. To accommodate the team until the new stadium was ready, Kauffman signed a lease at Municipal Stadium.19

Within a couple of years, Kauffman was taking a financial hit on the new ballpark, which was costing more than expected, some of which he needed to cover. Revenues were also hurt for a year as construction delays deferred the opening until 1973, and attendance in 1972 fell to just over 700,000. It would jump to a then-team record 1,345,341 in 1973, the Royals’ first year in the new ballpark.

The 1972 season was marred by a players strike that began during spring training and lingered into the season, canceling a week’s worth of games. As the players union had never taken such an action before, the events stunned many longtime baseball people, and Kauffman developed into a semi-hawk on player issues. He was a paternalistic owner in the best sense of the word, offering free career counseling and financial advice to his players and occasionally handing out hundred-dollar bills to players in the locker room after a tough game, telling them to take their wives out for dinner.20 But Kauffman had spent a lot of money to acquire and build the franchise, which was still not profitable, stating that he had invested roughly $19 million in the franchise: Beyond the initial investment, he had sunk $5 million into Royals Stadium and annual losses were significant. For example, in 1971 the team lost $2.2 million; $600,000 was depreciation, a noncash charge, but the other $1.6 million was operating losses.21 Kauffman couldn’t see why the players should be allowed any more of the overall baseball revenues.

In response to Marvin Miller and the players association filing to arbitrate the McNally–Messersmith challenge to the reserve clause in the fall of 1975, Kauffman filed suit, supported by the other major-league clubs, arguing that the reserve clause was not arbitrable under the collective-bargaining agreement. The court allowed the arbitration to move forward, telling Kauffman he could come back if he wanted to dispute the decision. When Kauffman led the owners back into court to overturn the famous Seitz decision that invalidated the reserve clause, the court ruled that the arbitrator’s ruling would stand. Kauffman’s frustration with free agency can be seen in his reaction to it: Through 1980 the only free agent signed off another team was utility infielder Jerry Terrell.

On the field, the Royals backslid in 1972 after a surprising 1971 season, and the impatient Kauffman decided to fire manager Bob Lemon over Tallis’s objections. As justification, Kauffman publicly mentioned a mishandled August benching of Amos Otis and Freddie Patek for not hustling and also suggested that he wanted to hire someone younger. This last comment exposed Kauffman to age-discrimination protection, causing him to have to pay Lemon an extra year’s salary. Kauffman’s impatience and unrealistic expectations were also laid bare. “Starting in 1974,” he bragged, “we expect to win (the American League championship) five out of ten years.”22

Kauffman further exasperated Tallis by hiring Jack McKeon, the manager at Triple-A Omaha, with whom Tallis had quarreled in the past. In particular, McKeon was a vocal advocate for the Baseball Academy, and hence a favorite of Kauffman’s. McKeon would go on to a successful career in baseball as both a manager and general manager, but in 1972 he owed his allegiance to Ewing Kauffman alone. The impatient Kauffman had journeyed a long way from the putatively hands-off owner of 1969.

Despite a strong second-place finish in 1973, principally due to a number of great trades and smart drafting by Tallis and the front office, Kauffman became frustrated with his mounting financial losses. Between the financial drain of the Academy and the Royals’ top-notch minor-league system, the team reportedly lost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Notwithstanding a strong season on the field, the opening of their new ballpark, and a near-doubling of attendance, Kauffman lost roughly $900,000 in 1973.23 Late in the season he hired Joe Burke to run the financial side of the Royals to help stem the red ink. Burke had spent years in the front office of the Washington Senators and, after the club’s move to Texas, two years as the club’s GM. Kauffman was clearly preparing for a change in his GM.

Municipal Stadium served as home of the Kansas City Royals from 1969 to 1972. (COURTESY OF THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS)

By the middle of the 1974 season, as the Royals hovered near .500, “Kauffman’s irritation with the costs of owning a baseball team was beginning to show.”24 He had sunk somewhere around $20 million into the club and had yet to turn a profit in any season, and his net worth was sinking due to the Marion stock slide. Kauffman bounced Tallis and promoted Joe Burke to general manager, giving him full control over both the baseball and business sides. In another cost-saving move, after the season Kauffman directed Burke to join the newly formed Major League Scouting Bureau, enabling the Royals to lay off 20 full-time and 50 part-time scouts.25 A couple of years later, as the impact of this decision began to be felt in the farm system, Kauffman reversed course and began rebuilding his scouting staff. As with the sales employees at Marion, he offered the Royals scouts better perks and profit-sharing, but they “were expected to generate more leads and baseball talent than [their] rivals.”26 In late July 1975 Burke and Kauffman again changed managers, firing McKeon and bringing on Whitey Herzog. Herzog had managed for Burke in Texas and at the time was the third-base coach for the California Angels.

After four seasons of pursuing the Oakland A’s, in 1976 the Royals finally broke through with a 90-72 record and won the division title before losing a tightly contested ALCS with the Yankees. Of the eight expansion teams that began play in the 1960s, the Royals attained and sustained success the quickest, and Kauffman’s willingness to hire good baseball people and put money into his team was a big reason.

The team won division titles in 1977 and 1978 as well, again losing to the Yankees in the ALCS both years. Despite his success, Kauffman and Muriel never really warmed to Herzog, and the manager felt as though he was tolerated only as long as he was winning. Once when Angels owner Gene Autry asked Muriel how his “old friend Whitey was,” she responded, “Who gives a shit?”27 After falling to second place in 1979, Kauffman and Burke jettisoned Herzog, bringing in Jim Frey. Under Frey in 1980 the team finally beat the Yankees in the ALCS to win the pennant. “That was my greatest thrill in baseball,” Kauffman remembered. “And the moment was made all the more memorable because it had come at the expense of the New York Yankees.”28

After a disappointing 1981 season, Kauffman promoted John Schuerholz to GM and Burke to president. The team still boasted a talented nucleus, led by third baseman George Brett, and remained competitive in the early 1980s. The Royals finally won the World Series in 1985, bolstered by three young pitching aces.

The Kansas City Royals celebrate their 1985 World Series championship after defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. (COURTESY OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL)

For Kauffman, 1981 was something of a watershed year. He turned 65 and had a tumor removed from his chest along with part of a rib. On the baseball front, the Royals slumped as Kauffman believed Frey lost control of his players (Burke replaced him with Dick Howser), and the long players strike began to sap baseball’s appeal for him.29

Kauffman began considering bringing in a partner willing to buy a 49 percent interest in the team with rights to acquire full ownership down the road. In January 1983 he signed a letter of intent with a man named Michael Shapiro, and for $100,000 granted him an option to buy 49 percent of the franchise, including the cable-television rights, for $11 million and requiring a $12 million letter of credit. Once the deal became public, local reporters began digging into Shapiro’s background. It turned out he had gone to high school in Kansas City and was now living in Los Angeles and rumored to be associated with Hollywood. After some investigation, Shapiro was apparently not the bigwig he advertised. It seemed he was merely working in the accounting department at one of the studios. And sportswriter Joe McGuff learned he had been involved with a rodeo, and “(Shapiro) had ruined it.” Kauffman canceled the deal when Shapiro could not come up with the required deposit by the February 16 deadline.30

Later that spring Kauffman cut a similar deal with Memphis real-estate developer Avron Fogelman, but this time without the cable television rights. The two stipulated the value of the franchise at $22 million, and Fogelman paid $11 million for a 49 percent interest. Kauffman retained an option to sell the remaining 51 percent to Fogelman between 1988 and 1991. If Kauffman had not sold by the end of that period, he would become obligated sell to Fogelman. In early 1988 the two recut the agreement. Fogelman paid $220,000 to bring his share up to 50 percent and Kauffman’s sale obligation went away; he could now remain a partner in the team indefinitely. Their partnership agreement was extended through 2012 with the provision that if Kauffman died before then, Fogelman could purchase his 50 percent for $11 million.31 His frustration with baseball’s economics blinded Kauffman — like many others — to the massive increase in franchise values that was about to occur.

As Kauffman aged, and with some of Fogelman’s purchase capital now infused into the team, the Royals became more willing to pursue free agents to maintain its competitiveness, particularly toward the end of the decade. But several high-profile signings — notably Mark Davis, Storm Davis, Kirk Gibson, and Mike Boddicker — did not live up to the hype.

In 1989 Kauffman found himself forced to reorganize his businesses. As the pharmaceutical industry evolved, Marion’s executive leadership team felt a merger with another drug company was required for its long-term survival. Kauffman hated to surrender control of the company he had built from his basement, but he acquiesced to the recommendation. Later that year Marion Laboratories merged with Merrell Dow, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, to create Marion Merrell Dow and a nice but unwelcome payday for Kauffman. In 1988 Forbes estimated his net worth at $740 million, an amount certainly increased through the merger; now much of that was liquid as well.32

At the same time, Fogelman’s real-estate empire was unraveling in the commercial real-estate lending and liquidity crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Fogelman was under tremendous pressure from his lenders and needed his equity in the franchise to bail himself out. Fearful the franchise would get caught up in Fogelman’s messy finances and an out-of-town buyer would get Fogelman’s purchase option, Kauffman agreed to recut their deal again. Under the new agreement, Kauffman loaned Fogelman $34 million and effectively regained full ownership of the team. In addition he would have to cover roughly $20 million in failed real-estate investments awarded to players George Brett, Dan Quisenberry, and Willie Wilson, originally backstopped and advocated by Fogelman as part of their contract extensions. Moreover, Kauffman would have to fund $5 million to cover the previous year’s asset contribution defaulted on by Fogelman, and the entire $7 million in operating losses for the current year, typically split between the two partners. Not surprisingly, Kauffman said, “I feel like I have been taken advantage of.”33 Kauffman used the uncertainty created by Fogelman’s troubles to leverage a more attractive new 25-year lease on the ballpark and lock the team to Kansas City for the foreseeable future.

By the early 1990s Kauffman was aggressively spending on his roster while at the same time seething at the players union. In 1990 as the two sides battled over the collective-bargaining agreement, Kauffman said, “If they don’t settle soon, it would be my nature to withdraw everything offered and close the season down. You cannot keep giving and giving and giving.”34 Nevertheless, he still desperately wanted to win, and by 1993, after signing David Cone and Greg Gagne, Kansas City had the fourth highest payroll in the game.

Kauffman’s health had also begun to fail, and he began to fear for his mortality. He wanted to sell the team to a local ownership committed to keeping the team in Kansas City, but no one stepped up to the roughly $90 million price tag he hung on the franchise. Instead, he tasked Marion CFO and his longtime financial adviser Michael Herman to devise a structure that would allow the team to be owned in trust until baseball’s economics changed and a satisfactory buyer could be found who would keep the team in Kansas City.

Kauffman, Herman, and the tax lawyers eventually came up with a convoluted, tax-advantaged proposal. Upon his death, the team was to be donated to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. A five-person limited partnership would purchase Class A voting stock to run the team, and the foundation would receive Class B nonvoting stock. Kauffman also funded enough cash to cover annual operating deficits, estimated in excess of $3 million per year, and additional expenditures associated with free agents. As part of the bargain with the community, local leaders and charities would be required to come up with $50 million to help subsidize operating losses. When the team was eventually sold, they would get their money back. Kauffman also suggested reducing payroll to minimize losses until a buyer could be found and baseball’s economics recalibrated.35

Two potential stumbling blocks existed: the baseball owners and the IRS. Baseball’s owners did not want one of their franchises owned by a charitable foundation but eventually agreed as long as there was a deadline set as to when the franchise had to be sold. The tax issue came down to “whether retaining a baseball franchise in Kansas City is a charitable activity.” If not, the estate tax on the franchise might have forced an immediate sale. The alternative of donating the franchise to his Kauffman Foundation would have been problematic due to the limitations on the use of the foundation’s charitable funds to cover operating losses on a noncharitable entity and the prospect that the foundation would be required to quickly sell to the highest bidder. In 1995 the tax authorities affirmed that the transaction was, in fact, tax-exempt. The foundation would have six years to sell the team, after which a buyer would not be required to keep the team in Kansas City.36

Kauffman died on August 1, 1993, from bone cancer. He had a private funeral and burial three days later. A month before his death, Royals Stadium was renamed Kauffman Stadium in his honor. The franchise was turned over to the five-person limited partnership of Kauffman’s handpicked members. Longtime friend and Walmart CEO David Glass, whom Kauffman had first met years earlier when he was still actively engaged in pharmaceutical sales and calling on Glass’s drugstores, became managing partner.37 The other four partners were Herman, who became team president; Lou Smith of the Kauffman Foundation and president of the Kansas City office of Allied Signal; Larry Kauffman, Ewing’s son; and Gene Budig, chancellor of the University of Kansas. When Budig was named AL president in June 1994, McGuff took his spot. Glass paid $250,000 for his controlling shares, the other five paid $50,000 each. Under IRS rules, these Class A shareholders were limited to a profit on their investment not to exceed 15 percent per year.38

David Glass had loved baseball since his youth and would now be running a big-league team. He had worked his way from a small-town Midwestern boy to become the CEO of Wal-Mart, America’s largest retailer. Author Bob Ortega described his approach: “Glass veiled his driving ambition and his great confidence in his own abilities behind a cool, deliberative, and circumspect manner.”39

Glass grew up in Mountain View, a town of a few thousand in southeastern Missouri. Like most kids at that time and place, he worked to help support the family while he went to school. Glass was not a particularly driven high-school student but showed a strong aptitude for math. He played multiple sports, including baseball, and became a huge Cardinals fan. After a couple of adventures post-high school, Glass joined the Army and married Ruth Roberts. After his stint in the military, Glass enrolled in Southern Missouri State University in Springfield, where he received a degree in business administration. Marriage, the Army, and college seemed to have focused his ambition, and after college Glass joined Crank Drugs, a Springfield-based drugstore chain.40

Glass first met Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton in 1964 at the grand opening of one of Walton’s early stores. Walton had heard good things about Glass’s financial abilities at Crank and invited Glass to the event. The gala turned into a farce when watermelons stacked outside started exploding in the 115-degree heat and the juice began mixing with excrement from the donkeys brought in to give rides to children. The mess and the stench became part of Wal-Mart lore. Not surprisingly, Glass shied away from Walton’s approach.41

As Wal-Mart expanded over the next decade, Walton continued to keep an eye on Glass. Finally, in 1976 when Walton offered him the role of executive vice president of finance and distribution, effectively the number-four position at the company, Glass accepted. Over the next several years Glass became CFO, and finally, in 1988 he was named CEO.

When he became CEO, Glass moved the company beyond simply better merchandising and expense control to propel Wal-Mart’s expansion. “I guess the single biggest difference between my approach and [Walton’s],” Glass said, “is that a long time ago I had strong belief that technology would ultimately drive this business to be the size that it is. I’ve championed our efforts in technology and the systems and sophistication that we’ve been able to achieve, everything from the logistics aspects to all the financial aspects of it.”42 By the time he retired 12 years later, the company had grown from 1,200 Wal-Mart discount stores to about 2,500, plus 456 Sam’s Club warehouses, and another roughly 1,000 stores worldwide. Sales had increased from $16 billion to $165 billion.43

As the 1980s drew to a close, Glass’s net worth (estimated at $400 million to $500 million in 1991) had grown well beyond the amount needed to comfortably buy a baseball franchise, and he was searching for one to either buy or invest in. In this pursuit Glass made unsuccessful runs at the Royals, Minnesota Twins, and San Diego Padres. In 1991 Glass was part of an investment group led by longtime St. Louis GM Bing Devine and Walton, who were trying to buy the Houston Astros. Owner John McMullen reportedly targeted a $100 million price, and Devine’s group couldn’t forge a deal. Coincidentally, McMullen sold the team the next year for $117 million to Drayton McLane Jr., who had sold his grocery wholesale business to Wal-Mart in 1990.44

Once he became chair of the Royals board, Glass declared he did not plan to meddle in the baseball operation. “I get to do the fun part of it. I get to say yes or no on important decisions. Being a baseball fanatic for all of my life, I do have fun with it. But it doesn’t require much time.” 45

Glass quickly became a hawk on labor matters and a strong proponent of revenue-sharing. He rationalized his aggressive support of revenue-sharing by highlighting the difference between baseball and other businesses: “In business you go out and do the best job you can and you don’t have to worry about competitors. Whoever does the best job wins. But in professional sports, you have to worry about your competitors. You want to beat your competition, but you also want to make sure you keep them strong.”46

Glass was instrumental, for example, in gaining August Busch III’s reversal and acceptance of revenue-sharing in early 1994. Glass was one of the owners who urged Busch to change his mind. Several of these men, including Glass, had leadership positions with the beer company’s largest customers. When Busch changed his position, one writer noted this relationship between Busch and men who called him. “Gosh, I don’t deserve any credit for it,” Glass said, playing his role down. “St. Louis deserves the credit for bringing in fresh proposals.”47

Though Kauffman’s legacy had accounted for operating deficits by creating a pool to fund them, the Glass-led partnership was extremely frugal with its spending so as not to risk depleting the reserve. The front office felt outfielder J.D. Drew was the best player in the 1998 draft but did not select him due to financial constraints. Players either traded away or allowed to leave as free agents because of salary concerns included David Cone, Tom Gordon, Jose Offerman, and Tim Belcher.48

In the aftermath of the 1994-95 strike, the board realized they would have difficulty finding a purchaser willing to pay a reasonable price and hesitated to put the team formally on the market. In the meantime, they were approached by a group led by George Brett and his brothers. Brett, who had retired after 1993 as a future Hall of Fame third baseman and the greatest player in Royals history, was now director of player development for the Royals and a fan favorite. When he “made some commotion about wanting to see the books,” some in the community felt he wasn’t getting fair shake.49 In fairness to the board, they reportedly couldn’t engage in a sale of the team without a formal marketing process and hadn’t yet even engaged an investment banker.50

Glass was a logical buyer and several people close to Kauffman, including his daughter Julia, thought he wanted Glass to eventually buy the team.51 Glass’s interest in baseball was well-known, and he did little to quash the speculation. “I think that’s a possibility,” Glass said early in his chairmanship regarding the possibility he would buy the team. “I wouldn’t say that would be totally out of the question.”52

With the deadline for Kauffman’s succession plan looming in the not-too-distant future (January 1, 2002), Glass and the other board members formally put the team up for sale in late 1997. In September, Glass had announced he was not going to pursue purchasing the franchise. He had received some stinging criticism over his oversight of the team, particularly the implication that he had been purposely trying to keep the price down, so he could buy it cheaply.53 The process dragged on for nearly a year with no buyer willing to step up to the minimum $75 million asking price.

Only two serious bidders eventually came forward. One, led by Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt and Western Resources, a large Topeka-based natural gas and electric utility, offered $27 million at closing and another $25 million at a future date. Moreover, the offer was subject to $70 million in improvements to Royals Stadium being approved within five years, with the buyer controlling the process and timing of the request to governmental bodies. Apparently, some tax implications also prevented them from making a more aggressive bid. A second offer came from a syndicate headed by Miles Prentice, a New York attorney, for close to $75 million. The Royals board suggested that Prentice up his price to $75 million and add some local Kansas Citians to his group, which he did, including Julia Kauffman. In November 1998 the board finally reached an agreement to sell the franchise to Prentice for $75 million. But baseball Commissioner Bud Selig lobbied against Prentice’s group due to concerns that the syndicate was too large and didn’t have deep-enough pockets. Selig’s campaign was enough to sink Prentice’s bid when it finally came up for formal approval a year later.54

Board member McGuff complained, “What I am so frustrated about is that it took so long to get to this point.”55 In response, the board put the franchise back on the market. This time around, they received four bids for the team, including one from Glass himself.

Now 64 years old, Glass had decided to refocus his efforts on purchasing the Royals. Much of the ill-feeling toward his perceived manipulation of the process had evaporated and most observers were frustrated and exasperated with the lack of legitimate buyers. Once it became clear that he was close to buying team outright, he stepped down as the CEO of Wal-Mart. Making it official on January 14, 2000, Glass said he wanted to spend more time with baseball, “a great passion all my life.”56

In March Glass reached an agreement with the board to purchase the franchise for $96 million. Baseball’s owners approved him unanimously. “When we talk about the global issues in baseball his judgment is very well-respected,” Phillies Chairman Bill Giles said. “Of all the small-market people in baseball, he’s probably the most respected. People listen when he speaks.”57 Once approved, Glass said, “I know that Ewing Kauffman wanted me to wind up owning the team. He said that to me more than once.” Adding, “I think [getting back to the postseason] can be done fairly rapidly.”58

On April 18, 2000, David Glass formally became the owner of the Royals. At the time he purchased the team, Glass was obviously an extremely wealthy man but did not show up on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans or the “near misses,” indicating that Forbes, anyway, believed his net worth was less than the $620 million cutoff. In late 1999 his stock and stock options in Wal-Mart were estimated at a value of $323 million, and of course he had numerous other assets as well, including Glass Enterprises, a real-estate and investment firm.59 To purchase the team, Glass sold 2 million Wal-Mart shares, or around 40 percent of his holdings, valued at roughly $111 million.60

Several months before the purchase, he offered his thoughts on what ownership under a Glass regime would look like. “I am very competitive and despise losing,” Glass said. “I would work very hard to make sure we have a team in Kansas City that is competitive, that is fun to watch. The fun goes out of it when you lose all the time.” That acknowledged, however, Glass was very definitive on his approach to economic issues. “Fiscal responsibility on the part of all owners is one of the prerequisites for baseball to regain some of its competitive balance. I would not be the type of owner who would fund major losses. … The goal of this franchise should be to break even.” This would not bode well for future payroll. In 1999, with one of baseball’s lower payrolls, the Royals recorded a profit for the first time in the 1990s.61

Moreover, Glass was coming from a Wal-Mart culture that valued minimizing expenses among its core values. “Often that meant keeping expenses down. Little counted more to Sam Walton than that,” wrote Wal-Mart researcher Robert Slater. His philosophy was to manage every penny, nickel, and dime; if you did, the dollars would take care of themselves. The more he kept costs low, the more savings he could pass on to his customers.”62

With the purchase, Glass established a board of directors consisting of his wife, Ruth, his two sons, Dan and Donald, his daughter, Dayna Martz, GM Herk Robinson, and Julia Kauffman. In particular, his son Dan was going to have a role in running the team and was shortly named team president.63

In his new role, Dan would be groomed to take a more active role in overseeing the franchise. “He will spend time in all areas, learning the business side as well of the baseball side of the business,” Glass said. “He’s been involved with the baseball organization for about five years –all on the baseball side. It’s always been my thought that this is a family commitment to own the team for the foreseeable future. Some day I’m not going to be around, and I look for him to run it for the family at some point.”64 Now with stable ownership, the new leadership also needed to build out its organization.

Dan had actually spent close to seven years in the organization. He originally joined the Royals in 1993, the year David took over as head of the Royals board, as a baseball operations assistant. Three years later he was named assistant director of player personnel, and his duties gradually expanded to include contract negotiations, involvement in the development of the Latin American program, and arbitration preparation. Dan also made his home in the Kansas City area, removing some of the stigma of his dad’s out-of-town ownership.65

To implement his vision, in June the senior Glass promoted Robinson to chief operating officer, and his assistant Allard Baird to general manager. Baird was clearly in a difficult position: try to build a winning team with a payroll toward the bottom of the sport and a limited budget with which to sign top draft picks. Moreover, despite Glass’s sophistication in improving the systems at Wal-Mart, as one reporter noted, “few teams were more mom-and-pop than the Royals.” According to one report, the Royals did not provide their scouts with company cell phones.67 “I have to approach it a little differently than some teams,” Baird acknowledged, “because we’re always in a development mode.”68 He needed to find quality players less expensively. “We might like a player, but then we can’t afford him. It’s natural to think, ‘Well if you want to compete, you’ve got to step it up.’ What do you step it up to? We know our boundaries, so we’ve got to work harder.”69

One of Baird’s strategies was sign youngsters out of the Dominican Republic. “Our approach is to go younger,” he said. “Sixteen- or seventeen-year olds. High risk, high reward. Rely on development. The failure rate will be higher, no question, but we can work with that.” Adding, “If you don’t have money to spend you project … and as long as your owner understands the risk factor, it’s okay.”70 Specific tactics included a “caravan” approach where Royals scouts traveled throughout the Dominican Republic holding tryout camps so as to scour the countryside, and more radically, looking for talent in South Africa.71

Although the 2002 collective-bargaining agreement increased revenue-sharing, many small-market teams remained reluctant to increase payroll. As sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has pointed out, this was not an illogical response. “The owner will offer a player a salary up to the player’s expected incremental contribution to team revenue,” he wrote. “The fact that the owner receives a revenue-sharing transfer from MLB does not increase the value of a player’s incremental contribution. It does the opposite.”72 And Glass seemed to have taken this lesson to heart, particularly given the team’s struggles on the field in 2001 and 2002. According to one report in September 2002, he alerted his front office that they might be directed to “slash payroll this winter.”73 In the event, the Royals cut payroll by just under $7 million or 14 percent.

By 2001 both the Chiefs and Royals were campaigning to improve their stadiums at the Truman Sports Complex. They were approaching 20 years old and were well behind the new generation of stadiums, particularly in terms of upkeep and available revenue streams. For example, the Royals received $1.5 million in luxury-box revenue while another small-market franchise, the Indians, received $13 million from Jacobs Field.74 Kauffman Stadium was very visionary when it was built,” Dan Glass said. “The infrastructure is there. “We just need to get the amenities up to the standards of Major League Baseball. We’re not asking for a new stadium like the Cardinals.”75

His father, however, was much more circumspect and made it clear the family was distancing itself from having to pay for the improvements, estimated to be around $300 million, $150 million for Arrowhead and $150 million for Kauffman. “My family has $100 million invested in this franchise. I could take that same $100 million and make 10 percent somewhere else,” the senior Glass said. “But I’ve chosen to forgo that amount of money. In a roundabout way, that’s a contribution to baseball in Kansas City. I believe that we are already contributing.”76 He added, “If the team is bad, people don’t really care if you have a state-of-the-art stadium. If you were playing in a cow pasture with wooden bleachers, I would still want to pay for the team — and not the stadium — first and foremost.”77 Under the existing economics he was hitting his target of at least breaking even under the current stadium situation — though the team was not competitive –making something less than $5 million in 2000 and around $1.5 million in operating income in 2001.78

After several years of negotiations, in November 2004 a bi-state bond issue to finance much of the cost of the proposed renovations was voted down overwhelmingly. Two Kansas counties, Wyandotte and Johnson County, and two Missouri counties, Platte and Clay, voted against the proposal. Only voters in Jackson County, Missouri, the county housing the stadiums, came out in favor.79

Two years later, in 2006, after further talks, a new proposal was put on the ballot. In this rendition, the total cost of renovation would be $575 million: $425 million through public borrowing, $75 million from the Chiefs, $25 million from the Royals, and $50 million in state support though income-tax credits. To fund the $425 million, Jackson County voters elected to implement a three-eighths percent sales tax. Before the vote both teams signed a new 25-year lease, contingent on the referendum passing. Had it failed, the county was concerned that existing leases, signed in 1990, could be in jeopardy as they contained a clause requiring that the facilities remained in state-of-the-art condition. As additional incentive to the voters, Major League Baseball promised an All-Star Game to Kansas City between 2010 and 2014 if the vote passed. A second referendum proposed funding $170 million of a $200 million roof to cover Arrowhead that could also be rolled to provide protection for Kauffman, through a use tax on goods purchased by Jackson County businesses outside the state. This second ballot initiative failed, costing Kansas City the 2015 Super Bowl, which it had been promised if both votes passed.80

Construction of the stadium improvements commenced in October 2007, targeting completion in time for the 2008 home opener. During the season, additional construction was programmed for areas not directly affecting the games or the fan experience.81

When Glass formally acquired the franchise, some of the frustration over his trustee-type oversight during the 1990s gave way to cautious optimism that the Royals now had a single, dedicated owner who proclaimed his interest in building a winning franchise. Much of this goodwill dissipated, however, when the team traded two of its star young outfielders, Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye, in 2001 as their free agency approached. In 2003 the team logged a surprise finish above .500, but it had outplayed its talent level, and in 2004 the Royals regressed. Once again the team traded its best young star and impending free agent, Carlos Beltran, at midseason. In May, in the midst of this disastrous 104-loss season, Herk Robinson retired after 35 years in the Royals organization. The next season the team fell even further, losing a franchise-record 106 games.

The combination of the Royals’ struggles on the field, their low payroll (the team ranked 29th out of 30 teams in 200582), and the lack of a larger financial commitment to the stadium remodel provoked disparagement of Glass and his ownership tenure. Moreover, the franchise value had increased since Glass purchased the team, helped most recently by the increased revenue-sharing codified in the latest collective-bargaining agreement. In 2004 Forbes valued the Royals at $171 million, a 12 percent increase over the previous year (and well in excess of the average increase of 3 percent). Additionally, the Royals showed an operating profit of $6.6 million, again ahead of the league average, which Forbes estimated as a loss of $1.9 million.83 Over the next few years, several observers ranked Glass among the worst owners in sports.84

Glass also had a generous side, often fulfilled behind the scenes, where he would help ex-players or the family of a scout.85 But his competitive drive was being tested against the commitment to firm fiscal restraint and the reality of baseball’s economics.

On the heels of the terrible 2004 and 2005 seasons, the club started horribly in 2006 — after the May 3 game the team was 5-20 — and Glass realized he was going to have to change his approach if he wanted to be competitive. The team won on May 4 to avoid tying the record of 13 straight road losses to open the season, but Glass went public with his discontent, saying “significant changes” were coming. “What’s happening is just unacceptable,” he said. “We’re going to change some things to make it better. I’ve got a bunch of balls in the air right now, and I’m going to catch some of them.” One Associated Press reporter noted that Glass seemed “uncharacteristically agitated.” Most observers felt his statements meant a replacement for GM Allard Baird was forthcoming.86

Unfortunately for Baird, it took longer for Glass to catch the balls than he might have hoped, leaving Baird uncertain as to his ultimate fate, and Glass subject to criticism over the team’s inability to make a move. Finally, on May 31, Atlanta Assistant GM Dayton Moore agreed to become Kansas City’s new GM. Further making the timing particularly bizarre, the amateur draft would be held on June 6. Moore, possessor of the Braves inside scouting information and subject to potential conflicts of interest, could not participate in the Royals draft and would not formally assume his GM duties until June 8. Glass reportedly asked Baird to run the draft even after being fired.87 Both sides quickly realized the awkwardness of this request, and Glass named Assistant GM Muzzy Jackson interim GM for the week and put him in charge of the draft, supported by personnel director Deric Ladnier.

A native of Wichita, Kansas, Moore was given near-complete control over baseball operations, whereas Baird had been subject to a tighter rein.88 This reportedly included a reluctance by ownership to trade veterans and return only prospects. For key trade chips Carlos Beltran and Jermaine Dye, Baird was reportedly required to land major-league-ready talent, a significant handicap as teams looking to bolster their major-league squad often would prefer to surrender prospects rather than weaken their major-league roster. In particular, Baird purportedly had a deal for top prospects worked out for Mike Sweeney, vetoed by Dan.89

Dan Glass, however, minimized his influence on baseball operations. “We try to run this organization the same way the Kauffman family did,” he said. “You hire good baseball people, and then you support them and let them make the decisions. … The only time I get involved is when there may be a lot of money involved, and I think that’s natural. My job is to provide support for the baseball people.” Regarding his disapproving a trade of Joe Randa to the Cubs a few years earlier, where the Royals were purportedly going to receive a prospect while covering much of Randa’s salary with the Cubs, Glass said, “It wasn’t like the trade was a done deal and I stepped in. There was a discussion about a possible deal, and there are always discussions about trades, especially at the winter meetings, and I had some concerns about the direction it was going.”90

The news conference to introduce Moore generated some controversy of its own. Two sports radio reporters, Rhonda Moss and Bob Fescoe, grilled Glass and his son Dan on their handling of the Baird firing. Glass, who clearly wanted the press conference to be about Moore and the future, “grew visibly shaken and chippy in his retorts.” In retribution, Glass revoked the media credentials of the two reporters for the rest of the season.91

On the hiring of Moore, Dan Glass said, “He’s absolutely the best man for this job. And my job is to support him and give him the resources he needs to do his job.”92 The Glass family generally adhered to their hands-off approach and allowed Moore to assemble the club and rebuild the front office as he saw fit. They also loosened their pocketbook somewhat to rebuild the team’s infrastructure, particularly in the scouting and draft spheres.93

During Moore’s first few years he received permission to sign a couple of high-priced free agents to return the team to respectability, landing pitcher Gil Meche after the 2006 season and outfielder Jose Guillen a year later. After a number of years ranked in the bottom five, the Royals bumped their payroll: The 2009 salary list of $76.8 million ranked 21st in baseball, a significant jump over 2006 at $47.7 million, 26th highest.94 The team’s results, however, did not match the increase in salaries. After the 2010 season Moore swapped 2009 Cy Young Award winner and impending free agent Zack Greinke (along with Yuniesky Betancourt) to Milwaukee for four valuable young players: Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi. It would prove to be a great trade, but also highlighted the Royals’ recognition that they were several years away from being competitive and still in a rebuilding mode. Nevertheless, Glass felt that he had the right man in Moore, and in 2009 he extended Moore’s contract through 2014.95

There would be no more high-dollar signings until Moore and Glass felt the team’s young major leaguers and prospects were ready to compete. Finally, after several years of false starts, Kansas City had built up a quality stable of young talent to validate this strategy.96 In the near term, however, Glass pared back payroll to the league’s lowest in 2011 at $35.7 million. For comparison, that season the Yankees’ major-league-high payroll topped $206 million. This retrenching as the team developed its prospects allowed Glass to earn substantial operating income (this is different from net income in that it does not include interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) over the next several years, totaling $73.2 million from 2009 to 2013.97

Kansas City finished 71-91 in 2011, but Moore believed he had assembled a core that could compete in a couple of years. He persuaded Glass to allow him to sign several of his young stars to long-term contacts. The team disappointed in 2012, winning only one more game than in 2011, but once again Moore prevailed and brought in two high-salaried veteran pitchers, James Shields and Ervin Santana, via trades. As a consequence, in 2013 the team’s payroll jumped to 16th at $87.4 million, and the Royals finally broke through, finishing 86-76, clearly a team on the rise.

On the revenue side, Glass’s continued lobbying for additional revenue-sharing proved increasingly successful with each new agreement with the Players Association, and by this time smaller-market teams received significant revenue-sharing proceeds. Now with a chance to win, Glass was willing to boost payroll. The team also benefited from an almost fourfold increase in ticket revenue — up to $80 million — over the decade through 2015.98

The spending increase also came on top of one of baseball’s worst local television deals. After a short experiment with the team-sponsored Royals Sports Television Network, Kansas City had signed a contract in 2008 with the Fox Sports regional network. It runs through 2019 and reportedly currently pays the team $20 million per season. When the team signed the contract, the Royals were coming off a terrible run on the field and a season in which they recorded only a 2.8 rating. Once the Royals started playing well, viewership of the team’s games exploded. In 2015 the regional network reported a rating of 12.3, the highest in baseball, and the highest of any team since the 2002 Mariners. Even during 2017, their second consecutive season without a winning record since their World Series victory, the Royals logged the baseball’s second highest TV rating at 8.5.99 Glass can expect a significant increase in rights fees should these recent ratings continue.100

In 2014 as the team pursued its first postseason appearance in nearly 30 years, Glass reiterated his ownership philosophy: “Small-market teams are always limited. We’ve been willing, when we believed we had an opportunity to, to stretch and go beyond what logically made sense. Our objective, and Dan and I have discussed this before with the Royals, we’ve never viewed the Royals as something where we could make a profit. Our objective has always been to try to break even. I guess you’ll have a year where you might make a little. But you might have years where you lose money. Over a period of time, we’d like to come close to breaking even, at least. And you try to fit it into that framework. But if you have an opportunity to win, you consider doing almost anything.”101

Kansas City finally captured the American League pennant in 2014 and won the franchise’s second World Series the next year. During these and subsequent seasons, Glass continued to support payrolls in the middle of the pack. From 2015 to 2017 the Royals payroll ranged from $120 million to $130 million and ranked as high as 12th in 2015. True to his financially frugal background, upon winning Glass made sure to acknowledge it. “Don’t forget the business side,” he said, “because without them, there’s no baseball side.” He divvied up the credit individually as well: “I say it all the time, but it’s Dan [Glass], and Dayton, and Kevin [Uhlich, senior vice president of business operations] who do all the work.”102 By his actions, though, Glass clearly recognized Moore’s efforts. When Atlanta asked for permission to interview Moore for their GM position after the 2017 season, Glass refused.103

With their new-found success on the field, at the gate, and on television, the Royals looked also to boost revenue from other sources. After the 2016 season the team could not reach an agreement with long-term marketing partner Hy-Vee grocery stores due to their increased price for establishing a marketing relationship.104 The correlation between the recent on-field success and the jump in revenue quantified the extent to which a winning team and organizational credibility can generate significant additional revenues and TV viewership in Kansas City.

As of the spring of 2018, Forbes ranked the Royals as the 27th most valuable franchise in baseball, worth $1.015 billion, and the 2012 CBA defined Kansas City as the 27th largest market. The recent decline in attendance and escalation in payroll from the post-World Series bump led to an operating loss in 2017 of $17 million.105

After many years of finding their way, the Glasses eventually turned around a franchise that had degenerated into baseball’s most hapless: From 1994, the first season after the death of Ewing Kauffman, through 2012, the Royals had the worst winning percentage in baseball. With the 2015 World Series victory behind them, Kansas City was once again at a crossroads in its team building, and the Glasses and Moore were once again facing the challenge of rebuilding in one of baseball’s smallest markets.

Last revised: February 14, 2019

Photo credits

All photos courtesy of the Kansas City Royals except where listed.

Notes

1 Joe McGuff, “Four Kaycee Groups Seek Franchise,” The Sporting News, December 16, 1967: 29.

2 Gene Fox, Sports Guys: Insights, Highlights, and Hoo-hahs from Your Favorite Sports Authorities (Kansas City, Missouri: Addax Publishing, 1999), 82.

3 Jerome Holtzman, “A.L. Vote to Expand Marks 1967 History,” Official Baseball Guide For 1968 (St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1968), 180-81; Sid Bordman, “Score Runs High in Selection of Kauffman,” Kansas City Times, January 12, 1968.

4 Bordman, “Score Runs High.”

5 Joe McGuff, “Kauffman Goal: Flag in Five Years; Royals’ Boss Weighs Daring Plan,” The Sporting News, June 7, 1969.

6 Roger D. Launius, Seasons in the Sun: The Story of Big League Baseball in Missouri (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 93.

7 The principal source for Kauffman’s pre-baseball life is Anne Morgan, Prescription for Success: The Life and Values of Ewing Marion Kauffman (Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews and McMeel, 1995); also helpful were Phil Koury in Sid Bordman and Jim Reed, Expansion to Excellence: An Intimate Portrait of the Kansas City Royals (No other publication information presented), iii-viii, and Phil Koury, “Kauffman Puts Winning Record on Line,” Kansas City Star, January 14, 1968.

8 Morgan, 46-7.

9 Dickson Terry, “Kaycee ‘Will Never Lose This Team,’” The Sporting News, January 27, 1968: 23-24.

10 Morgan, 266.

11Mark Mulvoy, “KC is Back with a Vengeance,” Sports Illustrated, May 26, 1969.

12 Frank Deford, “It Ain’t Necessarily So, and Never Was,” Sports Illustrated, March 6, 1972.

13 Joe McGuff, “Kauffman Goal: Flag in Five Years; Royals’ Boss Weighs Daring Plan,” The Sporting News, June 7, 1969, 16.

14 Sam Mellinger, “Forty Years Later, Royals Academy Lives On in Memories,” Kansas City Star, August 2, 2014.

15 Joe McGuff, “Royals Junk Timetable,” The Sporting News, September 25, 1971.

16 Morgan, 176.

17 “Inside Mr. K,” The Squire, March 9, 1989.

18 David Mitchell, “Sports Complex Can’t Afford Upgrades Without Tax Dollars,” Kansas City Business Journal, June 15, 2001.

19 Holtzman, “A.L. Vote to Expand Marks 1967 History,” 180-81; Bordman, “Score Runs High.”

20 Denny Mathews and Fred White with Matt Fulks, Play by Play: 25 Years of Royals Radio (Kansas City, Missouri: Addax Publishing, 1999), 86.

21 Joe McGuff, “’Players Must Learn Facts of Life’ — Kauffman,” The Sporting News, April 22, 1972.

22 Joe McGuff, “ ‘Blame Me for Lemon’s Exit,’ Says Kauffman,” The Sporting News, October 21, 1972: 23; Joe McGuff, “Tallis-Kauffman Split Linked to Lemon Firing,” The Sporting News, July 6, 1974: 15.

23 Sid Bordman, “Royals Promote Burke to G.M. Post,” The Sporting News, June 29, 1974.

24 Morgan, 260.

25 Morgan, 261.

26 Stewart, 149.

27 Whitey Herzog with Kevin Horrigan, White Rat: A Life in Baseball (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 111.

28 Morgan, 268.

29 Jonathan Rand, “Kauffman Finds Outlet in Baseball,” Kansas City Times, undated clipping.

30 “Lawyer Says Shapiro Held Up Royals Suit in Hopes of Settlement,” Kansas City Times, February 13, 1985; Gene Fox, Sports Guys, 86-88; Mike Fish, “Would-be Buyer of Royals Suing Co-owner Kauffman,” Kansas City Star, February 12, 1985.

31 Bob Nightengale, “A Partnership Is Anchored in K.C.,” The Sporting News, January 25, 1988: 48.

32 Morgan, 294; “Royals Co-owner Bails Out; Highest Bidder Gets Club,” USA Today, August 1, 1990.

33 Charles R.T. Crumpley, “Kauffman OKs Loan to Fogelman,” Kansas City Star, undated clipping.

34 “KC Owner Suggests Canceling Season,” Associated Press, March 11, 1990.

35 Doug Tucker, “IRS Clears Way for K.C. to Purchase the Royals,” USA Today, May 4, 1995; Scott McCartney, “Kansas City Royals Make a Pitch to IRS,” Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1993; Morgan, 310-311; Charles R.T. Crumpley, “Kauffman Went to Great Lengths to Keep Team Here,” Kansas City Star, November 1, 1998.

36 Scott McCartney, “Kansas City Royals Make a Pitch to IRS,” Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1993; Scott McCartney, “Kansas City Royals Score Big Victory with Pitch to IRS,” Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1995; Morgan, 312.

37 Gene Fox, Sports Guys, 90; Morgan, 315-317.

38 Morgan, 315; Fox, 89.

39 Bob Ortega, In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and How Wal-Mart Is Devouring the World (London: Kogan Page, 1999), 95.

40 Ortega, 95-99.

41 Robert Slater, The Wal-Mart Triumph (New York: Portfolio, 2004), 30; Ortega, 56-57.

42 “David Glass Builds on Wal-Mart Legacy,” USA Today, July 27, 1995.

43 “Wal-Mart CEO Glass Leaves After 12 Years,” Oneonta Star, January 15, 2000.

44 “Walton in Group Wanting to Buy Houston Astros,” Oklahoma Journal Record, August 3, 1991; “Houston Astros sold for $680 million,” May 16, 2011, cbsnews.com/news/houston-astros-sold-for-680-million; Constance L. Hays, “Wal-Mart Agrees to Sell Food Supplier,” May 3, 2003, https://nytimes.com/2003/05/03/business/wal-mart-agrees-to-sell-food-supplier.html.

45 “David Glass Builds on Wal-Mart Legacy,” USA Today, July 27, 1995.

46 “Keeping Royals All in the Family,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, May 24-30, 2000.

47 John Helyar, “And We Thought They Sold Beer at Games to Wash Down Peanuts,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 1994.

48 Joe Posnanski, “The Royals Decade,” January 1, 2010, https://joeposnanski.com/joevault/?p=50.

49 Fox, 90.

50 Fox, 90; Brandon Copple, “Home Stretch,” Forbes, June 12, 2000.

51 Julia was the biological daughter of Muriel and adopted by Ewing after they were married.

52 Fox, 90; Steven Rock, “Kauffman’s Daughter Happy That Glass Will Own Team,” Kansas City Star, April 17, 2000.

53 Fox, 90; Jerry Heaster, “Search for Dream Owner of Royals Striking Out,” Oklahoma City Journal Record, August 4, 1998; Jeffrey Flanagan, “Glass’ Thankless Task Almost Complete,” Kansas City Star, August 13, 1998.

54 Ronald Blum, “Royals Owners Approve Royals Sale,” Sun Sentinel, April 18, 2000; Brandon Copple, “Home Stretch”; “Baseball Rejects Prentice Bid for Royals,” November 11, 1999, https://a.espncdn.com/mlb/news/1999/1111/165380.html.

55 “Baseball Rejects Prentice Bid for Royals.”

56 “Wal-Mart CEO Glass Leaves After 12 Years,” Oneonta Star, January 15, 2000.

57 Steven Rock, “Potential Owner of Royals Has Business Savvy, Passion for Baseball and a Lot of Money,” Kansas City Star, November 27, 1999

58 “Owners Approve Sale of Royals,” April 17, 2000. cbsnews.com/news/owners-approve-sale-of-royals.

59 Rock, “Potential Owner of Royals.”

60 Steven Rock, “Glass Plans to Sell Stock to Pay for Team,” Kansas City Star, March 22, 2000.

61 Rock, “Potential Owner of Royals.”

62 Slater, 53.

63 “Family on Board,” New York Times, May 5, 2003; Ronald Blum, “Royals Owners Approve Royals Sale,” Sun Sentinel, April 18, 2000.

64 “Keeping Royals All in the Family,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, May 24-30, 2000.

65 mlb.com/royals/team/front-office/dan-glass; Jeffrey Flanagan, “Dan Glass ‘Proud’ to See Royals Back on Top,” November 13, 2015, https://mlb.com/news/royals-president-dan-glass-proud-of-team/c-157236190.

66 Sam Walker, “On Sports: The Front Office Blues,” Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2002.

67 Harvey Araton, “Restoration Project,” New York Times, July 9, 2012.

68 Mark Kind, “Profile: Allard Baird, ‘He’ll Tell You the Hard Things,’” Kansas City Business Journal, January 6, 2003.

69 Alan M. Klein, Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 38.

70 Klein, 40-41.

71 Klein, 43-44.

72 Andrew Zimbalist, May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2003), 103-104.

73 Zimbalist, 108-109, quoting Bob Nightengale, USA Today Sports Weekly, September 4-10, 2002.

74 Copple, “Home Stretch.”

75 David Mitchell, “Sports Complex Can’t Afford Upgrades Without Tax Dollars,” Kansas City Business Journal, June 15, 2001.

76 Steven Rock, “Glass Says He Won’t Put His Own Money Into a Stadium,” Kansas City Star, July 7, 2001.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.; Sam Walker, “On Sports: The Front Office Blues,” Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2002.

79 Clark Corbin, “Voters Nix Bistate Nlans,” November 4, 2004, https://bonnersprings.com/news/2004/nov/04/voters_nix_bistate/.

80 Yvette Shields, “Vote Due on K.C. Stadiums; County Legislators, Public Will Weigh In,” The Bond Buyer, March 22, 2006; “Voters OK Stadium Upgrades, Reject Rolling Roof,” Kansas City Business Journal, April 5, 2006; Joel Thorman, “Super Bowl 2015 Was Supposed to Be in Kansas City,” January 30, 2015, https://arrowheadpride.com/2015/1/30/7950913/super-bowl-2015-was-supposed-to-be-in-kansas-city.

81 “Royals Hold Ground Breaking Ceremony for Stadium Renovation,” October 3, 2007, https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/baseball2007-10-03-883213026_x.htm.

82 baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2005-misc.shtml. For consistency, I use the payroll figures published at baseball-reference.com throughout this essay unless otherwise noted. They can differ from other published sources and “may not include every bonus a team paid in a season, or players called up or acquired mid-season.”

83 “MLB Valuations,” April 26, 2004, https://forbes.com/forbes/2004/0426/066tab.html#364c859d4a70.

84 Dave Zirin devotes a chapter to Glass in his book Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love; Rolling Stone put Glass at number 10 in their ranking of the worst owners in sports; ESPN’s page 2 staff ranked him number six in their list of the greediest owners in sports; and Bleacher Report listed him at number eight among the worst owners of all time. Dave Zirin, Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love (New York: The New Press, 2012), 133-140; Jeb Lund, The Worst Owners in Sports, Rolling Stone, November 25, 2014, rollingstone.com/culture/lists/the-15-worst-owners-in-sports-20141125/david-glass-kansas-city-royals-20141125; “Greediest Owners in Sports,” undated, https://espn.com/page2/s/list/owners/greediest.html; Ezri Silver, “The 20 Worst Owners in Sports History,” June 26, 2010, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/411966-the-20-worst-owners-in-sports-history#slide13.

85 Jason Whitlock, “Glass Kind, but Still the Worst Owner,” Kansas City Star, June 25, 2006.

86 Doug Tucker, “Royals Owner Vows to Make Changes,” Lincoln Journal Star, May 6, 2006; “Royals Fire GM Baird; Moore Hired,” ESPN, May 31, 2006, https://espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=2464544.

87 Peter Gammons, “Glass Abused Baird,” ESPN, June 2, 2006.

88 Despite some suggestions that Moore negotiated for complete control, Moore denied he ever demanded it. Dayton Moore and Matt Fulks, More Than a Season: Building a Championship Culture (Chicago: Triumph, 2015), 57.

89 Wally Fish, “Defending Allard Baird, Plus Other News,” December 20, 2009, https://kingsofkauffman.com/2009/12/20/defending-allard-baird-plus-other-news; Joe Posnanski, “The Royals Decade,” January 1, 2010, https://joeposnanski.com/joevault/?p=50.

90 “Dan Glass: Family Tries to Emulate Kauffman,” Kansas City Star, undated clipping.

91 Jason Whitlock, “This Glass Is Empty,” ESPN Page 2, June 6, 2006, https://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=whitlock/060615.

92 “Dan Glass: Family Tries to Emulate Kauffman,” Kansas City Star, undated clipping.

93 Vahe Gregorian, “David Glass Reflects on Royals’ Rise and ‘Taking the Heat,’” Kansas City Star, October 16, 2014.

94 baseball-reference.com.

95 Tracy Ringolsby,” Glass Deserves Credit for Royals’ Success,” November 7, 2015, https://mlb.com/news/david-glass-plays-big-role-in-royals-success/c-156725516.

96 Along with the players picked up in the Greinke trade, the organization boasted first baseman Billy Butler, first baseman Eric Hosmer, third baseman Mike Moustakas, catcher Salvador Perez, outfielder Alex Gordon, outfielder Wil Myers, and pitchers Danny Duffy, Yordano Ventura, and Kelvin Herrera.

97 Information from Forbes in Sam Mellinger, “Royals’ ‘Break-Even’ Claim Is Plausible, but Front Office Can Still Do More,” February 14, 2014, https://kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article339151.html.

98 Sam Mellinger, “The Small Market Changes That Helped the Small Market Royals Spend Big,” February 1, 2016, https://kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/sam-mellinger/article57527133.html.

99 Maury Brown, “Here Are the 2017 MLB Prime Time Television Ratings for Each Team,” October 10, 2017, https://forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2017/10/10/here-are-the-2017-mlb-prime-time-television-ratings-for-each-team/2/#e94204463ccd.

100 Max Rieper, “How Much Should the Royals Expect from Their Next Television Deal?” December 15, 2015, royalsreview.com/2015/12/15/9888970/how-much-should-the-royals-expect-from-their-next-television-deal; Blair Kerkhoff, “Royals Set TV Rating Record on Fox Sports KC,” October 5, 2015, https://kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article37795596.html.

101 Andy McCullough, “Extended Interview: Royals Owner David Glass Talks Playoff Chances, Payroll and More,” July 15, 2014, https://kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article733190.html.

102 Jeffrey Flanagan, “Dan Glass ‘Proud’ to See Royals Back on Top,” November 13, 2015, https://mlb.com/news/royals-president-dan-glass-proud-of-team/c-157236190.

103 Sam Mellinger, “David Glass Can Block the Braves, but Without a Second Step He’s Only Hurting the Royals,” November 2, 2017, https://kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/sam-mellinger/article182324856.html.

104 Mark Davis, “Hy-Vee Can’t Justify the Cost, Ends Sponsorship with Royals, November 30, 2016, https://kansascity.com/news/business/article117939003.html.

105 “The Business of Baseball,” https://forbes.com/mlb-valuations/list/#tab:overall.

The Minnesota Twins have called Target Field home since 2010. (COURTESY OF STEW THORNLEY)

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been a baseball mecca. The Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints were Triple-A mainstays, and each had a long and distinguished history, being the two teams with the most wins since the founding of the American Association in 1902. In the early 1950s, it seemed that this might be a permanent situation, as the 16 major-league teams were located in just 10 cities — New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, and Washington — with four of these having two teams and New York having three. The major leagues had a decidedly Northeastern slant.

Several things happened in the 1950s that gave the Twin Cities hope. One was demographic. In the 1950 Census for the first time the combined population of Minneapolis and St. Paul, including its growing suburbs, was over a million. The Twin Cities were now seen as one of the major population centers, but were noticeably without a major-league team, along with Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Buffalo, all in the top 15 in population.1 The Twin Cities had the Minneapolis Lakers, to be sure, but the NBA in the 1950s was still a backwater league, as were the NFL and the NHL. Only baseball was really “major league.”

In reaction to the demographics, the stability of the 16-team baseball pantheon began at long last to change. The Boston Braves gave up competing with the Red Sox and moved to Milwaukee in the spring of 1953. Later that year, the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles for the 1954 season. In the fall of 1954, the Philadelphia Athletics announced they were moving to Kansas City for the 1955 season. The A’s and the Browns did sound out the Twin Cities option, but looked elsewhere when it was clear that there was no adequate ballpark for their teams to play in.2 Later in the decade, of course, the major change in baseball took place when in 1957 the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants moved to the West Coast for the 1958 season. But that gets us a bit ahead of our story.

After World War II there were those in the Twin Cities who felt that the Minneapolis-St. Paul area should have a major-league baseball team. By the early 1950s, what got the attention of those most serious about this was that both Milwaukee and Baltimore had succeeded in attracting major-league clubs because they had major-league-caliber ballparks to offer.3 So the effort to attract major-league baseball to the Twin Cities turned its focus toward creating a suitable ballpark. Both the Millers and the Saints played in old, entirely inadequate facilities that would not attract any major-league club.

Still, in the 1950s the long-standing animosity between Minneapolis and St. Paul was still very much alive. While St. Paul was the slightly older city, and was the state capital, Minneapolis had emerged as a much more vibrant commercial center, and by the 1950s was the larger of the two cities. This led to the ironic situation of the two cities independently pursuing the ballpark strategy.

The option pursued by St. Paul was, in some ways, an ideal one. It was focused on the Midway District, an area west of downtown St. Paul and, interestingly, close to downtown Minneapolis. In November of 1953, Walter Seeger, who owned a St. Paul refrigeration company, led a group of St. Paul boosters to get a $2 million referendum passed for a ballpark to be built in the district.4 Midway Ballpark, as it was called, opened in 1957, with a capacity of 10,250, and was used by the St. Paul Saints until 1960.5

The action that would eventually pay off in drawing major-league baseball to the Twin Cities occurred in Minneapolis. In the summer of 1952, Charles Johnson, Gerald Moore, and Norman McGrew began the long process of organizing an effort to attract a team to the area.6 Johnson was a sports editor and columnist for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Moore, a sales manager for a moving and storage company, was the president of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce and later the head of the Minneapolis Downtown Council. McGrew had been hired by the Chamber of Commerce with two initial responsibilities: keep Northwest Orient Airlines in town, and lure a big-league team to the area.7 While many others would eventually get involved, these were the founders of the drive to get a major-league team. The discussions among these founders soon focused on where and how to build a ballpark.

The efforts focused on a site near the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, in Bloomington. Their thinking was influenced by the emerging need for adequate parking, now that fans overwhelmingly came to games by car. The site was equally distant from both downtowns, though it was not close to either.

In 1954 a Metropolitan Sports Area Commission was formed to carry on the business of creating a ballpark that would attract a major-league franchise. An organization called the Minute Men was formed to raise funds for the ballpark. They put together a bond program worth $4.5 million to provide the initial funding, though in the end the facility as built would require double this amount. The plan was to create a ballpark seating 20,000 that would initially be used for minor-league baseball, but could easily be expanded to 40,000 if a major-league team committed to coming to the area.8

The proposal for the ballpark, used to attract investors, emphasized the greater Bloomington site as a community resource. There were many ideas for uses of the land beyond just a ballpark and its vast parking lots. The investment prospectus even spoke optimistically of a team committing to move to the area in time for the 1956 season, when it was expected that the ballpark would be ready for occupancy. Interestingly, the proposal for a ballpark emphasized that the community would share in the income from ballpark activities. Ticket sales, concessions, even parking, would be shared between the occupying baseball team and the community. There was even language about sharing future television income, to help to service the bond debt. Though the initial plans were to hold the City of Minneapolis harmless in this bond drive, in the end the city had to agree that it would step in to cover the debt service if income from the ballpark did not meet the need. And later, when the ballpark needed to be expanded from 20,000 seats to 40,000, the city had to step in to refinance the entire package.9

Ground was broken for the new ballpark in Bloomington on June 20, 1955, on 160 acres of land just south of what would later become Interstate 494. It took less than a year to build. The first game was played on April 24, 1956, with the Minneapolis Millers facing the Wichita Braves. It was only in July that the ballpark picked up its official name: Metropolitan Stadium. It affectionately came to be known as The Met. Its seating capacity at opening was 18,200; later during the Millers’ occupancy, it settled at 21,000. Now the Twin Cities had a ballpark. Well, actually, two, as St. Paul went ahead with the construction of Midway Stadium; but Midway was never a serious option in the attempt to lure a major-league team.

During the early phases of trying to attract a team, there were multiple indications that the team that moved to the Twin Cities would be the New York Giants. The Millers were the Giants Triple-A farm club. Giants owner Horace Stoneham attended an early Millers game at the Met, and said it was one of the best ballparks in all of baseball. In May of 1956 he had said publicly that he was considering a move to Minneapolis.10 All kinds of signals encouraged the Minneapolis organizers to have high hopes that this was really going to happen. In later discussions Stoneham and Minneapolis representatives talked through details of the move, even discussing the price of popcorn at the ballpark.11

The fall of 1956 saw fateful events in the saga to land a team. During the 1956 World Series, representatives of the Los Angeles effort to land a team had a conversation with Calvin Griffith about moving the Washington Senators to Los Angeles.12 Griffith was quite attracted to the idea. In the end the Senators decided that they did not want to leave Washington, though one rumor was that during the 1956 World Series, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley had scribbled a note to Kenneth Hahn, who was representing Los Angeles, asking him not to proceed with Griffith because he wanted to bring the Dodgers to LA.13 But regardless of the accuracy of this story, it is interesting that later, as we shall see, O’Malley played an important role in getting the Senators to move to the Twin Cities.

Stoneham and the Giants were eyeing the Twin Cities quite apart from the Bloomington ballpark effort. In 1948 Stoneham had purchased 40 acres of land in St. Louis Park, west of Minneapolis, as a site for a potential new ballpark for the Millers, an act that no one knew about during subsequent ballpark discussions.14 Though no ballpark was built on that site, if one had been there, it might have put the Twin Cities in the running for the relocation of the Browns and A’s.15 Stoneham’s interest persisted. On a drunken evening in early 1954, he told the Millers’ general manager, George Brophy, that he would move the Giants to Minneapolis and that Cincinnati would move to New York to compensate for the Giants move.16 Obviously, hopes were raised.

As late as March 23, 1957, Horace Stoneham told Walter O’Malley in a private conversation that he had made a commitment to move the Giants to Minneapolis.17 O’Malley asked Stoneham if he might be interested in San Francisco, and Stoneham replied that he “was not at all impressed by that location.”18 In April of 1957 several members of the Sports Area Commission met with Stoneham in New York to discuss details of what a deal would look like, and came away with high hopes that a deal was soon to be consummated for a Giants move to Minneapolis.19 However, as events transpired, the possibility that the Giants would move to Minneapolis diminished. There is a lot of mythology about O’Malley’s role in changing Stoneham’s mind.20 However, the primary impetus came from the new mayor of Stan Francisco, George Christopher.21 O’Malley helped Christopher in arranging contact with Stoneham, but it was Christopher’s hard work with the leaders in San Francisco and his persuasiveness with Stoneham that cemented the deal.22

In May the Giants announced to the world that they would move to the West Coast, and Cincinnati would move to New York, to restore a National League team to the area.23 By August the Giants board of directors approved the move. The Giants, in contrast to the earlier moves of the Browns/Orioles, Braves, and Athletics, cut a very attractive deal. San Francisco promised to build a ballpark seating 40,000 to 45,000, with parking for10,000 to 12,000 cars. Concession revenues would go to the Giants. Rent for the ballpark would be capped at 5 percent of revenue. The team would control the venue for all other events. The Giants would get to approve the ballpark’s design.24 In return for these attractive terms, the Giants signed a 35-year lease.25 These terms were beyond what the Twin Cities operators had been considering.

This left the Twin Cities out in the cold. There were brief discussions with the Cleveland Indians, but legal issues concerning the Indians’ ballpark lease put an end to that.26 The Twin Cities group then turned their attention to Calvin Griffith and the Senators. The Senators’ situation was grim. Griffith was one of the last of the traditional baseball owners and the Senators were his only source of income. They had done poorly on the field for many years, and attendance lagged. By the summer of 1958 Griffith was seriously interested in moving, and the Twin Cities were his primary target. But the other American League owners opposed this. They were particularly anxious about hearings taking place in the US Senate just then over revoking baseball’s antitrust exemption. The feeling was that it would be a huge political disaster to take the team out of the Washington area. Indeed, Griffith even testified before the Senate committee that he would never leave DC as long as he could make ends meet.27

However, Griffith continued his overtures to the Twin Cities. The Senators and the Phillies played an exhibition game at the Met just after the All-Star game in 1958, and Griffith made his first visit to the Twin Cities for that game. He had previously worried about Minnesota, thinking it was a cold backwater. But Griffith was impressed by what he saw and heard. He liked the Met as a venue, and found the area in the middle of the summer to be quite lovely.28 Now the Twin Cities boosters once again felt they had a live one on the line. What would it take to confirm the deal?

The Twin Cities group took up one key issue: making the Met ready for a major-league occupant. The Millers were still playing there, though in December of 1957 the Boston Red Sox took over the ownership of the Millers. During the negotiations for the lease of the Met, the Red Sox insisted on an option for a major-league team. Joe Cronin, general manager of the Red Sox, was Calvin Griffith’s brother-in-law, and likely he was acting as a stalking horse for the Senators.29

In the second half of 1958 there were complex machinations involving the boosters, the Board of Estimate and Taxation, and the investors in the ballpark. The boosters realized they could not raise the total amount needed to expand the ballpark, so they wanted to buy out the earlier investors and refinance the entire deal for an expanded ballpark (estimated to cost $9.5 million) through general-obligation bonds backed by the taxpayers of Minneapolis.30 The Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution to sell such bonds, but put a sunset clause in it. If there was no commitment from a major-league team by January 1, 1959, there would be no bond sale and no ballpark expansion. Despite the Minnesotans’ guarantee of 750,000 fans a year for at least three years, Griffith once again balked.

So once more things were at a standstill. But several major developments finally broke the logjam. The first was Branch Rickey’s proposal to form a third major league, the Continental League.31 A number of large US cities wanted major-league baseball, and Rickey was able to gather together commitments from the Twin Cities, Houston, Denver, New York, and Toronto to form the initial franchises for the Continental League. The Minnesota lead on this venture was merchant banker Wheelock Whitney, who soon formed a close and enduring bond with Rickey. Wheelock’s partnership group included Bob Short, George Pillsbury, members of the Dayton family (Dayton-Hudson stores and Target) the Minneapolis Star & Tribune and Hamm’s Brewing. Throughout the summer of 1960 a series of negotiations both within the Continental League and with the existing leagues took place. To succeed, Rickey had to get Organized Baseball to recognize the new league, which he hoped would allow him to stock Continental League teams with real major-league players. But major-league baseball was reluctant to do this.

The other development was the proposal to create a new professional football league, the American Football League. The logic underlying this effort was similar to Rickey’s: create new franchises as a threat to the existing league, and either get them to expand, or else create viable franchises in up-and-coming urban areas not currently covered by the existing league. The Twin Cities were one of the original sites for a new AFL franchise.

These developments put enormous pressure on baseball’s major leagues. And particularly, it highlighted the dire straits of the Washington Senators. There were active discussions again in late 1959 about a move to the Twin Cities, but again the American League owners refused to grant their permission.

However, 1960 “would be the most historic year in Twin Cities sports history.”32 The Continental League organizers met in the Twin Cities in January and created local enthusiasm for the idea that maybe the path to major-league status went in this direction. Just the previous November the first full meeting of the AFL had been held in Minneapolis, and it seemed that this was the best path to a professional football franchise, as the established National Football League had shown reluctance to expand.

In the wake of those meetings, things moved quickly. On January 28, 1960, the NFL awarded the Twin Cities a new franchise, beginning with the 1961 season, with games to be played at the Met. The Met’s capacity would increase from 22,000 to over 30,000 in 1961, and later, when the Vikings would add double-decked stands in left field, to over 45,000.33 In March, the Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA announced that they were moving to Los Angeles.

Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota, served the American League’s Minnesota Twins for 21 seasons. However, it was originally the home of a minor-league team, the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. (COURTESY OF STEW THORNLEY)

Baseball soon followed. In July the two expansion committees of baseball, chaired by Walter O’Malley of the Dodgers and Del Webb of the Yankees, contacted Rickey and said they were considering expansion. After discussions, the two chairs announced that the major leagues would expand. The American League would create two new franchises, in Washington and Los Angeles, and allow Griffith to move to Minnesota for the 1961 season. The National League would expand to Houston and New York in 1962. Rickey of course noted the irony that only Houston and Minnesota were new areas. But this was enough to result in the death of the Continental League, which was one of the conditions laid down by the two major leagues.34

When it came to naming the new major-league franchises, both the football and baseball owners in the Twin Cities chose the novel idea of using the state name rather than the city. The Twins had actually proposed that the name be Twin Cities, but the American League rejected this. The owners at least allowed the Twins to use the interlocking “TC” on their caps.35 Using the Minnesota name was, of course, a way of appeasing the Minneapolis and St. Paul interests. This set a precedent for later sports franchises in other states, but the NFL Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins were the first.

By October of 1960 the deal was in place. The old Senators (the new Washington team would assume the Senators name) would be moving to Minnesota. The form of the deal was not quite what the Giants had received from San Francisco, but Griffith was pleased. He signed a 15-year lease. He got 90 percent of the concession revenues. The Sports Area Commission got 7 percent of ticket revenues as rent for the ballpark. No rent was required for the remainder of the lease if the Twins didn’t draw at least 750,000 fans in each of the first three years. The Twins also controlled concessions for other events at the Met, including Vikings games. This would come back to color relations between the Twins and Vikings later when a new ballpark was under consideration. Griffith also got a $600,000 broadcast deal for radio and TV, more than twice what he had in Washington. The other issue to be negotiated was indemnity payments to the Millers and Saints owners. The local community pledged $225,000 toward these fees. Interestingly, Walter O’Malley, who still controlled the Saints, allowed a generous grace period for the payment of his indemnity fee.36 So the Twin Cities had a major-league baseball team, beginning with the 1961 season.

Calvin Griffith was welcomed to the Twin Cities with open arms. After all the deals were in place, he showed up on November 4, 1960, to an enthusiastic reception. He was met at the airport by both the mayor of Minneapolis and the governor of Minnesota. The story made the front-page in the Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers. He bought a home in the tony community of Wayzata on Lake Minnetonka, and even that was covered in the papers, with profiles of both Calvin and his wife, Natalie.37

Calvin Griffith’s history in baseball was somewhat unusual. He was born into a large family In Montreal in 1911. The family struggled with father James Robertson’s alcoholism, which led to his early death in 1923. In the summer of 1922, Calvin and his younger sister, Thelma, moved to Washington to live with Clark Griffith, whose wife, Addie, was James Robertson’s sister. The youngsters were raised as members of the Griffith family, and though they were never formally adopted by the Griffiths, both took their surname. Calvin began his baseball involvement as a batboy with the Senators in 1922, and he continued for several years, before entering Staunton Military Academy in 1928. He graduated in 1933, and then spent two years at George Washington University. He played baseball at both schools. He left George Washington in 1935 to become the secretary-treasurer of the Senators’ Chattanooga farm team. He had a series of increasingly important positions with the Senators’ farm clubs before returning to Washington in 1941 to become assistant secretary of the Senators. He began taking on more and more responsibilities with the Senators, and in 1955, when Clark Griffith died, he was elected president of the Senators.38

Several aspects of the franchise’s player roster were encouraging. Griffith had developed the Senators farm system, and it was beginning to pay off, with promising young players like Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Jim Kaat, Jimmie Hall, and Rich Rollins.39 The Senators’ long interest in Cuba had also paid off, with their great scout Joe Cambria working his connections to sign promising young players like Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Zoilo Versalles, Sandy Valdespino, and Tony Oliva.40 The investments made during the late Senators era began to mature as the team relocated in Minnesota. Good attendance gave Griffith money to work other key trades, and hire such important on-field talent as Johnny Sain and Billy Martin.41

The 1960s turned out to be perhaps the best decade in Twins history, though the first decade of the twenty-first century had a lot to offer as well. The young Twins team in 1961 was entertaining, and the Minnesota fans responded by filling the seats to the tune of 1,256,723 attendance. This was much better than the 750,000 promised by the boosters, and coupled with the sale of Senators assets (like Griffith Stadium in Washington), gave Griffith a profit better than he had seen in years. He was able to adjust salaries in the front office, the latter largely populated by the Griffith family. He also began serious investments in the minor-league system, which over the years would be one of the crown jewels of the Twins franchise. The Twins also spent $400,000 on improvements to Met Stadium, which also was being upgraded to host the Vikings.

The 1962 Twins were even more exciting, finishing in second place with a 91-71 record, the best record in the franchise since 1945, and drawing an American League high attendance of 1,433,116. Emotions were running high that perhaps the Twins were on the verge of championships. This was not to be. The 1963 Twins got off to a slow start but were able to finish in third place with a 91-70 record. But the ’64 team fell to 79-83, and attendance dropped, though still above a million.

One staff move that would color much of the rest of the decade was hiring Billy Martin as manager. He had played for the Twins under Sam Mele during the 1961 season, and was very popular with the fans. Martin turned down a lucrative contract offer to play in Japan, and instead settled for a lot less money to work for the Twins as a scout. He was a good scout, and landed some players who would help the Twins in coming years. One major miss by the Twins was when Billy advocated the signing of a young pitcher named James Palmer, but Griffith balked. Palmer became a Hall of Fame pitcher with the Orioles.42 Martin behaved well as a scout. Even though he signed a contract as a sales rep with Grain Belt Brewery, he never got in trouble. After the 1964 season the Twins hired him as their third-base coach. He brought many innovations to player training and strategy.43 He would get a lot of credit from the press and the fans. In particular, he had a lot to do with the development of Zoilo Versalles, who was the American League MVP in 1965.

The 1965 season was the major breakthrough. The franchise won its first pennant since 1933. The Twins also hosted the 1965 All-Star Game. Minnesota was clearly on the national stage. Despite losing the World Series to the Dodgers in seven games, they were an exciting and attractive franchise. The Twins again had a record attendance, 1,463,258. Game Seven of the World Series drew 50,596, unprecedented in the history of the franchise. Sandy Koufax broke their hearts with a masterful 2-0 shutout on two days of rest. But baseball excitement in the region was at an all-time high.

In 1965, the Minnesota Twins won their first American League pennant and narrowly lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

The 1966 season did start out well. Many of the core players were in decline because of age or injuries. By midseason the Twins had fallen to seventh place, 19 games out of first. However, the second half of the season was much better, and the Twins eventually finished second, though nine games out of first. One further episode colored the season. Martin and Howard Fox, the traveling secretary, got into a shouting match on the flight after a game, and then engaged in fisticuffs when they arrived at the hotel.44 It was Martin’s first serious breach of conduct with the Twins. While the Twins would continue to be upbeat about the possibility of Martin becoming manager, it at the very least colored his relationship with a key staff person.

The Twins again started slowly in 1967, and as a result, Griffith decided to let manager Sam Mele go. There were rumors that Billy Martin was next in line to manage the Twins, but the recent dust-up with Fox was still in Griffith’s mind, so he chose Cal Ermer. After Ermer took over, the Twins started playing much better, and going into the last weekend needed just one win in a two-game set in Boston to win the pennant. They failed. Boston won both games, and when the Tigers lost on the last Sunday, the Red Sox were the pennant winners. But the Twins were an exciting team, and they set a franchise attendance record that year, 1,483,547, topping even their pennant-winning year.

In 1968, the Twins Triple-A farm club, the Denver Bears, started out slowly. After their record fell to 8-22, the Twins fired John Goryl as manager and offered the job to Billy Martin.45 Martin thought this was a move to get him out of the Twins organization, but his wife convinced him that it would be a chance to show off his managerial talent, and increase his odds of getting a major-league job.46 Martin turned the team around, and they went 65-50 the rest of the way, playing “Billy Ball,” which featured such things as aggressive baserunning, lots of attention to details, and “punishments” for counterproductive play such as pitchers giving up too many walks or fielders throwing to the wrong base.47 This performance would result in Martin being hired to manage the Twins in 1969, though as Calvin Griffith said of Martin, “I feel like I’m sitting on a keg of dynamite.”48

Under Martin the 1969 Twins won the American League’s Western Division by a handy nine games. But in the new divisional format for the first time, they lost three straight playoff games to the surging Baltimore Orioles. At the end of the season, Calvin Griffith decided he could no longer put up with Martin’s antics, and fired him. Most notably, Martin had gotten into a fight with Twins pitcher Dave Boswell outside a bar in Detroit in August.49 Such shenanigans followed Martin’s career as manager with Detroit, Texas, Oakland, and, notoriously, with the New York Yankees. Interestingly, while Griffith was unhappy with Martin, the fans loved him, and the “Win! Twins!” bumper stickers of the 1960s were replaced with “Bring Billy Back.”50

Martin was replaced by Bill Rigney for the 1970 season. Rigney had played and managed the Minneapolis Millers, so was a familiar figure in the Twin Cities. His 1970 Twins also won the American League West, but were swept again by the Orioles in the postseason. The 1970 Twins drew more than a million fans to make the decade a clean sweep of million-plus attendance years.

That first decade in Minnesota was a great time for the franchise. They had drawn over a million fans each year. They had played in the World Series. The franchise was in the best financial shape it had been in for a long time. The success at the end of the decade, with two division titles, was encouraging, even if the playoffs had been disappointing.

But there were troubles on the horizon. Their co-occupants of the Met, the Vikings, were unhappy with the venue. They had invested their own money in creating a double-deck stand in left field. But the ballpark was clearly designed for baseball, not football, and the Twins got the concession revenue even when the Vikings played. As the 1970s began, the Vikings were starting to rattle cages about getting a new ballpark. Both the Vikings and Twins had signed 15-year leases, which would expire in the mid-’70s, giving both franchises leverage on the ballpark front. Even for the Twins the Met was odd. When they moved to the Twin Cities, permanent stands had been built down the right-field line, extending both the main level and the second deck. But down the left-field line there was still an unsatisfying single-decked temporary stand, and there was no prospect of permanent stands being built there, as the Twins couldn’t afford it and the Vikings had no interest in stands that would be in the end zone for football. So though the Met was only 15 years old as the new decade began, both tenants were unhappy.

The ’70s would be a dismal decade for the Twins on the field. They drew more than a million fans only twice, in 1977 and 1979. The decade was dominated by the ballpark drama locally, and the changes in the financial situation in baseball nationally. There was considerable turnover in managers. Bill Rigney was replaced in midseason of 1972 by Frank Quilici, who was in turn replaced by Gene Mauch in 1976. In 1980 Johnny Goryl replaced Gene Mauch late in the season. Such managerial instability continued into the mid-’80s.

Calvin Griffith was always tight with his money. A commercial that had new catcher Butch Wynegar saying he loved baseball so much he would play for nothing cut to the smiling Calvin Griffith who said, “I sure do love that kid.”51 But of course this was in the midst of a dramatic change in baseball contracts. Free agency had arrived, and it immediately impacted the Twins. Their rising star pitcher, Bert Blyleven, was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1976 so Griffith would not have to deal with his impending free agency. The Twins got Mike Cubbage and Roy Smalley III in that trade, who would be mainstays of the team for a while. The 1977 Twins provided excitement on the field, with Rod Carew flirting with .400 and Larry Hisle and Lyman Bostock hitting with gusto. The Twins drew over a million fans again for the first time since 1970. But they lost Hisle and Bostock to free agency the next year.

In September of 1978 Calvin Griffith poisoned the waters for his star player, Rod Carew. He gave a speech to the Lions Club in Waseca, where he was unaware that a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune was in the audience. He made numerous outrageous statements, such as “Carew was a damn fool to sign that contract. He only gets $170,000 and we all know damn well that he’s worth a lot more than that, but that’s what his agent asked for, that’s what he gets.”52 Even worse: “I’ll tell you why we came to Minnesota. It was when I found out you had only 15,000 blacks here. Black people don’t go to ballgames, but they’ll fill up a rassling ring and put up such a chant it’ll scare you to death. We came here because you’ve got good, hard-working white people here.”53

These comments totally upset Rod Carew, and it led to his being traded to the California Angels in anticipation of his coming free agency. The Waseca speech also led to criticism of the Twins’ small number of black players, including trades involving outspoken black players (Ken Landreaux and Gary Ward) for white players.54 In addition, the Twins scouting focused on the Midwest and the Deep South, where they would not encounter that many outstanding black players. While in subsequent years many black players were signed, including Kirby Puckett from inner-city Chicago in 1982, Griffith never escaped the reputation established by the Waseca speech.

The emergence of free agency coincided with a changing landscape in baseball owners. Many owners now had considerable wealth from other lines of work. George Steinbrenner, who bought the Yankees in 1973, was the iconic owner of this new generation. He had access to a lot of money, much of it that of his ownership partners, and eventually a lot of power to negotiate good deals for TV and radio rights.55 As a result, he was able to land top players in the emerging free-agent market. Calvin Griffith, whose only income came from the Twins, was, in the words of Jon Kerr, “baseball’s last dinosaur.”56 Interesting, though, when Jim “Catfish” Hunter became available in late 1974 as baseball’s first free agent, allegedly Griffith was one of the owners who expressed an interest in signing him.57 Hunter signed with the Yankees. As Jay Weiner, sports reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, put it, “Griffith couldn’t keep up with his 1970s competitors at the 1950s Met using 1930s strategies.”58

But the dominant story of the 1970s was the ballpark. The Met was no longer competitive with ballparks being built all over the major-league landscape. Starting with Dodgers Stadium in 1962, 13 new ballparks had been built for major-league teams, in many cases for joint residence with professional football. Many of them were built as circles, with movable stands to adjust the seating for football and baseball. In many ways, these circles were not ideal for either sport, since many fans were now farther away from the action. Only Kansas City built two ballparks, one for baseball and one for football, both of which continue to be lauded as ideal venues for their sports. New amenities, including luxury boxes, opened up new revenue streams. The Met was already obsolete, and there were no funding streams available for upgrades.59 The next ballpark in the Twin Cities, the Metrodome, would also be a latecomer to the joint football/baseball phase of construction, and would be behind the curve as well.60

Investigations into the possibility of a new ballpark started in 1970 with the Metropolitan Sports Area Commission. There were only six years remaining on the Twins’ and Vikings’ 15-year leases, so time was of the essence. Early discussions focused on a downtown Minneapolis ballpark, primarily for the Vikings. Vikings owner Max Winter was a huge fan of the idea, including having the ballpark covered.61 When Griffith got wind of these discussions, he was interested in joint tenancy. The idea of a covered ballpark was attractive to him too, although initially he wanted a movable roof so baseball could be played in the open air when the weather was good.

Meanwhile, Bloomington, the site of The Met, had ideas. The Met Sports Center arena opened in 1966 for the Minnesota North Stars, near Metropolitan Ballpark. Bloomington’s idea was to upgrade The Met for the Twins, and build a new ballpark for the Vikings.62 Despite these grand plans, Bloomington had no idea for how to finance this, and instead was going to rely on Minneapolis for support.63 In the end The Met was torn down to make way for the Mall of America, and even the Met Center was torn down not long after the North Stars moved to Dallas in 1993. The landscape for future professional sports was now tilted to downtown Minneapolis (though in the case of professional hockey, the new Minnesota Wild got an area in downtown St. Paul).

The impetus for a downtown ballpark was led by John Cowles Jr., the head of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. He had many motives. Unlike other cities, the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul were not plagued by white flight or other related issues. Natural economic forces had pulled people and business to the ring of suburbs surrounding the cities. Downtown Minneapolis retail sales had fallen by 5 percent by the early 1980s, while the comparable figure in the suburbs had risen by 12 percent because of the emergence of large shopping malls. A number of corporations had moved their headquarters to the suburbs: Prudential Insurance, General Mills, 3M, and Cargill. Cowles wanted the new ballpark to be built downtown to counteract these trends.64

But it wasn’t easy. There was resistance to the idea of spending public money on facilities for highly paid professional athletes. During this period it was common to hear comments like “If the jocks want a new ballpark, then the jocks can pay for it.”65 The Twin Cities were already investing in other cultural amenities: the Guthrie Theater in 1963, the Nicollet Mall in 1967, a new facility for the Walker Art Center in 1971, a new Orchestra Hall in 1974. It took seven years to get a stadium bill passed in the Minnesota legislature. But the forces for a new ballpark were inexorable. The new governor, Rudy Perpich, made its a priority.66 In 1977 a bill was enacted to construct a new facility; it required that there be no more than $55 million in public financing. The bill was “site neutral,” and a new agency, the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, was set up to find a location for the dual-purpose facility.67 Perpich filled the new commission with a slate of seven Minnesotans who broadly represented the state.68

In 1978 an outdoor-baseball enthusiast, Julian Empson, organized a campaign group called “Save the Met.” It was largely populated by a political community centered on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota campus. They created quite a ruckus. In many ways, in the words of Jay Weiner, “For all time, they injured the image and spirit of the Dome.”69 Empson even went so far as to develop plans for the state to buy the Vikings and Twins and keep them at The Met. In the end it went nowhere, and the forces behind the building of the Metrodome went forward.

There was a stipulation in the legislation that the site for the ballpark would have to be donated or funded through private fundraising efforts. Cowles led the effort to raise the $15 million that was needed to purchase a downtown site. He and his business colleagues succeeded.70 The vote by the commission to decide on a location was as close as could be, 4 to 3 in favor of the downtown site vs. Bloomington.71 The original bill had stipulated that the occupants — the Twins and the Vikings — had to sign 30-year leases. Griffith balked at this. So in 1979 the commission working on lease agreements with the Vikings and Twins modified Griffith’s contract to allow him to vacate the lease if during a three-year period the average annual attendance was below the lesser of 1.4 million or the average attendance for the American league.72 There followed a number of legal challenges, but in the end the courts backed the plan and the stadium project proceeded.73

There was a lot about the Metrodome that was unfavorable for the Twins. It was designed primarily for the Vikings. The baseball field would be nestled in a corner of the structure, with seats facing away from the diamond, so that many spectators would have to crane their necks to see the infield action. Only about 8,000 seats were in the lower deck between first base and third base, not ideal for the sale of baseball tickets. In contrast to The Met, the Vikings were in the driver’s seat about revenue. The Vikings would control the sale of luxury boxes. They would get the majority of concession income, though they offered the Twins better terms than the Twins had offered to them at The Met. Business leaders even had to raise funds to pay for Griffith’s offices in the Metrodome because he didn’t have money given the Twins’ poor attendance in the ’70s as well as the emergence of free agency.74 All of this led to Griffith’s obstinacy about the terms of the lease.

The Minnesota Twins played in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome from 1982 through 2009. (COURTESY OF THE MINNESOTA TWINS)

Construction of the Metrodome began in December of 1979, and under the brilliant leadership of Donald Poss, it was built on time and under budget.75 The original superstructure was finished in 1981, and in June of that year the construction of the roof began. The roof had to be weatherproof, coated by Teflon, and inflated by 20 large fans. It was inflated for the first time in October of 1981, raising the center of the dome 186 feet above the playing surface.76 When the ballpark opened in April of 1982, it could seat up to 55,000 for baseball and 63,000 for football. Both the Vikings and the University of Minnesota Gophers used the field for football. The first season there was no air-conditioning in the ballpark, and the midsummer games were unbearable. Air-conditioning was added for the 1983 season.

The Metrodome was a terrible place to play baseball. The ceiling led players to lose sight of popups and fly balls during night games, leading to the installation of upward pointing lights toward the roof, which helped some.77 The springy artificial turf led balls to bounce over outfielders’ heads. A popup by Dave Kingman of Oakland in May of 1984 disappeared through a vent in the ceiling. He was credited with a ground-rule double. And the roof collapsed several times due to weather. Even before it opened, it collapsed from the weight of snow in November 1981. During the 1983 season this happened again when the California Angels were scheduled to play the Twins. In April of 1986 a severe windstorm ripped a hole in the roof, showering fans in the right-field stands with water. The game was delayed.78 And later, when the Twins had success in the World Series in 1987 and 1991, the noise levels inside became unbearable. Twins players wore earplugs in defense.

The Twins were not very good in these early years of the Metrodome, and attendance was poor. In 1982 they drew only 921,186, and in 1983 only 858,939. It was clear to the city fathers that Griffith’s escape clause was about to be enacted. So for the 1984 season, the local business community organized a ticket buyout program. They bought unused tickets for many games, mostly midweek when the prices were lower. Their efforts to distribute them were not very successful. For example, a May game against the Toronto Blue Jays had a listed attendance of 26,761, but fewer than 10,000 people were actually there. The next day, the paid attendance was 51,863, but again, fewer than 10,000 fans were in attendance. When the Twins began listing both actual attendance and tickets sold, a court fight ensued about which would be the official figure that determined whether Griffith could exercise his escape clause. But before the issue could be resolved, he sold the team to a local banker, Carl Pohlad.79

Who was Carl Pohlad? He could not have been more different than Calvin Griffith. Pohlad, like Griffith, had humble beginnings. Born in rural Iowa, he was a self-made businessman. While he was a good-enough high-school football player to earn an athletic scholarship to Gonzaga University, he left the university before graduating, and returned to Iowa to pursue a career in banking. He served in Europe during World War II, earning three Purple Hearts and two Bronze Stars.80 He and his brother-in-law initially had a business that helped banks manage their affairs. This led ultimately to their gaining control of Marquette National Bank in Minneapolis. The bank was profitable enough to allow Pohlad and his wife to move to the tony suburb of Edina. By 1955 he was president of the bank. He became very active in the banking industry, and established himself as a maker of deals that led to repeated profitable partnerships. In many of Pohlad’s business deals he pushed the limits and consorted with dubious partners.81 By the time negotiations for a new ballpark were reaching a frenzy, Pohlad’s reputation in the Twin Cities was tarnished, to say the least. Pohlad was interested in owning a major-league team, and had explored options for a variety of other teams before purchasing the Twins.82 He liked the publicity associated with team ownership.

Pohlad was a more typical owner for his time. He did not depend on the Twins for his income. Griffith had explored several sales options, but decided in the end to sell to Pohlad because it was the first serious offer he got that met his terms. (Earlier in the year Donald Trump had approached Griffith about buying the team, but that exchange went nowhere.) A Minneapolis-based group led by Marv Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner offered $27 million in cash, but Griffith turned them down.83 There were complexities in the buyout, because at this time Griffith family owned just 52 percent of the team, and this was split in half with his sister, Thelma Haynes.84 The other 48 percent was owned by H. Gabriel Murphy of Tampa, a carryover from the Senators era.85 While Pohlad was able to buy the Griffths’ shares over time for $24 million, Murphy wanted his total share upfront. He got it, and Pohlad had 100 percent ownership of the team.86

Unlike Griffith, Pohlad was not a hands-on owner. He hired people who would manage the day-to-day operations of the club, including contract negotiations, trades, and other matters. But he did understand the business side of baseball ownership. He knew that a favorable stadium deal was a key to the profitability of a team. Even as he purchased the team from Griffith, he pushed for a better deal at the Metrodome. He got a better deal for concession revenue and more favorable rental terms, and kept the terms of Griffith’s escape clause.87

It’s ironic that several of the most successful years of the Twins franchise occurred in the midst of Pohlad’s negotiations and threats. The Twins won their first World Series in 1987, and repeated in 1991. In 1988 the Twins became the first American League franchise to draw over 3 million fans. This was helped by a late-season campaign to buy out tickets organized by a local radio station when it became clear that the 3-million mark was within reach. It’s ironic that the Twins, who would later face a possible contraction, achieved this attendance landmark before such American League juggernauts as the Yankees and Red Sox. It was later legitimately exceeded by the Twins during the first two years in Target Field, 2010 and 2011.

Despite success on the field, Pohlad continually used threats to move the team out of Minnesota to leverage a local movement to build a new ballpark. After the 1987 season he threatened to use his escape clause after the 1988 season unless a new lease was in place for the 1989 season. As Jay Weiner points out, a lot of the subsequent negotiations involved creative accounting on Pohlad’s behalf.88 He claimed huge losses. Despite skepticism by the Sports Facilities Commission, in 1988 Pohlad received a new 10-year lease with substantial improvements for the franchise. The lease included no rent at all, higher concession revenues, the right to sell advertising in the Metrodome, and a much more favorable escape clause. And while the Metrodome was originally built for the Vikings, the football team now had a much less favorable deal than the Twins, leading to ongoing enmity between the two franchises.

The 1990s and beyond were occupied by Pohlad’s push to get a new ballpark. There were two distinct phases, one that ended in a disastrous defeat and a second that led to the financing of what became Target Field. The Twins on the field were not very good after the 1991 World Series championship, and Pohlad complained about losing money. This in large part drove the push for a new stadium. By the mid ’90s, attendance had fallen to close to the 1 million mark, a figure that in the salary market of that era was not sufficient to sustain the team’s finances.

Much of the national enthusiasm for building new ballparks was inspired by Baltimore’s Camden Yards, which opened in 1992. While it was brand-new and had all the amenities of the times, it had a retro look to its baseball-specific design that was very appealing. Following Camden Yards’ opening, new retro-style ballparks were built in no fewer than 15 major-league cities. Pohlad himself visited Jacobs Field in Cleveland not long after it opened, and declared, “This is what I need.”89

The first major push for stadium financing began shortly thereafter, in July of 1994. Pohlad had designs on a ballpark with a retractable roof on a site along the Mississippi River not too far from the Metrodome. Public sentiment was running strongly against any public financing of a new stadium. It was not a good time for such an initiative in Minnesota.90 Not long before, in 1993, the North Stars NHL team had moved to Dallas. The new Timberwolves had overreached and built a new arena, the Target Center, that had to be bailed out by the City of Minneapolis and the State of Minnesota. Then the 1994 baseball season itself was a disaster: Not long after Pohlad announced his intention to seek a new ballpark, a players strike led to the cancellation of the rest of the season, including the World Series. It also didn’t help that a number of well-paid athletes for the Vikings and Timberwolves were having run-ins with the law. The citizens of Minnesota were in a foul mood concerning public support of professional teams.

All of this came to a head in the 1996-97 time frame. Governor Arne Carlson was eager to work out a deal between Pohlad and the state legislature that would enable the construction of a new baseball stadium. His stated goal was to get the legislature to pass a supporting bill during the 1997 session. However, he regretted his approach. He later said, “The vision and public buy-in should have come before the financing and the politics.”91 But it didn’t work that way. What at first looked like a good deal turned into a public-relations disaster. It appeared that Pohlad had committed $82.5 million of his own money to the ballpark’s proposed $350 million cost. In return, the state would get a 49 percent interest in the ballclub for coming up with the remaining money. But the details of the alleged agreement were murky, and when tough questions about the deal began to be asked, it turned out that Pohlad’s offer was really a loan that would have to be paid back. In the climate of the time, there could not have been a bigger blunder. When the vote came up in the legislature, it failed. As Jerry Bell, who oversaw the team’s new-ballpark effort, said, “It was the biggest mistake in all of the 13 years.”92 (The 13-year time noted by Bell was the total time from Pohlad’s 1994 announcement to the breaking of ground for Target Field in 2007.)

It was not long after this that the Twins threatened to move to North Carolina. A group led by businessman Don Beaver was eager to bring major-league baseball to the Greensboro area. Pohlad made an agreement to move the Twins if a stadium referendum could be passed in the Greensboro area. In May of 1998 Greensboro voters rejected the plan, and the prospect of a move was off.93

The situation for the Twins was not good. Steve Berg, in his account of the origins of Target Field, reviewed the situation in 1999:94 The Twins were in the midst of a prolonged series of losing seasons, and were 29th of the 30 major-league teams in attendance, 30th in payroll, and 30th in wins. Their revenues from ballpark income and broadcasting contracts were 29th in the league, “ten times lower than the Yankees’ revenues and four times lower than the major league average.” The memories of drawing more than 3 million fans and winning two World Series were very distant. All this happened when other cities were enjoying new ballparks while Twins fans were still dealing with the baseball-poor Metrodome.

Then St. Paul re-entered the picture. Its mayor, Norm Coleman, made an attempt to solve the Twins’ problem. He had already lured the NHL back to Minnesota by landing the Wild and, with the state’s help, was building them a new arena, the Xcel Energy Center, in downtown St. Paul. Five different sites in St. Paul were explored for a new ballpark; one near the intersections of Interstates 35E and 94 emerged as the favorite. But these plans lost their drive when the voters of St. Paul refused to approve a sales-tax hike that would have paid for a third of the cost.95

While all of this was going on, Major League Baseball, at the initiative of Commissioner Bud Selig, explored reducing the leagues by two teams. Just after the 2001 World Series, the owners voted 28 to 2 (the 2 being the targets of this reduction) to eliminate two teams. Cal Pohlad’s son Jim wrote to Twins employees that the team was willing to consider contraction due to “a feeling of hopelessness.”96 The landlords of the Metrodome took the issue to court, arguing that the Twins were still bound by a lease to play in the Metrodome. Hennepin County District Judge Harry Crump blocked any move to shut down the Twins franchise. His ruling was upheld in the Court of Appeals. This whole process came to be known as “Homer Hankie Jurisprudence.”97 Jerry Bell, the Twins president, later said he doubted Pohlad would have accepted the $250 million contraction offer if it had been legal.98 However, Pohlad continued to threaten to move the team, and another court decision that freed the Twins from their Metrodome lease after 2006 led to the series of actions resulting in a new ballpark for the Twins.

As the twenty-first century began, two important things happened. First, the Twins’ long streak of dismal performances ended. They made a strong showing in 2001, and in 2002 decisively won the Central Division, defeated the Oakland A’s in the Division Series, and lost to the eventual World Series champion Anaheim Angels in the American League Championship Series. The second development was that attendance at Twins games surged, starting with the 2001 season. The Twins had a raft of emerging stars, and were an exciting team. All of this rejuvenated the search for a new ballpark.

A series of downtown locations were put forward as possible ballpark sites. The original riverfront site was gone, having been committed to the construction of a new Guthrie Theater. One idea was to either update or replace the Metrodome. But a favored site emerged in the Warehouse District, pushed by two Minneapolis businessmen, Bruce Lambrecht and Rich Pogin. And a different approach was taken. Rather than focus first on the Twins’ needs, the group looked at the effect a ballpark would have on the community. As the Warehouse District site was small, the model the planners took was Wrigley Field in Chicago, which was fit into a tight space and was a centerpiece for the surrounding community, known as Wrigleyville. Lambrecht and Pogin dubbed their idea Twinsville. This site had a number of other advantages. It was near highways, light rail, and bicycle paths, making access easy. There were already substantial amounts of parking in the area, in part because the Timberwolves’ Target Center was nearby. There were many nearby hotel rooms, and the area was emerging as an entertainment district with restaurants, bars, and shops.99

The group formed an organization called New Ballpark Inc. When their initial plans to raise private funding didn’t go anywhere, they approached Hennepin County (Minneapolis and suburbs) as a potential partner. Two county commissioners, Mike Opat and Peter McLaughlin, had taken leadership roles in engaging the county in a wide range of issues. Under Opat’s leadership, the proposal for stadium development was taken to the state legislature. Somewhat oddly, the legislature approved in principle such a move, but excluded Hennepin County from the legislation, pointing instead to St. Paul. However, this move failed to take into account the rich transportation infrastructure in the Warehouse District site and the lack of it in the preferred St. Paul site near the Excel Energy Center. The idea of a St. Paul site died again.

Next came a complex, improbable, even heart-stopping series of events that led to final approval of a new ballpark. One key player was the new governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. Though he had not supported the Twins’ efforts in the past, his political instincts led him to explore what could be done if indeed Hennepin County played a key role in the financing. In April of 2005 the Twins and Hennepin County put forth a partnership plan for a ballpark. The Twins would pay one-third (really, this time), and the county would raise the rest through a sales-tax increase. In a contentious vote, four of the county commissioners voted to approve the tax hike. But then the question arose as to whether this tax hike should be approved through a voter referendum. Governor Pawlenty convened a meeting in October 2005 to put the matter up for a decision. The Twins wanted assurance from the leaders of both the House and the Senate that they would go ahead with a vote without a referendum requirement. The leaders agreed.100

On May 21, 2006, the bill passed in both houses of the legislature. But there was one final problem. The owners of the land on which the new ballpark would be built had offered the land for $12 million, but their offer had expired. Now they wanted more. The two sides were far apart, so the matter went to court, and a final settlement of $29 million was agreed to. The legislature had set a $90 million limit on the cost of the land and infrastructure needed (such as walkways, bridges, transit stations, etc.). With the big jump in the cost of the land, the Twins stepped in and offered an additional $24 million for these costs. The deal was finally done.

On May 21, 2007, ground was broken for construction of the new ballpark. An official ground-breaking ceremony was held on August 30, with a quite enfeebled Carl Pohlad turning over a spade of dirt. He would not see the field completed. He last visited the construction site on June 20, 2008, and died on January 5, 2009. By then his son, Jim Pohlad, had taken over the primary owner’s role of the Twins, though both of Carl’s brothers, Bill and Bob, serve on the team’s executive board. The Twins front-office directory lists the Carl R. Pohlad Family as the owners of the team.101 Dave St. Peter was president and chief executive officer.

The ballpark itself was designed by HOK, which in 2009 changed its name to Populous. The firm had designed many of the best of the new US sports venues, including NFL stadiums as well as baseball parks. Sixteen of the 21 new-generation ballparks were HOK-designed, including Camden Yards. Fitting the ballpark into the tight Warehouse District site presented numerous challenges. Steve Berg’s insightful account can be consulted for details of the design process.102 One of the key early decisions was to eschew a roof. Given the site, a roof would have added at least $130 million to the cost. When no extra funds were forthcoming, the idea was dropped. Big-league baseball in Minnesota would be played out of doors again, always. This was indeed the first time major-league baseball fans had been moved from a purely indoor facility to a purely outdoor one.103 Subsequent attendance figures showed that the fans loved being outdoors again.

The Minnesota Twins drew more than 3 million fans in the first two seasons at Target Field in 2010 and 2011. (COURTESY OF THE MINNESOTA TWINS)

Target Field opened for business in March of 2010, with a college baseball game between the University of Minnesota and Louisiana Tech, and 37,757 fans attended. The Twins played two exhibition games against the St. Louis Cardinals on April 2 and 3. The ballpark’s regular-season opener was against the Boston Red Sox on April 12, 2010, to a sellout crowd of 38,145. The Twins drew more than 3 million fans the first two years at Target Field, and only in 2016, when the Twins lost 103 games — a Twins franchise record — did attendance fall below 2 million. Unlike the Metrodome, the Twins controlled all the revenue at Target Field, and the lusty attendance figures gave them some operating room. On the field, they weren’t quite so fortunate. Their streak of nine winning seasons in 10 years ended in 2011. They had losing records from 2011 to 2014, then a surprising winning year in 2015 before having the worst record in their history in 2016. The Twins’ fortunes reversed in 2017, with a winning record and a wild-card playoff spot. (They lost again to their playoff nemesis, the Yankees, in the one-game wild-card playoff.)

During Calvin Griffith’s ownership of the Twins, they relied heavily on developing their own players through their farm system. While they did occasionally sign veteran players, most of their best-known players of that era were home-grown. But free agency changed that. While Griffith was not a buyer as free agency arrived, his lineups were often raided, and he also engaged in trades to forestall free-agency losses (e.g., Rod Carew). During Pohlad’s ownership, this changed somewhat. The better financial fortunes of the Twins, especially since the turn of the century, allowed them to make investments in the free-agent market. They never became a major player in the free-agent market, and as has so often happened, some of those signings worked, and others didn’t.

One of their more interesting moves came in March of 2010 when they signed Joe Mauer to an eight-year contract extension valued at $184 million, taking effect in 2011 and running through 2018, the largest contract in Twins history. While many fans greeted this move approvingly, as Mauer was clearly the face of the franchise during this era, others were concerned that this might limit their ability to sign other valuable players later. As with so many longer-term contracts with a somewhat older player, Mauer’s performance leveled off and declined slightly during the period of the contact, in part due to injuries. In 2018, after completing the last year of his contract, Mauer retired.

By 2017 the Twin Cities area had done something nobody back in the 1990s could have imagined. The Twins and the Vikings each had new, single-purpose ballparks. The Vikings built their new stadium on the site of the old Metrodome. The Minnesota Gophers football team, which had played in the Metrodome for many years, also had a new stadium, one that the Vikings played in while their new digs were under construction. The Twin Cities now had four professional franchises in relatively new facilities. Going forward, it’s not clear whether this will be a stable situation. As Jay Weiner has argued, the Twin Cities are an improbable market for hosting four major-league-caliber professional sports teams, not to mention major-league soccer, and major college sports (football, basketball, hockey).104 The mathematics of ticket sales, luxury boxes, and other fan-based costs are a stretch for a population the size of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

It’s not immediately clear which of the four franchises is the most vulnerable. The Twins still struggle with the small-market issues that have plagued them throughout the post-free-agency era. If their farm system can keep delivering exciting young talent, they may be able to navigate their way through the challenges of their small-market status. But given all this, the Pohlad family is apparently uninterested in giving up ownership of the team.105

The Twins ownership history has several notable characteristics. First, in their 59-year history, they have had only two owners, Calvin Griffith and the Carl Pohlad family. Second, both ownerships were family-oriented, a bit more so for Griffith, who packed the front office with relatives. (The Pohlad family has stepped up following Carl’s death.) Third, the ownership history has focused on ballparks. The building of Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington was essential for attracting the interest of both Horace Stoneham and Calvin Griffith, a lesson the Twin Cities learned from the experiences of other franchise moves in the 1950s. Then, with the Vikings in the lead, the focus shifted to improving or replacing Metropolitan Stadium; the result was the Metrodome. But the Twins, despite winning two World Series and breaking the 3-million mark in attendance at the Metrodome, lobbied for more than a decade to get what in the end was Target Field. Threats to move the franchise were used by both Griffith and Pohlad in their efforts to get a new venue, and baseball itself threatened the Twins with contraction, ironically saved by the courts via the stadium lease. Given the so-far-satisfying experience of the Twins at Target Field, it could be that the Twins face a period of contentment under the leadership of the Pohlad family.

Acknowledgements

A number of SABR colleagues read draft versions of this history. Andy McCue, the overall editor of this series, provided early and continuing feedback. Stew Thornley, Dan Levitt, and Lloyd Keppel read and commented on the entire draft. Rod Nelson provided helpful information about Billy Martin. Jay Weiner provided helpful input early in the process. Judy Olson provided valuable editorial feedback. I am grateful for all this help. Of course, any errors that remain are my fault.

Sources

Besides the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the following:

Vince Gennaro, Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball (Hingham, Massachusetts: Maple Street Press, 2017).

Bob Showers, The Twins at the Met (Edina, Minnesota: Beaver’s Pond Press, 2009).

Stew Thornley, Minnesota Twins: Hardball History on the Prairie (Charleston, South Carolina: History Press, 2014).

Notes

1 Jay Weiner, Ballpark Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 3.

2 Weiner, 7.

3 Ibid.

4 Weiner, 9.

5 Wikipedia, “Midway Ballpark” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Ballpark), viewed May 22, 2018.

6 D. Brackin and P. Reusse, Minnesota Twins: The Complete Illustrated History (Minneapolis: MVP Books, 2010), 10.

7 Weiner, 1-5.

8 Weiner, 12-15.

9 Weiner, 15.

10 Weiner, 24-5.

11 Weiner, 25.

12 Ibid.

13 Andy McCue, Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers and Baseball’s Westward Expansion (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 143.

14 Weiner, 10.

15 Stew Thornley, personal communication.

16 Weiner, 11.

17 Walteromalley.com, March 23, 1957.

18 Ibid.

19 Weiner, 26.

20 Robert F. Garratt, Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 21-24.

21 Garratt, 13-21.

22 Ibid.

23 Weiner, 27. Weiner also notes that this announcement triggered the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce to look into a new ballpark to replace Crosley Field.

24 Garratt, 20.

25 Weiner, 28.

26 Weiner, 29.

27 Weiner, 31.

28 Weiner, 30.

29 Ibid.

30 Weiner, 33.

31 Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 544-556.

32 Weiner, 46.

33 Wikipedia, “Metropolitan Ballpark,” viewed May 24, 2018.

34 Lowenfish, 557-578.

35 Steve Berg, Target Field: The New Home of the Minnesota Twins (Minneapolis: MVP Books, 2010), 43. From 1987 to 2009 they used an “M” on the hat as their primary uniform. They reverted to the “TC” as primary in 2010, though the “M” was used as an alternative for a while.

36 Weiner, 53.

37 Jon Kerr, Calvin: Baseball’s Last Dinosaur (Minneapolis: Wisdom Editions, 2016, 2nd Edition), 97.

38 Shirley Povich, “Senators’ New President Started as Batboy,’ Sporting News, Nov. 9, 1955, 2.

39 Dan Levitt and Mark L. Armour, “The Last of the Family Owners: The Griffiths Build Their Lone Minnesota Pennant Winner,” in Gregory H. Wolf, ed., A Pennant for the Twin Cities: The 1965 Minnesota Twins (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2015), 16.

40 Levitt and Armour, 15-17.

41 Levitt and Armour, 19.

42 Bill Pennington, Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), 150.

43 Pennington, 152.

44 Pennington, 154-55.

45 Pennington, 155.

46 Pennington, 156.

47 Pennington, 156-160.

48 Pennington, 160.

49 Pennington, 167-169.

50 Stew Thornley, Baseball in Minnesota: The Definitive History. Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006), 196.

51 Thornley, 198.

52 Nick Coleman, “Griffith Spares Few Targets in Waseca Remarks,” Minneapolis Tribune, October 1, 1978.

53 Ibid.

54 Kerr, 172.

55 Details in Bill Madden, Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

56 Kerr.

57 Madden, 74.

58 Weiner, 64.

59 Weiner, 63.

60 Weiner, 61.

61 Weiner, 65.

62 Weiner, 67.

63 Stew Thornley, personal communication, June 19, 2918.

64 Weiner, 66-69.

65 Weiner, 74.

66 Amy Klobuchar, Uncovering the Dome (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1982, Reissued in 1986 with changes), 68-72.

67 Weiner, 77.

68 Klobuchar, 86-107.

69 Weiner, 79.

70 Weiner, 92.

71 Klobuchar, 106.

72 Klobuchar, 135-138.

73 Klobuchar, 138-141.

74 Weiner, 96.

75 Klobuchar, 141-144.

76 Thornley, Baseball in Minnesota, 224-5.

77 Thornley, personal communication, June 19, 2018.

78 Thornley, Baseball in Minnesota, 226-7.

79 Thornley, Baseball in Minnesota, 227.

80 Weiner, 119.

81 Minneapolis Star & Tribune, April 20, 1997, A1, A12, A13.

82 Minneapolis Star & Tribune, April 20, 1997, A13.

83 Weiner, 105-106.

84 New York Times obituary, October 12, 1995.

85 Washington Post obituary, November 4, 2001.

86 Weiner, 105-7.

87 Weiner, 127-8.

88 Weiner, 128-129.

89 Weiner, 189.

90 Berg, 49.

91 Berg, 49.

92 Berg, 50.

93 Berg, 52.

94 Ibid.

95 Berg, 54-59.

96 Berg, 59.

97 Berg, 60.

98 Ibid.

99 Berg, 62.

100 Berg, 64-67.

101 mlb.com/twins/team/front-office, opened March 28, 2019.

102 Berg, 74-125.

103 Berg, 98.

104 Weiner, 467-471.

105 twinkietown.com/2017/2/2/14471290/owner-jim-pohlad-family-not-selling-mlb-baseball-minnesota-twins-ever, Opened March 28, 2019.

New York Enters the American League

American League President Ban Johnson knew that for the long-term success of his new major league, which began in 1901, he would eventually need a franchise in New York. Among his circuit’s four Eastern clubs — Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington — Baltimore was Johnson’s preferred candidate for relocation: It was smaller than Boston and Philadelphia, and he liked having a team in the nation’s capital. Though many of Baltimore’s syndicate of owners were locals who considered their city major league-caliber — the Baltimore National League squad of the mid-1890s had been baseball’s best before being amalgamated into the Brooklyn Dodgers — Johnson, at least as early as the 1902 preseason, had begun secretly talking with Baltimore manager John McGraw about shifting the Orioles franchise to Gotham.

Johnson’s biggest challenge to putting a team in New York would be finding a place to play. The National League’s Giants were owned by Andrew Freedman, a wealthy, well-connected real-estate tycoon, who was also a confidant of Tammany Hall boss Richard Croker.2 At the time, as urban America exploded in population, municipal governments often couldn’t cope with the influx of immigrants and rural migrants; into this vacuum stepped party organizations, often called “machines” that were run by “bosses.” These organizations doled out favors to businessmen competing for construction projects and other municipal licenses, gave city jobs to their supporters, and addressed many of the needs of working-class ethnic communities. Urban machines were notoriously corrupt but often remained in power for decades with the support of the voters and a frequently corrupt judiciary. The most notorious of these organizations, dubbed Tammany Hall, was a Democratic political machine that controlled New York City for many years.3 Freedman used his connections with Tammany Hall to block the few available suitable sites.

John McGraw, ambitious, driven, and mercurial, liked the idea of running a team in the nation’s largest metropolis and covertly traveled to New York early in the 1902 season to scout out potential ballpark locations. He met with Frank Farrell, himself a well-connected Tammanyite and boss of much of the City’s high-end, illegal gambling and horse-race betting, and an associate of Tammany’s Big Tim Sullivan.4 Most famous for his palatial gambling establishment, the House with the Bronze Door, Farrell and his syndicate oversaw roughly 250 gambling enterprises. With Farrell’s support, McGraw thought they had lined up a position on the East Side around 112th Street but the city turned the site into a park, frustrating their plan.5

McGraw and Johnson, however, couldn’t coexist in the same league. One of Johnson’s key tenets in starting his new league had been to clean up the hooliganism, dirty play, and umpire abuse that had been rampant in the National League during the 1890s. McGraw, aggressive and willing to do just about any of those now-forbidden deeds to win, was suspended several times early in the 1902 season for his abusive actions. Upon the last suspension McGraw later claimed Johnson told him that he would not be allowed to stay on as manager of the team when it moved to New York.6

Shortly thereafter McGraw entered secret negotiations with Freedman and two engineered a scheme to get McGraw to New York and deal the AL a significant blow. In July, McGraw contrived to get released from his Baltimore contract and was promptly signed by Freedman to manage the Giants. Freedman, using a front man to purchase the stock, then acquired a controlling interest in the Baltimore franchise and released all the team’s capable ballplayers, who were then scooped up by the Giants. Johnson, who had some inkling of the plan and was not altogether taken by surprise, quickly grabbed back control of the franchise and cobbled together a roster to play out the season.7

If he hadn’t been fully committed before, Freedman’s treachery cemented Johnson’s determination to field a team in New York in 1903. The league voted in August to stake the up-front costs necessary to plant their flag in Gotham for the next season, a price that included signing a number of players from the National League’s Pirates. Of course, as emissary for his league Johnson faced two significant hurdles: He needed to find a well-heeled ownership group he liked, and he needed a place to play. And the two were not unrelated: Though Freedman had sold the Giants in September 1902, because of his enmity with Johnson and his support for the NL, he continued to use his connections to block the American League’s search for suitable stadium locations. His influence over land sites and their potential assemblage through his association with the Interborough Rapid Transit system only added to the new league’s difficulties. Johnson’s dilemma became fully apparent when a site he thought he had assembled at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue was blocked, apparently due to the influence of Freedman.8 Fortunately for Johnson, he was sought out by Joseph Gordon, a coal merchant with some history in New York baseball. Gordon had just lost his job as deputy superintendent of buildings and was well plugged into New York City real estate. Gordon claimed he knew of an available site. In return he wanted the franchise. Johnson, though he needed the site, recognized that Gordon didn’t have the wealth to build and run a franchise in Gotham and insisted on “seeing the man with the money.” Gordon introduced him to Frank Farrell, still excited about owning a baseball team and also feeling betrayed by McGraw, though Farrell and Johnson had conceivably met previously through influential New York Sun sportswriter Joe Vila.9 Farrell purportedly showed up with a certified check for $25,000. When he proved amenable to paying both $18,000 to cover salaries advanced to players by the league and some nominal reimbursements to Baltimore’s minority stockholders, and willing to spend the funds necessary to build a ball grounds and assemble a team, Johnson awarded Farrell the franchise. Farrell also assured him he didn’t have to bring in any partners: “I didn’t propose to let anybody carve me if I went into this thing.” The AL president, who prided himself on being squeaky clean, had little choice but to accept a well-connected Tammanyite of his own. To front for the franchise, Farrell and Johnson allowed Gordon, generally unconnected to Tammany Hall, to act as team president.10

On March 14, 1903, the Greater New York Baseball Association was incorporated to operate New York’s American League baseball franchise. Gordon was clearly the face of the new team, and several days later he publicly announced the stockholders, who included Farrell.11 The AL Baltimore franchise ceased to exist.

Despite Farrell’s earlier protestations, he brought in his longtime friend Big Bill Devery as a partner. Devery was a shady ex-police chief with his own Tammany connections, who had escaped conviction despite a couple of indictments. Devery had walked the beat of one of Farrell’s first gambling parlors and the two had been friends ever since. Devery had accumulated a nice nest-egg by 1903 but had lost his position and clout within the Tammany political machine. Devery’s connection with the team remained obfuscated for many years and for a short time he even denied being an owner. Farrell later became the face of ownership, and over time his press became more sympathetic, focusing on baseball, not his gambling connections. He was now a “sportsman,” not a “gambler.”12

Even with their Tammany and real-estate connections, the New York club could do no better than Gordon’s marginal site just west of Broadway between 165th and 168th Streets at the far north end of Manhattan in Washington Heights. It was leased for a 10-year term from the New York Institute for the Blind. The lease was executed on March 12, 1903, giving the team only seven weeks to build the ball grounds in time for the April 30 home opener. Fortunately, the erection of the modest wood-frame stands of the era could be accomplished relatively quickly.13 As a backup Johnson and the new owners had identified a site in the Bronx owned by the Astor estate at 161st Street and Jerome Avenue — a site that two decades later would be purchased by a different set of Yankees owners for a new stadium.14

Still, getting the ballpark built in time would be a close race due to the physical configuration of the location. The work to level and prepare the rocky, uneven site cost roughly $200,000, while construction of the 16,000-seat ballpark cost approximately $75,000, bringing the total investment for Farrell and Devery in the their new grounds to around $275,000, an outlay larger than typical for ballpark erection at the time, though they may have received some assistance from the league.15 The ball grounds were christened Hilltop Park and the team became informally dubbed the Highlanders because the location was one of the highest points on Manhattan and Gordon’s Highlanders (in an allusion to the team’s president) were one of the most famous regiments in the British Army.16

New Yorkers did not immediately flock to see their new American League entry. Despite a sold-out Opening Day, the team drew just over 210,000 fans, the second lowest in the league and well behind their crosstown rival Giants, but turned a small profit. The team more than doubled its attendance in 1904 as the Highlanders were in the pennant chase until the last day of the season. Over the next several years the club generally fell in the middle of the league in attendance, and while financial information is sketchy, when the Highlanders finished second in 1910 with mediocre attendance, they reportedly turned an $80,000 profit.17 In part, this was because Farrell abandoned his pledge of no advertising in Hilltop Park and sold billboard space on the outfield fences.18

In 1907 Farrell bounced President Gordon and took over the role himself, explaining, “I decided that I should get some of the glory. I had put up the money and done a lot of the work.”19 Gordon had snagged much of the spotlight late in the 1904 season when he chided the NL champion Giants for their reluctance and subsequent refusal to participate in the World Series against the upstart American League. As the publicity available to a baseball owner in New York became more apparent, Farrell no longer wanted to remain in the background. When he let Gordon go, Farrell offered his one-time president the dividends on $10,000 worth of stock, but no right to sell, transfer, or vote the stock.20

Gordon refused to go quietly. He claimed he had been promised a 50 percent share of the team when originally incorporated and that he was due half the profits after Farrell received the return of his initial capital. He also claimed that the team had been making significant profits based on recent average revenues of $240,000 and expenses of $80,000; accordingly, he demanded an accounting, as the rightful beneficiary of half of these profits.21 It’s highly unlikely the team was anywhere near as profitable as Gordon alleged, and in the end the court ruled against his improbable, undocumented claim for half the franchise.22

In 1909, as teams throughout baseball began opening the next generation of concrete-and-steel ballparks, Farrell resurrected his search for a suitable location for a new ballpark. Moreover, the New York Institute for the Blind seemed reluctant to extend the land lease, which would expire prior to the 1913 season. For a new, modern ballpark, Farrell and his proxies uncovered a site in the Bronx just north of the Harlem Ship Canal. The overall area under the land assemblage included the old Spuyten Duyvil Creek and surrounding marshy regions. Dewatering this site sufficiently to allow the construction of new ballpark would prove an engineering nightmare.23 Nevertheless, Farrell outwardly expressed optimism. “In my new site,” he said, “I believe I have secured an excellent location, and I shall erect a series of stands that will afford spectators every comfort and convenience that the up-to-date baseball fan has learned to expect as his right. It will be fireproof, which in itself will relieve every officer of the club of much worry and responsibility.”24

Early in the 1911 season Farrell had a chance to offer a courtesy to his crosstown rivals when the Giants ballpark, the Polo Grounds, suffered significant fire damage. Farrell offered up Hilltop Park to accommodate the Giants games until the Polo Grounds repairs were finished. When the Giants moved back into the rebuilt Polo Grounds in late June, Giants owner John Brush would remember the consideration shown by Farrell.

Despite the outlay of considerable sums on engineering his new ballpark in the Bronx, Farrell’s project was plagued with water and construction difficulties, sapping much of his focus and energy from his team on the field. Moreover, Farrell proved a poor judge of baseball executive acumen and integrity. Late in the relatively successful 1910 season he sided with crooked star first baseman Hal Chase over manager George Stallings, bouncing the latter and installing Chase as player-manager. After one season, Farrell replaced Chase with the overmatched Harry Wolverton; Chase remained as the first baseman, and the team struggled on the field.

The ballpark situation, too, remained an ongoing headache. With their 10-year lease nearing expiration and the New York Institute for the Blind unwilling to renew it — thinking they could get more than the $10,000 per year the Highlanders were paying — Farrell needed a new venue quickly. Fortunately for Farrell, Brush allowed the Highlanders to share the Polo Grounds. Under the terms the new lease, the team paid the Giants $55,000 a year for the first two years, and the Giants were responsible for maintenance and expenses. The AL club would also be allocated a small share of the concession revenue.25 After 1910 with the team consistently in the second division, the losses associated with the Bronx stadium fiasco, and now having to pay significantly higher rent, Farrell and Devery were beginning to feel the financial pinch.

The Two Colonels Take Over

In 1914 Organized Baseball was challenged by a new competitor when the upstart Federal League declared itself a major league. Both the major and minor leagues as well as the Federal League suffered huge financial losses during the two-year conflict. As the leagues battled for players over the winter of 1914-15, Ban Johnson and Federal League President Jim Gilmore both understood the importance of shoring up their league’s weakest franchises, and both wanted the same man for a New York franchise, Jacob Ruppert. One of New York’s most eligible bachelors, Ruppert ran his family’s brewery operation and had accumulated a significant fortune. Well dressed and at home in upper-class society, Ruppert occasionally lapsed into a German accent when agitated, despite his native birth. Ruppert also dabbled in exotic hobbies: He collected jade, Chinese porcelain, and oil paintings; for a time he kept a collection of small monkeys, and he raised Saint Bernards. Like many of the upper class at the turn of the last century, he also raised and raced horses.26

Popular, wealthy, and well-connected to the German-American community, Ruppert was a natural for politics. In 1886 he joined an upper-class regiment of New York’s National Guard. A few years later he was appointed aide de camp to Governor David Hill and given the rank of colonel, a largely ceremonial title. Ruppert took great pleasure in this title and for the rest of his life liked to be addressed by it.

Late in the 1880s Tammany Hall tapped Ruppert to run for city council president, but they withdrew his candidacy due to various political machinations and miscalculations. The Democratic organization later sponsored him to run for the US Congress in 1898 in a generally Republican district. Ruppert won in a mild upset and served four terms. After eight years in Congress, Ruppert concentrated most of his energies, aside from all his hobbies, on the brewery business. Moreover, Ruppert had loved baseball since his youth. In 1914 Ruppert began talking to people in and around baseball, inquiring about buying into the game. Both Gilmore and Johnson remained in close touch with Ruppert, hoping to entice him into his league.

Johnson’s mortal enemy, New York Giants manager John McGraw, may have inadvertently helped Johnson in his quest. McGraw was a close friend of Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, another wealthy investor looking to buy into baseball. An engineer by training, Huston had remained in Cuba after fighting in the Spanish-American War and started an engineering and construction company. By 1914 he was a rich man, near the level of most baseball owners, but well below Ruppert’s fortune. Huston reportedly secured an option to purchase the Chicago Cubs for $600,000 in 1914 and planned to bring along his pal McGraw as manager and part-owner. McGraw initially expressed an interest but soon claimed he was tied to New York by his multiyear contract.27 In reality, he probably did not want to leave New York and simply wanted an excuse so as not to embarrass his friend. Without McGraw on board, Huston allowed the option to lapse.

Ruppert and Huston did not know each other but the baseball ownership fraternity was small, and once they met — probably through McGraw — the two agreed to join forces for the right opportunity. McGraw suggested that the Yankees might be available, and the two reluctantly agreed to look into what was generally regarded as one of baseball’s most hapless teams. Adding to their trepidation, the team’s books were a mess and Ruppert and Huston were more than a little leery about what they were getting into.

In Johnson’s eyes, though, the Yankees were the perfect franchise for the duo. Ruppert was a well-connected New Yorker without too much Tammany baggage, and Frank Farrell and William Devery, always of suspect character, were out of money. As an inducement, Johnson persuaded the American League’s owners to make some decent players available to the Yankees immediately after the two gained control the club.

Farrell, however, didn’t really want to sell the Yankees. He liked all the perks that came with owning a major-league baseball team in New York. Farrell dragged out the sale by lingering over minor contractual matters in the hope that something might change. The team had accumulated losses of $83,273 and debts of around $285,000, however, and his partner, William Devery, who generally liked to stay behind the scenes, was ready to cash out.28

In late 1914, while Ruppert was reconsidering, Gilmore and Chicago Federal League owner Charles Weeghman traveled to French Lick, Indiana, the resort community where Ruppert spent a portion of his winters. They hoped to tempt Ruppert into purchasing the Indianapolis franchise, which he would move to New York or its environs.

Once Ban Johnson realized how close the Federals were to landing Ruppert, he snapped back into action. On Saturday, January 30, 1915, as negotiations remained stalled, Johnson had finally had enough of Farrell’s procrastination. He put Farrell and Devery in one conference room, Ruppert and Huston in another, and trusted the lawyers to hammer out the final document. In the end the new owners closed on the team for $463,000.29

Once they purchased the franchise, their fellow American League magnates generally forgot their pledge to make players available to the Yankees. Only Detroit President Frank Navin honored the promise of players: He allowed the Yankees to purchase two reserves, outfielder Hugh High and first baseman Wally Pipp, for $5,500. In July, the team purchased budding star pitcher Bob Shawkey for only $3,000 from Philadelphia Athletics owner Connie Mack, who, in a financial bind because of the Federal League, was selling players. In another arrangement to find players, Ruppert reached an agreement with Richmond in the International League through which for a payment of $3,000 the Yankees would get first dibs on selecting any player they wanted from the Richmond roster for the payment of an additional $2,500 per player.30

Resentful but still determined, Ruppert and Huston hoped to purchase some of baseball’s better players as they became available in the aftermath of the Federal League war. They spent $40,000 to purchase four mediocre players controlled by Federal League magnate Harry Sinclair. More successfully, they paid Mack $37,500 for future Hall of Fame third baseman Home Run Baker, who had held out during 1915 while demanding his contract be renegotiated. The Yankees owners felt frustrated and further betrayed that same offseason at their exclusion from the Tris Speaker sweepstakes when Ban Johnson engineered the sale of the all-time great center fielder from Boston to Cleveland for $55,000.

Huston hoped to prove his baseball smarts as a front-office executive and actively supervise baseball personnel decisions on the model of Charles Comiskey in Chicago or Barney Dreyfuss in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately for Huston, in one of his first high-dollar recommendations the Yankees purchased pitcher Dan Tipple from Indianapolis for $9,000 — a considerable sum for the time, particularly in the midst of the Federal League war. Tipple’s failure to perform and progress as expected led quickly to Huston’s eclipse as a baseball insider.

The partnership of Huston and Ruppert was strained from the start. Neither man had the temperament or desire to share authority. Nevertheless, the Two Colonels both tried hard — and with some success — to make the marriage work. Both were extremely competitive and driven. Ruppert played the hard-driving perfectionist, while Huston was the high-spirited, socially active partner. The Yankees hired Wild Bill Donovan as their manager but let him go after three years at the helm on the heels of a 71-82 finish in 1917. Huston wanted to hire his buddy and current Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson. Ruppert, who did not really know Robinson, interviewed him and came away unimpressed. Furthermore, signing Robinson would have caused some friction with Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets, though the Yankees could have maneuvered through this had Ruppert really wanted Robinson.

Huston, who had joined the war effort and was in France (he would return a lieutenant colonel, leading many to call the owners the Two Colonels), could not exert the influence he wanted or deserved. Ruppert remained resistant to Robinson and consulted Ban Johnson for advice. Johnson reportedly recommended the St. Louis Cardinals’ diminutive manager, Miller Huggins, whom he considered the best manager in the National League behind John McGraw. Ruppert was favorably impressed with Huggins and hired him without consulting Huston. Huston was naturally furious that while he was away, Ruppert had spurned his candidate and signed another. Ruppert’s unilateral hiring of Huggins led to the most serious and longest-lasting disagreement between the two owners. Huston’s anger at the Huggins hiring ripened into an excessive dislike of Huggins and a hatred of Johnson for his perceived interference with his team’s internal affairs. Even after he returned from France, Huston never reconciled himself to Huggins. Until he sold out his interest in the Yankees a number of years later, Huston unrelentingly worked to undermine and replace him.

In the middle of 1919 the Yankees owners found themselves at the center of a controversy that would eventually topple the National Commission, baseball’s ruling body. Carl Mays, one of the American League’s top pitchers, jumped the Red Sox in July, and, as the other league owners began offering packages of players and money for Mays, Boston owner Harry Frazee looked to cash in. Johnson argued that an insubordinate player should not be able to force a trade and demanded that the Red Sox instead suspend Mays. Frazee and the Two Colonels ignored Johnson’s edict: The Yankees bought Mays for $40,000 and two players. Johnson ordered Mays suspended and decreed that he could not play for New York. The Yankees owners disregarded Johnson’s directive and obtained a court injunction permitting Mays to play. With this act of defiance, the Yankees owners, allied with Frazee, became the focus of Johnson’s enmity. Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, also feuding with Johnson, joined Frazee and the Yankees owners in a triumvirate committed to the dismissal, or at least neutering, of Johnson — first among equals on the three-man National Commission.

The other five American League owners, however, remained loyal to Johnson, creating a precarious stalemate. Albert Lasker, a prominent Chicago businessman and a Cubs minority stockholder, proposed a plan to replace the old Commission system with a three-person triumvirate of neutrals with no financial interest in baseball. The National League generally supported the plan, but the five Johnson loyalists in the American League objected, mainly because Johnson would be forced to relinquish his power. After much posturing and politicking, the issue came to a head in November. At a meeting in Chicago on August 8, the three disgruntled American League franchises threatened to jump to the National League, forming a 12-team New National League. (Another team would be added later.) The Johnson loyalists eventually backed down, and the owners brought in Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as baseball’s first commissioner.

The Yankees owners continued their big spending after the 1919 season when they splurged for Babe Ruth. With the financial squeeze mounting on Boston owner Harry Frazee, on January 5, 1920, the Yankees and Red Sox announced the sale of Ruth from Boston to New York. The Yankees paid a record sum of $100,000: $25,000 up front and three promissory notes of $25,000, each at a 6 percent interest rate, due in November 1920, 1921, and 1922. In addition, Ruppert gave Frazee a three-month commitment that he would lend him $300,000 to be secured by a first mortgage on Fenway Park.31 

Notably at this time, the constitutional amendment banning the sale of alcoholic beverages was taking effect. The new law would clearly have a significant adverse impact on Ruppert’s brewery operation — his main source of income. The purchase of Ruth and the large loan to Frazee testified to Ruppert’s willingness to take considerable financial risks in order to construct a winner.

Yankees co-owner Jacob Ruppert, left, with manager Miller Huggins, and star outfielder Babe Ruth. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

With Ruth on board, in 1920 the Yankees produced one of their best seasons to date and with 1,289,422 fans set an attendance record that would stand nearly a decade. Sustained by the Babe’s heroics, Huggins led the Yankees to 95 wins and a third-place finish. The team was on the cusp of greatness with owners willing to spend.

When business manager Harry Sparrow died in May 1920, the two owners were forced to take on a larger hands-on role that they didn’t really want. Moreover, as the owner of a large brewery operation, Ruppert recognized the importance of sound oversight and professional administration. After the season they reached out to Ed Barrow, manager of the Boston Red Sox, to oversee their front office. Technically hired as business manager, Barrow was one of the first men to take on the role of the modern general manager. A brilliant hire, the introduction of this new front office position, and Barrow’s grasping of both its potential and its boundaries was one of the foundations of the coming Yankees dynasty.

Barrow also introduced another of the keys to the Yankees long-term success, amassing possibly the greatest assemblage of scouts in baseball history. During his tenure Barrow expanded and reorganized his scouts, creating arguably the first modern scouting department. He hired Vinegar Bill Essick to scout the West and Eddie Herr, a former Detroit Tigers scout, whom he assigned to the Midwest. Bob Gilks and Ed Holly focused on the South and East respectively. Superscout Paul Krichell was principally responsible for the colleges, and acted as Barrow’s right hand.32

Through their relationship with the cash-strapped Frazee, the Yankees owners had a unique pipeline to major-league talent. Ruppert was willing to part with his money for top talent, and Frazee was more than happy to sell his remaining stars. That offseason the Yankees sent $50,000 and a couple of players to Frazee for four players including Hall of Fame hurler Waite Hoyt and star catcher Wally Schang. In 1921, with this new talent on board, a historic season from Ruth and a league-leading 27 wins from Mays, the Yankees finally won their first pennant. Although they lost the World Series to the Giants, the pennant represented vindication for all the effort and money expended by the two owners.

Over the next several years Ruppert bought the rest of Frazee’s stars. In one transaction after the 1921 season, he and Huston acquired two of the league’s best pitchers, Sam Jones and Joe Bush, along with star shortstop Everett Scott, for four players and $150,000 — the highest dollar amount ever included in a player transaction up to that point and one that would not be exceeded until the Cubs bought Rogers Hornsby from the Boston Braves near the end of the decade. In total the Yankees owners paid Frazee roughly $450,000 over a five-year period to build the team that captured three straight pennants from 1921 to 1923.

Ruppert and Huston could afford to spend because profits for the Yankees exploded after the Great War. The overall jump in baseball attendance coupled with the legalization of Sunday baseball in New York in 1919 and a Yankees ticket-price increase led to profits averaging $300,000 per year in 1920 and 1921, though much of this was paid to the government as part of the wartime excess profits tax controls. Once the tax was repealed in1921, the Yankees owners could keep more of their profits, which exceeded $300,000 in 1922.33

Furthermore, Ruppert and Huston were not taking distributions from their franchise; they were reinvesting all the profits. From 1920 through 1924, for example, four American League clubs distributed at least $200,000 to their owners, reducing the funds available for investing in minor-league talent. In contrast, the Yankees plowed over $1.6 million in profits back into the franchise; no other American League team retained even $700,000.34

The disappointment over the 1922 World Series debacle prompted the final divorce of the Two Colonels. The hated crosstown Giants swept the Series in four games, with hurler Bullet Joe Bush openly disrespecting Huggins during the final game, convincing Huston that the manager could not control his players. Back at the Commodore Hotel after the game, Huston let out a wild yell, sending drinks and glasses flying with a wide sweep of his right hand and bellowing: “Miller Huggins has managed his last Yankee ballgame. He’s through! Through! Through!” When tracked down for his reaction, Ruppert backed Huggins, announcing, “I won’t fire a man who has just brought the Yankees two pennants.”35

As long as the Yankees were unmistakably New York’s second team, Giants manager John McGraw was happy to allow his friends Huston and Ruppert to lease his home ballpark. Owner Charles Stoneham, too, liked the income generated by the lease. With the coming of Ruth, however, the Yankees boasted the league’s biggest draw and began to win as well. McGraw and Stoneham began to have second thoughts regarding the stadium arrangement and decided they wanted the Yankees out. Ruppert also suspected that Ban Johnson hoped to see the Yankees evicted — this was at the height of the Johnson/Yankee feud — as a way to revoke their league charter, which required having a venue in which to play. In May 1920 it came out that Stoneham had given notice to the Yankees that he would not renew their lease after the season.36 He eventually relented, however, and extended the lease for another two years through 1922. Stoneham made it clear, though, that this was only a short-term accommodation unless the Yankees were permanently willing to pay an exorbitant rent.

Ruppert and Huston naturally recognized that they needed their own ballpark, and needed it soon — by Opening Day 1923. A new ballpark would obviously provide many benefits beyond simply freeing themselves from the Giants control. The club would generate the ancillary revenue associated with a ballpark at the time, including concession revenue, rent from hiring out for football games and boxing matches, and storage income. Huston estimated the annual receipts from these sources at $325,000.37

In early 1921 Ruppert announced that the club had secured an option on a site in Manhattan. He assigned Charley McManus, a one-time executive in the real-estate department at Ruppert’s brewery and current Yankees front-office employee, as the point man for the stadium project. (When it was completed, McManus became superintendent of Yankee Stadium, a position he held for many years thereafter.) As with the Yankees’ previous site searches, this one proved quite difficult as well — even without obstructions thrown up by a political machine, finding and assembling a suitably large, accessible site in New York was far from a simple task. The first and then several additional sites fell by the wayside for various reasons; the Yankees eventually struggled through six potential alternatives before finally settling on their current site in the Bronx. Ruppert and Huston purchased the majority of the site from Vincent Astor. They wrangled a key corner from a florist for only $14,000 before he discovered the true reason for the acquisition. In total the Yankee owners spent close to $600,000 to acquire the entire site, and the construction cost of Yankee Stadium totaled about $1,600,000, bringing the all-in expenditure to roughly $2,200,000.

Once construction began in April 1922, Huston, the engineer, embraced the task of overseeing its construction. To help defray the cost, the American League loaned the Yankees owners $400,000 on a 10-year term at 7 percent interest. The new stadium was clearly the preeminent and most majestic baseball venue in America and would hold this distinction for many years.38

Ruppert Takes Sole Ownership

In the wake of the 1922 World Series sweep, Huston wanted out, and Ruppert was tiring of the partnership as well. Huston was frustrated by his inability to bring in a manager he respected, and highly frustrated with Ruppert’s high-handed approach to running the ballclub. “We went into the business on a fifty-fifty partnership basis,” Huston wrote to his partner, “but now you have arrogated to yourself so much authority and doing continually so many things without consulting me that it is becoming a one man show.” Along with his frustration over Huggins, Huston resented what he considered Ruppert’s co-opting of Barrow, that the blame over the Mays imbroglio fell disproportionately on himself, and what he considered Ruppert’s overall belittlement. Regarding several payments coming due, Huston added that he was ready to ante up his share, but “I will participate in no financing whatsoever until the affairs of the club are put on a truly partnership basis.”39 Perhaps just as importantly, Huston, who was not in the same financial class as his partner, felt nervous having essentially his entire net worth tied up in the team and the new Yankee Stadium.

As the partnership deteriorated, the Two Colonels entertained the possibility of selling the franchise, going so far as to negotiate a tentative sale for $2.5 million. When the sale fell through, Huston found a buyer for his half-interest. Ruppert, not interested in a new partner, decided to buy out Huston himself. The two negotiated a buyout of Huston’s half for $1.175 million: $450,000 in cash and the remainder in nine annual principal payments beginning in June 1925 (the first payment was for $85,000 and the remaining eight for $80,000) at 6 percent interest. The transaction was finalized in May 1923.40

With the buyout completed, Ruppert later offered Barrow the opportunity to buy a 10 percent share of the Yankees for $300,000. Barrow did not have anything close to that amount and turned to his old friend and one-time partner Harry Stevens, the concessionaire, to lend him some of the money.

In the early 1930s Ruppert quickly recognized that changes in the roster rules altered the practicality and usefulness or creating a farm system. In late 1931 he paid $250,000 for the Newark franchise in the International League, one step below the majors. In February 1932 Ruppert announced that the Yankees intended to own or control four minor-league franchises in different classifications. He hired future Hall of Fame executive George Weiss to run it, and by the mid-1930s the Yankees rivaled the Cardinals for baseball’s best farm system.41 

With the onset of the Depression, profits fell off dramatically for all teams, and several suffered staggering losses. In 1933, in aggregate, American League teams lost in excess of $1 million. The Yankees’ revenue advantage slipped as well, as four teams fared better financially that dismal season. Profits declined from $271,028 in 1929 to a loss of $98,126 in 1933, yet the team’s payroll of $294,982 was still the highest in baseball. In fact no other AL team had a payroll greater than $188,000. By 1939 Ruppert’s payroll was back up to $361,471, still the highest in the game.42

In early 1938 Ruppert received treatment for phlebitis, an inflammation of the veins, in his left leg. Although the malady was not thought to be serious at the time, Ruppert was confined to his home for several days. The illness forced him to skip traveling to the Opening Day festivities for his newly acquired farm club in Kansas City. Throughout the year Ruppert struggled with the condition and its complications. On January 13, 1939, after dropping in and out of a coma for several days, Ruppert died at age 71.

Meanwhile, the struggling Brooklyn Dodgers franchise had brought in the iconoclastic Larry MacPhail to run their organization. Two new economic opportunities (or challenges) faced baseball as World War II approached: radio and night baseball. In December 1938 MacPhail announced that he was pulling out of the no-radio agreement among the three New York teams, and that he would broadcast all Dodgers games. In response to MacPhail’s decision, the Giants began to waver on their pledge. Ruppert, ill but still obsessed with his baseball team, encouraged Barrow to put the Yankees on radio as well. The Yankees and Giants always worked their schedule to minimize conflicting home dates. In the same spirit, the two agreed to team up for their radio broadcast rights in 1939. Each would broadcast only home games to minimize the risk of cutting into the other’s stadium attendance.

Not surprisingly, sponsor demand was intense for the inaugural New York broadcast rights. The two teams executed a two-year contract with General Mills for Wheaties. Procter & Gamble also signed on to pitch Ivory Soap. From the two corporate sponsors the Yankees and Giants each received $110,000. The Dodgers, in a smaller market, received $87,500 despite broadcasting road games as well. [At the time announcers did not travel on the road; they broadcast re-creations based on wire reports.] The rights fees received by the New York clubs were significantly more than those received by the other franchises, which typically ranged from $30,000 to $60,000. By midseason 1939, Yankees attendance lagged 1938 by a significant margin. Team executives suspected both radio and the New York World’s Fair for the decrease in patronage. In total, attendance fell by over 100,000 from 1938 to 1939, despite a dominant team trying for its record-tying fourth consecutive pennant.

The sponsors fared poorly as well. Overall, between 3 P.M. and 5 P.M., baseball had about a 33 percent share nationwide. In Chicago the percentage of radios tuned to baseball was estimated slightly higher. In New York, however, baseball received only a 12 percent share.43 Some of this was blamed on Yankees announcer Arch McDonald, a capable announcer from the South who may have been a little too laconic for the taste of New Yorkers. Because of the low 1939 ratings the teams voluntarily agreed to reduce their fee to $75,000. The clubs also brought in a new announcer, Mel Allen, to be the lead for both the Yankee and Giant broadcasts. For 1941 the Yankees and Giants held out for $75,000 again. But this time no sponsor could be found at that level. Neither team felt it worthwhile to put the games on for a lesser rights fee and withheld their games from radio in 1941.

In 1942 the Yankees and Giants were back on the air, and Allen returned as the lead announcer. In 1943 the two teams again failed to reach an agreement with a sponsor and neither the Yankees nor Giants games were aired that season. Finally, in 1944 Gillette stepped up as a sponsor. The Yankees would never again play a season without radio coverage.

Ruppert’s death on January 13, 1939, threw the ownership of the Yankees into flux. He left the bulk of his estate in three equal shares to two nieces and Helen Weyant. Upon learning of her inheritance, Weyant expressed surprise and trepidation. She was a longtime acquaintance and the daughter of a deceased friend. Her brother Rex had been the Yankees assistant road secretary for the past three years. Full control over the estate fell to the “executors and trustees for the lifetime of the beneficiaries, who are to receive the entire proceeds during their lives.”44 Initially Ruppert’s wealth was estimated at $40 million to $45 million, of which about 60 percent would have to be paid in estate taxes. The Yankees organization was valued at around $10 million, requiring a tax payment of $5 million to $7 million. In other words, the estate would have to monetize many of the assets to pay the taxes and distribute the value of the estate to the beneficiaries.

Ruppert had designated three trustees for the bulk of the estate: his brother-in-law, H. Garrison Sillick Jr.; his brother, George Ruppert; and his longtime attorney, Byron Clark Jr. Clark also became the estate’s executor. Ruppert had added Barrow as a fourth trustee for the Yankee corporation, and he was named the team’s president. Although the beneficiaries ultimately would command the proceeds of the estate, Ruppert left the decision-making authority in the hands of the trustees. George Ruppert sought to reassure Yankee fans that Ruppert had provided for the Yankees, and that the team’s management and operation would not change.

Almost immediately rumors of a sale emerged. Despite George Ruppert’s assurances regarding the safeguards built into Ruppert’s will, payment of the estate’s tax burden weighed heavily on the trustees.

As early as July 1939 Clark disclosed that in response to the many sale inquiries, Barrow had informally valued the organization at $7 million.45 By March 1940 Barrow felt he needed to respond to the many rumors of an impending sale: “I have had several legitimate offers for the sale of the club, which I am not at liberty to mention just now, but this is not one of them. It would take a lot of money to buy the Yankees. I estimate the club to be worth roughly $6,000,000. Anybody who has that kind of money and is ready to put it up, can buy the Yankees.”46

The price continued to fall as the tax matter dragged. The asking price was actually closer to $4 million, and the Yankees received no bona-fide offers over $2 million. Clark, George Ruppert, and Barrow were all discussing the sale with several potential suitors, including Joseph Kennedy (patriarch of the Kennedy clan), with little success. In July 1940, George Ruppert acknowledged that the franchise had been offered to Democratic Party bigwig and Postmaster General James Farley for $4 million. To line up the capital, Farley was struggling to assemble a syndicate of moneyed investors. The trustees required that he muster a down payment of at least $1.5 million. In December 1940, Clark traveled with Barrow to the winter meetings in Chicago reportedly to facilitate the sale. But raising the down payment proved more difficult than expected, and Farley’s money-raising road show dragged on for nearly a year. In the end, he could not round up the necessary funds.47

In the meantime, Ruppert’s estate turned out to be worth much less than originally estimated. The trustees placed the overall value at only $7 million, a fraction of the earlier approximation. They valued the brewery stock at $2.5 million, the ballclub at $2.4 million, real estate at $600,000, and additional disparate items at $1.45 million, including miscellaneous securities, furniture, jewelry, paintings, and a $50,000 yacht. Of course, the trustees naturally had reason to value the estate as low as possible to minimize taxes. Nevertheless, the value of Ruppert’s holdings was clearly below expectations. It turned out that Ruppert owned only a portion of the brewery stock. In the real estate he so prized, he owned only a minority position, and, furthermore, the value of many of the properties had declined during the Depression.48 Magnifying the trustees’ predicament, the taxing authorities placed a much higher value on the estate than did the trustees. For example, the government valued the baseball operation at roughly $5 million as opposed to around $2.4 million by the estate. To settle the value disagreement, the estate decided to litigate the issue, which also had the advantage of postponing any tax payment until a resolution had been achieved. Regardless of the outcome of the litigation, it was now unmistakable that either the team or the brewery would have to be sold to pay the estate tax. Because the team was more liquid than the brewery and theoretically a less stable income generator, the Yankees organization seemed the more reasonable disposition.

As the dispute dragged on, the trustees grew weary of the wrangling in which they had little financial stake, and they had no desire to oversee all the complicated negotiations. On July 29, 1941, as permitted in the trust documents, they turned the administration of the estate over to the Manufacturers Trust Company.

Barrow also had to sue the estate to preserve the rights to his 10 percent ownership in the team. The original loan from Harry Stevens to purchase his share had been amended in 1938 to reflect a principal amount of $250,000 and an interest rate of 3½ percent. In his settlement with the estate, Barrow received a 10 percent interest in the team for $305,000 under the same terms as the original agreement with Ruppert.

MacPhail Puts Together a Syndicate

After the Pearl Harbor attack and America’s entry in World War II, non-war-related economic activity quickly came to a standstill. Barrow and Manufacturers Trust both received a number of inquiries, but none at a level they felt reasonable. In 1943 Larry MacPhail, now unemployed in baseball and serving in the War Department, put together a 10-person syndicate to purchase the team. His lineup of investors included construction magnate Del Webb and sportsman Dan Topping. Topping owned the Brooklyn Tigers of the National Football League. Because the team played in Ebbets field, he was effectively a tenant of MacPhail’s once he took over the Dodgers in early 1938, and the two became friendly. When they ran into each other in California during the war — MacPhail was there on War Department business, Topping with the Marine Corps — MacPhail invited him to join his syndicate. At the time Topping was having difficulty negotiating a lease renewal with Dodgers President Branch Rickey. Assuming he could get permission from the NFL to move to Manhattan (the New York football Giants already played there), owning Yankee Stadium would give him a playing venue he could control.

MacPhail first met Webb, a Phoenix-based millionaire in the construction business, in Washington during the war. MacPhail worked as an assistant to Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson, while Webb frequently traveled to Washington to negotiate war-related construction work. At the time, Webb was considering the purchase of the Oakland Pacific Coast League team for $60,000. When MacPhail contacted him regarding the Yankees opportunity, he quickly changed his focus. Other investors included Chicago taxicab magnate John Hertz and New York sanitation commissioner Bill Carey.

Barrow hated the idea of the boisterous, aggressive and spotlight-seeking MacPhail taking control of “his” team. He went so far as to state that MacPhail would only gain control of the Yankees “over his [Barrow’s] dead body.”49

MacPhail offered $2.8 million for 96.88 percent of the stock ($2.5 million for the 86.88 percent owned by the three Ruppert beneficiaries and $300,000 for the 10 percent controlled by Barrow). The remaining 3.12 percent was owned by George Ruppert and two others. In February 1944, despite Barrow’s distaste for MacPhail, acceptance by the trust company of the offer appeared imminent. Barrow managed to delay the sale, most likely because the estate received another extension on its tax bill. Commissioner Landis helped slow MacPhail down when he ruled Hertz, who was involved in horse racing, persona non grata in baseball ownership. Landis’s edict forced MacPhail to restructure his ownership entity.50

His delay in hand, Barrow sought to drive up the price or find another buyer. But finding a willing buyer with available cash under the wartime circumstances was highly problematical. In one scheme, Barrow hoped to steer the franchise to his friend, Tom Yawkey. This plan suffered from several shortcomings, most notably that Yawkey would first have to find a buyer for his Red Sox. In addition, Yawkey’s finances were potentially in limbo due to a recent divorce. Barrow also held out hope that James Farley could reformulate his syndicate, but that idea, too, came to nothing.

With little hope of either an alternate buyer in the short term or a delay until the end of the war and a reinvigoration of the civilian economy — which still seemed a long way off — Manufacturers Trust was becoming impatient. Furthermore, Webb and Topping, both now awakened to the availability of the team and their own interest in acquiring it, continued to pursue the club. The trust company attempted to reinstate MacPhail’s original terms by contacting Webb. They let him know that the estate might now be willing to sell at the original terms. The estate was also actively selling off some of its real-estate holdings, but the war depressed prices in real estate as well. Only a fraction of the tax burden could be raised through the liquidation of real-estate assets.

Independent of Webb, Topping learned through his society connections that Manufacturers Trust was getting antsy. In late 1944, when Topping again encountered MacPhail in New York, he proposed that they try to revive the deal. MacPhail needed little prompting, and the two decided that they would simplify their proposed ownership by narrowing the syndicate to include only Webb in their reformulated venture. Topping, through his numerous connections, took the lead in contacting Barrow. Topping’s father and Harry Sillick had been friends, and through H. Garrison Sillick III, he had become friendly with Barrow’s daughter, who was married to Garrison. She acted as an intermediary and set up a meeting between Barrow and Topping. Once Barrow realized the hurriedness with which Manufacturers Trust planned to dispose of the franchise, he merely hoped to preserve as much of his legacy as possible. He met one-on-one with both Topping and Webb. With both he stressed the importance of maintaining the status quo and running a first-class, well-respected, and championship organization. Both gave him enough assurance that he could sell without too much trepidation — although he had little choice, in any case.

In late January 1945, MacPhail, Webb, and Topping finally purchased the team, split evenly so that each owned one-third. They put $250,000 down with the remainder to follow in March. Prior to their final payment, the trio also agreed to purchase George Ruppert’s and associates’ 3.12 percent interest, giving them complete ownership of the team. Webb and Topping supplied the majority of the capital, lending MacPhail much of his obligation, and MacPhail became president under a 10-year contract. The final transfer of operational control occurred in late February.

When MacPhail took over the Yankees, he was already famous within baseball circles, having run the Reds and Dodgers with some success. His fame came from his game promotions and events, his installation of lights in both cities to allow night games, and his embrace of radio. He hired the unknown Red Barber to broadcast Reds games, and later brought him to Brooklyn. MacPhail and his two partners had clearly made a good buy. Even in 1945, the financial potential of the Yankees shined through. The Yankees turned a profit of just over $300,000 on $1.6 million in revenues. Though the farm clubs showed a slight loss of just over $100,000, overall the organization made $202,000 during a wartime season. With even a normal uptick from a return to peacetime, revenues and profits should soar.51

And in fact, that’s what occurred. Nearly all teams drew spectacularly in 1946, led by the Yankees. The club’s attendance of 2.27 million obliterated the previous major-league record, as the Yankees became the first team to draw over 2 million fans. The Yankees made $808,866 in profit that year, surely an all-time record to that point, and nearly one-third of the purchase price just one year earlier. And as with Ruppert, the Yankee triumvirate did not take any dividends — they reinvested all the profits into the ballclub.52 In 1946 the Yankees spent $583,989 on their “player replacement program,” including scout salaries, scout travel, baseball schools, newspaper and statistical services, bonuses to amateur free agents, and an allocation of the team’s general administrative costs among other items. This amount increased every year for the remainder of the decade.53

MacPhail also pushed the business potential of the club by ending the club’s radio partnership with the Giants and exploiting radio’s possibilities. The Yankees became the first major-league team to have the announcer travel with the team on the road, eliminating the campy recreations. With Mel Allen as the lead announcer both home and away, the Yankees jumped to the forefront of capitalizing on the medium. Further modernizing the organization, MacPhail introduced lights and night baseball to Yankee Stadium (as he had in Cincinnati and Brooklyn) for the 1946 season.

Webb and Topping Jettison MacPhail

After three years of running the Yankees, the pressure and constant limelight began to unhinge MacPhail. Near the end of the 1947 season he arranged an initial public stock offering of shares of the Yankees franchise through a New York investment bank. MacPhail and the bankers worked out an IPO that would make just under 50 percent of the club available to the public. The bankers estimated that this stock offering would raise about $3 million, implying a franchise value of roughly $6 million. MacPhail contrived the transaction to cash out part of his investment. Topping and Webb, however, had no desire to come under the scrutiny and reporting requirements of the public market. The two quickly resolved to buy out their partner. Just before the start of the World Series, Topping and Webb reached an agreement to acquire MacPhail’s one-third interest for around $2 million, a huge profit over his initial investment, most of which he had borrowed. Despite selling his ownership interest, MacPhail would remain as president and de-facto general manager.

The agreement to sell did not calm MacPhail. Just the opposite: His decision to surrender his ownership in baseball’s most popular franchise further troubled him. Rumors persisted that MacPhail feuded with other members of the Yankees executive team, most of whom had been in place for many years and were protégés of Ruppert and Barrow. MacPhail’s maniacal behavior culminated with his breakdown at the Yankees victory celebration dinner in the Biltmore hotel after they won the 1941 World Series. He stumbled around the dining room, alternating between bouts of sentimental crying and irrational raging. He saved his most vile epitaphs and anger to denigrate Brooklyn’s Branch Rickey, whose club the Yankees had just defeated. When John McDonald, MacPhail’s former employee in Brooklyn (against whom MacPhail still harbored a grudge for a magazine story), defended Rickey, MacPhail punched him in the eye.

MacPhail next lurched over to George Weiss’s table and berated his work. The rest of table watched in horror as MacPhail told Weiss he had “48 hours to make up your mind what you are going to do.” Weiss remained as calm as possible and suggested: “Larry, I don’t want to make a decision here tonight. We have all been drinking. I would like to wait until tomorrow and discuss this with you.” MacPhail, in no condition to be mollified, responded by firing Weiss on the spot. As MacPhail walked away, Weiss’s wife chased after him to appeal for her husband’s job, but he just ignored her. A shaken Weiss went outside to cool down and commiserate with top scout Paul Krichell. Weiss’s wife returned to the table in tears.

Topping finally seized control of the situation. He tried to calm MacPhail down only to be told he had “been born with a silver spoon in [his] mouth.” Topping then guided the still crazed MacPhail into the kitchen where the two huddled alone. After calming him down somewhat, Topping ushered MacPhail out a side door so he could gather himself. Topping and Webb accompanied Weiss up to his hotel room to reassure him of his position with the Yankees. MacPhail actually returned later, still combative, but no longer unglued. Webb and Topping, naturally, had no intention of leaving their $6 million operation in MacPhail’s hands and quickly worked to quietly terminate his Yankee contract. To run the club the duo promoted Weiss to general manager, Topping assumed the presidency, and Webb a key role on the ownership councils.

Dan Topping enjoyed a “sportsman” lifestyle that we seldom see any more in America, one founded on inherited wealth, some athletic ability, and active involvement in professional or other sports. Topping’s life also often entailed a playboy youth and multiple attractive socialite wives. His maternal grandfather amassed a fortune in the tin-plate business, started the American Can Company and had interests in railroads, tobacco, and banks. He left virtually his entire fortune of $40 million to $50 million to Dan’s mother. His paternal grandfather was a longtime president of the Republic Iron and Steel Company.

His parents gave him the education befitting a young aristocrat. He attended the Hun School, an expensive boarding school in New Jersey, where he starred in football, baseball, and hockey. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and played both baseball and football. Topping took up golf and became a top-notch amateur, winning several tournaments. After finishing school, Topping spent three years working at a bank, but quickly realized that the life of toiling for a dollar wasn’t for him.

In 1934 the 22-year-old Topping purchased a partial interest in the Brooklyn Dodgers of the fledgling National Football League. He soon acquired a majority ownership and spent some money to improve his club. By 1940 he had assembled a decent squad, but with the coming of World War II, most of the Dodgers’ best players entered the military and the team fell back in the standings.

Del Webb had survived a near-fatal bout of typhoid fever in his late 20s to build one of the West’s great construction and homebuilding empires. After he finally recovered ing from his illness, his doctor advised Webb to move to a dry climate. Webb and his wife took their $100 in savings and moved to Phoenix, Arizona. In Phoenix he began building grocery stores and when the Depression came, he managed to secure large government projects to keep his company afloat and even thrive. Webb’s contacts eventually included President Franklin Roosevelt, oil millionaire Ed Pauley, and Democratic power broker Robert Hannegan. The government contracts Webb landed during World War II made his company one of the country’s largest contractors.

Webb and Topping owned the Yankees equally. Both were wealthy and independent and neither liked or had experience with equal partners. Moreover their personalities and backgrounds were diametrically opposed: “Webb is the Far Westerner who looks as though he just shucked off his cowboy stuff,” wrote Harold Rosenthal. “Topping is an Easterner in the yachts-polo-anyone-for-tennis mold. Unless Webb has known you a long time, you’ll get a ‘yes,’ ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ from him. Topping is the open, friendly type, the kind the headmaster tells you your boy will turn out to be when you enroll him in one of the more fashionable Eastern prep schools.”54 Nevertheless, the duo made a surprisingly long-lasting and effective team.

The Yankees owners’ next high-profile baseball involvement came in December 1950 when baseball’s owners were considering extending the contract of Commissioner Happy Chandler. Webb detested Chandler and considered him rather a prude and prone to offer opinions and decisions without all the facts. Webb also had a more personal reason to dislike the commissioner. “His construction company built the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and I investigated to make sure that Webb’s involvement with the gambling center ended there,” Chandler recalled. “This seemed a sensible and understandable precaution, but Webb was furious.”55

Webb and Topping proved adept at working the backrooms of baseball ownership. Despite initial support for Chandler among many of the owners, the Yankees duo, supported by St. Louis Cardinals owner Fred Saigh, maneuvered the vote away from Chandler. Webb was not reticent about his involvement: “If I’ve never done anything else for baseball, I did it when I got rid of Chandler.”56

In late 1953 Webb and Topping sold the franchise’s real estate, including Yankee Stadium and the minor-league Kansas City Blues stadium, to Chicago-based businessman Arnold Johnson for $6.5 million, a tidy profit considering that their total investment in the team was roughly $4.225 million after their buyout of MacPhail. The Yankees signed a 28-year lease with Johnson with rents starting at $600,000 a year and declining to $350,000 a year by the last year of the lease. As part of the deal and to help Johnson finance the transaction, Webb and Topping took back a second mortgage on Yankee stadium for $2.9 million. Johnson then flipped Yankee Stadium to the Knights of Columbus for $2.5 million, leasing the stadium back from them for 28 years at rates significantly less than what he was leasing it to the Yankees for.57

The next year, helped by some behind-the-scenes politicking by Webb and Topping, Johnson bought the Philadelphia Athletics and moved them to Kansas City. Several AL owners expressed objections to his financial relationship with the Yankees — both the sandwich lease, making him effectively the Yankees’ landlord, and the second mortgage between the owners. At the time of Johnson’s purchase, he was given 90 days to work these issues out, a time period that was eventually indefinitely extended.58

During the 1950s baseball’s owners spent considerable time and energy mulling over the geographic future of their sport. After 50 years of franchise stability, many began to salivate over the potential huge payday in untapped metropolitan areas. Webb believed in realignment as opposed to expansion, as there were still plenty of struggling two-team cities that could no longer support two teams.

By the end of the 1950s it was clear to most observers there were more major-league-ready cities than there were franchises to go around. Business interests and politicians in those cities were pressing baseball for expansion. The inherently conservative baseball owners, however, continued to resist growing beyond 16 franchises. Ironically, the greatest pressure came in New York. To rectify having only one team after the departure of the Giants and Dodgers, well-connected New York lawyer Bill Shea, with the support of New York politicians and the possibility of a new stadium in Queens, began canvassing the country for potential investors and cities in a new, third major league, dubbed the Continental League.

After fighting a cagey rear-guard action for a roughly a year, Webb eventually realized he had little choice but to accept a National League expansion team in Queens as the least bad option. He was also the driving force in directing American League expansion into Los Angeles. Although other cites appeared to have more support, Webb wanted an American League team in California, and if the National League was going to force a second team on his city, he could do the same in Los Angeles.

On the field the team dominated in the 1950s like no other team in the history of the sport. But in the aftermath of the seven-game loss to the underdog Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series, Topping and Webb eased both manager Casey Stengel and Weiss out of their positions. “A contract with Casey didn’t mean anything,” Topping complained. “Casey was always talking about quitting. For a couple of months there [late in the 1958 season] we didn’t know whether we had a manager or not. We decided right then that we would never be put in that position again.”59 Topping also wanted to get more directly involved in the operation of the franchise, something that would have been much trickier with the imperial Weiss still in charge.

Topping quickly took to his activist role. When the Yankees won the World Series in 1961 after a two-year drought, The Sporting News named Topping its Executive of the Year for making “a radical change in the leadership of the Yankee club.” The Sporting News further touted his “courage,” and emphasized that he had become the key man running the franchise. “Had this bold move failed,” opined the paper, “Topping’s own position could conceivably have become untenable.”60

CBS Gets a Baseball Team

In August 1964 the Yankees announced the sale of the franchise to CBS, which dragged on throughout the offseason, troubled by additional revelations and commentary. Webb and Topping had first seriously considered selling the team a couple of years earlier when Topping went through some health problems. Topping felt he could no longer run the team and sounded out Webb about buying him out. Topping eventually rebounded but needed the money a sale could bring, and the two owners agreed to explore selling the team. With his many ex-wives and children to support, the proceeds from the sale of the team would ease Topping’s financial burdens.

The two initially reached an agreement with Lehman Brothers, then a large investment house. The sale was dependent on some complex tax angles, and while the lawyers and accountants were working them out, CBS chairman William Paley called his friend Topping to see if the team was available. Topping told him they were already committed in another direction, but that if something changed, he would get back to him. When the sale fell through, Topping called Paley on July 1, 1964, to see if he was still interested. Paley was, and the two began negotiations.

On August 14 Topping and Webb agreed to the final deal, selling 80 percent of the Yankees to CBS for $11.2 million. Additionally, Topping would stay on as the operating partner. Topping later testified that he had received offers as high as $16 million, “but they wanted to run the whole show, and I preferred a deal where I could remain active.”61

It is hard to overestimate the outcry generated by the sale of the Yankees to a television network. Up to this point baseball teams rarely had true corporate ownership. More importantly, in 1964 television was rightly seen as a large and growing phenomenon in American life, and its ultimate impact was not yet fully understood. The sale of America’s number-one baseball team to its number-one television network appeared to foreshadow grave consequences.

Many criticized the process as much as the substance. Fearing just this sort of reaction, Webb and Topping persuaded American League President Joe Cronin to get league approval by telephoning the league owners rather than calling a meeting. The owners approved the sale 8 to 2, but the two dissidents, Charles Finley of the Kansas City Athletics and Arthur Allyn of the Chicago White Sox, went public with their opposition. Eventually Cronin felt compelled to call a league meeting to confirm the sale, but the vote remained the same, and the sale was finalized on November 2, 1964. Webb had little desire to remain in a ceremonial position; in March he sold his remaining share for $1.4 million. Topping stayed on as team president.

Topping was soon overmatched without a strong baseball executive as general manager. After a slow start in 1966, with encouragement from CBS, Topping shook up his staff. But the team just wasn’t good enough and finished last. Topping resigned on September 19, selling his remaining 10 percent share to CBS. Topping publicly stated that he had resigned for personal reasons, but there can be little doubt that CBS wanted little to do with the men who had sold them a now struggling club for a record price. To replace Topping, CBS appointed Mike Burke, who had been an executive at CBS for several years and on the Yankees board for the past two.

Not surprisingly, a large conglomerate like CBS, with vast business holdings in a variety of industries, turned to a versatile business executive like Burke to run the Yankees. Burke, who wore tailored suits made in Rome, was a dashing figure, especially compared with the staid and conservative Yankees. He had been a football star at Penn, a war hero, a drinking buddy of Ernest Hemingway, an OSS agent, and an executive with Ringling Brothers circus, before joining CBS. His job now was to restore a legendary baseball team to its proper place of glory. “I won’t be satisfied,” he said, “until the Yankees are once again the champions of the world.”62

Once in charge, Burke and general manager Lee MacPhail (Larry’s son) smartly rebuilt the organization’s talent level. Nevertheless, despite several years of slowly improving talent, CBS decided to sell. Having purchased the most famous franchise in sports just eight years earlier, CBS was reportedly losing money on the Yankees, though that was not the primary motivation for selling. CBS had bought the team for its famous brand, in order to bring additional prestige to its hugely successful media company. Instead, the team fell from glory and many fans tended to blame the largely unseen corporate managers for the change in fortune. “CBS came to the conclusion,” said a spokesman, “that perhaps it was not as viable for the network to own the Yankees as for some people. Fans get worked up over great men, not great corporations. We came to the realization, I think, that sports franchises really flourish better with people owning them.”63

George Steinbrenner Takes Center Stage

In mid-1972 CBS chairman William S. Paley asked Burke to put together a group to buy the club, and Burke looked for a purchaser that would allow him to continue running the team. Cleveland Indians general manager Gabe Paul introduced Burke to George M. Steinbrenner, the 42-year-old CEO of American Shipbuilding Company who had recently come very close to purchasing his hometown Indians. A decade earlier Steinbrenner had taken over the small Great Lakes shipping company from his father, bought out most of his competitors, and built an empire.

Although hardly a household name, Steinbrenner had been involved with sports teams for many years. Once a track star at Williams College, he was later a football graduate assistant to coach Woody Hayes at Ohio State and had held football coaching positions at Northwestern and Purdue. In the early 1960s he bought the Cleveland Pipers, a team in the short-lived American Basketball League, and made an immediate splash by signing the most coveted college player in the country, Ohio State’s Jerry Lucas. The league soon folded, but a few years later Steinbrenner bought a stake in the Chicago Bulls and began acquiring racehorses.

Burke and Steinbrenner came to a deal quickly, and the formal announcement was made on January 4, 1973. Steinbrenner and several other general partners put up $10 million, $4 million less than CBS had paid eight years earlier. With the stadium about to be substantially renovated, a team coming into contention, decades of tradition to fall back on, and sitting in the biggest market in the country, it was an extraordinary deal. Burke reportedly could have received more money from other bidders, but with Steinbrenner’s group he would be a general partner. More importantly, Burke was led to believe he would continue to run the club as chief executive. GM Lee MacPhail and manager Ralph Houk also remained in their posts.

Just six days after the deal was announced, Steinbrenner held a press conference to introduce the other limited partners, including Gabe Paul, who had been running the Cleveland Indians. The news stunned Burke, who realized that Paul, with more than three decades of experience running baseball teams, would be no mere adviser. Steinbrenner had withheld the news of Paul’s inclusion from Burke, without whom he would not have secured the team. Burke resigned a few months later, after it had become clear that his control would be much more limited than he anticipated. He would not be the last person to underestimate George Steinbrenner.

Burke made his most lasting contribution to the future of New York and the Yankees when he came to a deal with Mayor John Lindsay for the city to thoroughly remodel Yankee Stadium. The 50-year-old ballpark had been deteriorating without significant upkeep for many years until Burke had the interior and exterior painted in 1967. Five years later he made a deal to have the city back a $24 million renovation, the same cost the city had borne to build Shea Stadium for the Mets in 1964. Burke had been aggressively pursued by the officials building new facilities right across the Hudson River in New Jersey and smartly used this leverage with the city. The football Giants, the Yankees’ co-tenants in Yankee Stadium, ultimately decided to abandon New York and move to New Jersey, but Burke had no desire to do so. “Yankee Stadium is the most famous arena since the Roman Colosseum,” he said.64

The renovation ended up costing the city more than $100 million (largely due to major road redesign), but Burke can be said to have saved the Yankees for New York. He worked out a deal to play both the 1974 and 1975 seasons in Shea Stadium, allowing the contractors nearly 2½ years for construction. Ultimately the renovation removed the 105 columns that reinforced the three-tiered grandstand (which had obstructed many views), replaced the roof and all the seats. The stadium reopened on time in 1976, but by then another man was in charge to reap the benefits. The additional revenues from the revamped ballpark would be critical in helping underwrite the team’s aggressive approach to the coming free agency.

Steinbrenner, meanwhile, spent the 1974 season dealing with his own serious legal difficulties. In April he was indicted on 14 felony charges, most stemming from his illegal contributions to the re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon. Although Steinbrenner tried to whitewash his offenses in later years, the facts of the case were pretty clear then and now. In order to circumvent campaign donation limits, Steinbrenner devised a fraudulent laundering scheme at American Shipbuilding: the company gave large “bonuses” to several employees, who were then required to donate that money (less taxes) back to Steinbrenner to funnel to Nixon’s people. Furthermore, Steinbrenner coerced these same employees to lie to the FBI investigators and illegally destroyed documents related to the case. When a couple of his workers made full confessions to the grand jury, the indictments followed. He faced six years in federal prison.65

In late August, Steinbrenner’s lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, worked out a generous deal for his client. In exchange for pleading guilty to both authorizing $25,000 in illegal campaign contributions and conniving to cover up his crimes, Steinbrenner paid $15,000 in fines but avoided jail. In November, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended Steinbrenner from day-to-day operations of the Yankees for two years. The suspension had little teeth — Steinbrenner could not represent the club at league meetings, or conduct business deals with other teams, but he remained very much in charge. “Unless Bowie Kuhn has the telephones bugged,” wrote Red Smith, “there will be nothing to prevent him from consulting with Gabe Paul every hour on the hour.”66 Kuhn himself recognized this: “Of course I knew, and I couldn’t object to his involvement in big money decisions. So long as he didn’t flaunt it.”67 Nevertheless, during his “suspension,” Steinbrenner sat in his owner’s box at Shea Stadium, and could be seen yelling into the dugout if he disagreed with something manager Bill Virdon was doing.

When Steinbrenner acquired the Yankees for $10 million, the purchase included two parking lots that the club flipped to the city, leaving a net purchase price of $8.8 million. At the time of his acquisition, Steinbrenner initially secured a controlling interest and 20 percent of the stock for a cash outlay of only $168,000, raising the rest from a number of limited partners and loans.68 Along with Paul, his partners included a hodgepodge of wealthy investors, including oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt; Tom Hunt, a classmate at Williams and a law partner and backer of Richard Nixon; and John DeLorean, the automobile executive and innovator.69

The team was not profitable during the early years of Steinbrenner’s ownership, particularly before the renovation of Yankee Stadium, and the team found it necessary to make capital calls to meet the team’s obligations. Over the first three years under Steinbrenner, the Yankees owners had to ante up an additional $3.69 million. Finally, in 1976 with the return to the World Series, the team reported a net income of $0.23 million and the capital calls ended. From 1977 through 1979, however, the team again reported losses, though relatively small — less than $1 million per year.70

Naturally several limited partners did not wish to fund their capital calls. In the troubled New York of the 1970s not only was it not obvious that that the team would eventually be highly profitable, but some were also leery of potential liabilities under the loan that helped fund much of the purchase. Like nearly all partnership agreements, the one covering the Yankees had a dilution provision — if an investor didn’t fund when called, he was diluted by twice the amount of the unfunded capital call. When Steinbrenner or other investors funded capital calls on behalf of those who didn’t, their share of the team expanded. By the end of the 1975 season Steinbrenner had increased his ownership interest to around 26.5 percent. Some limited investors chafed at Steinbrenner’s management style. He generally did not feel it necessary to keep the limited partners up to speed on the Yankees’ ever-evolving circumstances, both on and off the field. 71 One of Steinbrenner’s original partners, John McMullen who later owned the Houston Astros, famously quipped, “There’s nothing so limited as being a limited partner of George’s.”72

By the early 1980s Steinbrenner had expanded his share of the ownership to 55 percent, which grew further to around 60 percent by the late 1990s, and roughly 70 percent at the time of his death. Of the original limited partners, the only one left as of this writing (due to transfers and death) was Lester Crown and his family, who own around 13 percent.73

As managing general partner, Steinbrenner had veto power over who could buy the limited-partnership interests in the event a limited partner wanted to sell. Occasionally, a limited partner would complain of this restriction, though the club defended this as necessary to help protect the integrity and reputation of the franchise.74 The limited partners who chose to stay benefited enormously from the massive increase in the value of the franchise over the four-plus decades with the Steinbrenners at the helm.

Kuhn reinstated Steinbrenner on March 1, 1976, perfect timing for the owner. After two years of being substantially outdrawn by the Mets while sharing Shea Stadium, in 1976 the Yankees led the league in attendance as the only AL team to attract over 2 million fans. With free agency being institutionalized in the new collective-bargaining agreement signed during the season, the Yankees were uniquely poised to take advantage of the new state of affairs. They now had a refurbished stadium and the best-drawing team in the league situated in the media capital of the nation. Over the next 40 years Steinbrenner and his front office would use this advantage to unremittingly land many of baseball’s most coveted free agents.

With his aggressive, demanding posture on player acquisition, Steinbrenner was a formidable owner, and when teamed with a quality, assertive general manager the Yankees would continue to deliver as baseball’s winningest franchise, often despite incredible interpersonal drama both in the front office and with the players. When it came time to replace his original GM, Gabe Paul, after winning his first World Series in 1977, Steinbrenner promoted Cedric Tallis, and the Yankees repeated in 1978. But the owner soon tired of Tallis too, and there followed a parade of Yankees general managers, 10 in all over the next 14 years, each one needing to respond to the boss’s temper and whims. Despite a huge monetary advantage, the talent in the Yankees organization slowly slipped away, not to return until the 1990s. In fact, it took a second Steinbrenner suspension, this one lasting from 1990 to 1993, to allow another general manager (Gene Michael) to keep the job more than a couple of years, and when Steinbrenner returned the club was back in contention again.

In December 1986 a man named Howie Spira called George Steinbrenner to peddle dirt on Yankees star outfielder Dave Winfield, with whom Steinbrenner had been feuding for several years, most recently over Steinbrenner’s contractual obligations to make contributions to Winfield’s charitable foundation. Spira, who for a time had access to Winfield through his friendship with Winfield’s former agent Al Frohman, had developed a hatred for the outfielder after his exile from the inner circle. A free-lance radio reporter who would often show up at Yankees and Mets games and a self-proclaimed gambler in debt to loan sharks, Spira claimed he had evidence of shady activities on the part of Winfield’s associates and his foundation.75

After several more calls with Spira, mostly through Steinbrenner’s proxies, the owner and his legal team decided to use Spira’s allegations against the foundation in their legal wrangling with Winfield. All this remained behind the scenes, and Spira, who believed Steinbrenner had promised him $150,000 and a job for his evidence, began to hound Steinbrenner and his associates aggressively to honor the alleged commitment, bemoaning that he was desperate for money to cover gambling debts. Eventually, Steinbrenner capitulated and on January 7, 1990, paid Spira $40,000 in exchange for an agreement that Spira would keep their relationship and payment confidential.76 (A year later Spira would be convicted for extortion for his threatening harassment of Steinbrenner.)

Unfortunately for Steinbrenner, Spira remained bitter over the settlement and pushed his grievances in the press: In March the story of Steinbrenner’s payment broke in the New York newspapers. In addition, several recordings made by Spira of his telephone calls became public. Almost immediately Commissioner Fay Vincent opened an investigation into the payment and Steinbrenner’s association with Spira, assigning MLB investigator John Dowd, famous for investigation of Pete Rose’s gambling, to examine the case.

After a roughly four-month investigation, Vincent concluded that Steinbrenner had maintained an “undisclosed working relationship with a known gambler,” and that he had paid Spira for “negative information” to use against one of his own players. Vincent ruled that such actions violated the rule prohibiting conduct “not to be in the best interests of baseball.” Vincent intended to suspend Steinbrenner for two years, with a three-year probationary period thereafter.77

Steinbrenner, however, didn’t want the term “suspension” to be used on any punishment as it would jeopardize his position as vice president on the US Olympic Committee. Alternatively, Vincent and Steinbrenner agreed that he could step down as the managing general partner with “no further involvement in the day-to-day operations of that club … and will be treated as if he had been placed on the permanent ineligible list with two exceptions.” He would be allowed to “participate in major financial and business decisions of the New York Yankees solely in his capacity as a limited partner,” and he would be able to attend a limited number of major-league games with the commissioner’s approval. Steinbrenner also agreed not to sue. Additionally, Steinbrenner was required to reduce his percentage of ownership from roughly 55 percent to less than 50 percent.78

Steinbrenner initially proposed that his oldest son, Hank, then 33 years old, take over as managing general partner. Hank, however, likely because he didn’t want to appear to be just his father’s vehicle for running the team and the less than unanimous preliminary reaction from the team’s limited partners, declined.79 Vincent vetoed Steinbrenner’s next suggestion, Yankees executive Leonard Kleinman, due to his own taint from the Spira affair. The Kleinman nomination had come at the recommendation of Steinbrenner’s attorney as a way around the agreement not to sue, which Steinbrenner had quickly begun to chafe at; once rejected by Vincent — which they fully expected — Kleinman could sue. 80

In the meantime, the Yankees still needed a managing general partner, finally settling on Robert Nederlander, one of a group of three brothers who were among Steinbrenner’s initial limited partners.81 Upon his approval by Vincent, the 57-year-old theatrical producer and theater owner took charge of the Yankees. And though Steinbrenner continued to find ways to make his wishes known, Nederlander clearly held the reins. On baseball matters he generally deferred to his baseball operations team, and GM Gene Michael was given enough independence to begin rebuilding the ballclub with a new generation of younger ballplayers.

In December 1991 Nederlander, who had accepted the head job more as a favor to Steinbrenner than any real desire for the role and had tired of the Boss’s constant carping, resigned to concentrate on his theatrical interests. In his stead Yankees named Daniel McCarthy, another limited partner and a tax attorney for both Steinbrenner and American Shipbuilding. Vincent had little appetite for McCarthy, who had sued Vincent when he bounced Steinbrenner — alleging a potential loss of value to the franchise without Steinbrenner at the helm — and quashed his nomination. Finally, Vincent and the Yankees agreed upon Steinbrenner’s 31-year-old son-in-law Joe Molloy, who was married to his daughter Jessica.82 Perhaps surprisingly, Molloy ran the Yankees with some independence and skill, while letting his baseball people do their jobs. “He knew what his strong suits were,” remembered Mitch Lukevics, who was the Yankees’ minor-league director. “When he didn’t know something, he asked a lot of questions. He listened to a lot of opinions, and made educated decisions. Bottom line, he gave us the necessary resources to do the job.”83

In July 1992 the commissioner’s office notified Steinbrenner that it was ending his exile but held off permitting him to retake control of the franchise until March 1, 1993. Vincent, beleaguered and under pressure from the Kleinman lawsuit and other controversies within major-league baseball’s ownership fraternity, likely hoped that reinstating Steinbrenner would release some of the pressure. His rupture with the owners soon became hostile and dysfunctional, however, and in September 1992 Vincent resigned. When Steinbrenner returned in March his reappearance was celebrated on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the Boss sitting on a horse dressed as Napoleon. He was back in all his glory.

As Steinbrenner increased the team’s payroll for his championship teams in the late 1990s, he began looking for additional sources of revenue. The club had made a meaningful profit in 1996 when it won the World Series, reporting a $1.4 million net income, but in 1997, when the Yankees lost in the divisional round, they showed an $8.6 million net loss.84 That year Steinbrenner announced a 10-year, $95 million promotional deal with Adidas, alarming the other baseball owners and the commissioner, especially considering that in 1997 a half-dozen teams had total revenue from local sources below $30 million — the Yankees would get nearly a third of this amount per annum in just one licensing deal. Major League Baseball quickly ruled this deal invalid, and declared that it, not the individual teams, held the rights to all logos. Steinbrenner aggressively sued his fellow owners and numerous others, eventually settling several months later. Adidas was admitted as an official Major League Baseball sponsor, and Steinbrenner was allowed to keep his windfall.85

In 1988 the Yankees had signed a 12-year local television deal with the MSG Network for $483 million, by far the largest local television deal up to that time. By the late 1990s, as this agreement neared its expiration and with the Yankees again baseball’s best and most prominent franchise, it became clear that the Yankees broadcast rights were worth even more. Rather than boost the rights fees to the Yankees, during 1998 Cablevision (the MSG Network’s principal owner) negotiated to purchase a 70 percent interest in the team for between $350 million and $368 million, implying a total franchise value of between $500 million and $525 million, well above the previous record when the Los Angeles Dodgers were sold for $311 million. The deal fell through, though, after several months of wrangling, reportedly because the two sides could not agree on the level of control Steinbrenner would retain over the operation of the team.86

Through these and other conversations Steinbrenner came to realize the value of his team to a regional sports network, and he began to consider the possibility of forming his own.

Simultaneously, the owners of the New Jersey Nets of the NBA were hoping to enhance the value and prestige of their franchise. Moreover, one of the Nets owners was a philanthropist who donated large sums to charitable causes in his disadvantaged hometown of Newark. He hoped the Nets’ resurgence could help generate the momentum necessary to build a downtown arena. In one of the more unique deals between sports teams, in February 1999 the Yankees and Nets agreed to merge their franchises into a 50/50 joint venture christened YankeeNets, an entity perfectly aligned for a regional sports network, as the Nets would provide the network with additional winter programming. Under the formation agreement, the Yankees were valued at $600 million and the Nets at $150 million; therefore the Nets owners contributed another $225 million to balance the books, which was distributed to the Yankees owners. Each controlling partnership continued to run its respective franchise. The Yankees had seemingly hit upon on the next generation of professional sports team ownership — multiple local teams under one umbrella to bolster their local television potential.87

A year later YankeeNets raised additional funds by taking on $200 million in high-interest-rate debt: $15 million to cover team operations, $80 million to a debt-service fund to help cover the next three years of interest, and most of the remainder to be distributed among the owners. The debt-service fund was needed because the combined operation was hemorrhaging money, mostly due to huge losses from the Nets. For the 12 months ended September 30, 1999, the combined operations had revenues of $241 million and a net loss of $98.2 million. Of course, much of this was non-cash, but even on a cash-flow basis the new entity was $4.2 million in the red before interest on its then existing debt. For just the Yankees, in 1998 the team reported a net income of $12.7 million on operating earnings of $20.1 million, a nice increase over 1996 and 1997.88

The YankeeNets owners further sold an 8.6 percent stake in the venture for $75 million, implying an increase in value of the combined teams to $872 million. From the three capitalization events over a roughly one-year time frame, Steinbrenner and the Yankees’ limited partners reaped a huge cash payout. But to Steinbrenner’s credit, despite these massive paydays he never skimped on reinvesting in his team — after Steinbrenner’s return in 1993, the Yankees under the Boss consistently maintained baseball’s highest payroll.89

In the spring of 2000 YankeeNets teamed with a subsidiary of IMG to create a network to televise the Yankees and Nets. Unfortunately for the new venture, the MSG Network sued, claiming it had a right of first refusal on the rights fees to carrying Yankees games, and that any agreement with the new venture was prohibited under their contract. After bitter negotiations and outside arbitration, YankeeNets agreed to pay $30 million to the MSG Network to buy themselves out of the contract clause.90

In the summer of 2000 YankeeNets formally established the YES (Yankees Entertainment and Sports) Network as a regional sports powerhouse to carry the Yankees and Nets plus other sports programming. To help capitalize the operation, the group brought in four outside investors: investment firms Goldman Sachs and Quadrangle for $150 million each, and Amos Hostetter Jr. and Leo Hindery Jr. for roughly $20 million each, with Hendry named chief executive. For the total of $340 million, YankeeNets surrendered 40 percent of the network, keeping 60 percent of the enterprise, now valued at $850 million. YankeeNets used much of the $340 million to retire high-rate debt. The new network then negotiated a rights agreement to carry the Yankees and Nets, agreeing to pay the Yankees around $52 million per year.91

But the bitterness over the previous negotiations remained, and the cable operator Cablevision (the majority owner of the MSG Network) refused to include the YES Network in its basic cable package, trimming roughly 2.9 million subscribers (nearly 40 percent of the New York market) from the Yankees reach. Eventually in early 2003 New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer helped mediate a one-year deal under which Cablevision would carry the YES Network. The two sides needed to go to binding arbitration the next year to finally reach a more permanent accord to keep YES on Cablevision.

On March 23, 2004, the same day as the arbitration decision, the Yankees and Nets formally unwound their partnership. The relationship between Steinbrenner and the Nets owners had been contentious from the start — the personalities of the owners grated on each other — and the relationship further deteriorated when the Nets owners wanted to add the NHL’s New Jersey Devils. Steinbrenner insisted that a large percentage of the acquisition occur outside of the YankeeNets entity. Moreover, the increase in local revenue-sharing in baseball from roughly 20 percent to 34 percent in the 2002 collective-bargaining agreement — requiring additional payments by the Yankees for redistribution to the smaller-market franchises — exacerbated these tensions. The divorce became inevitable in the fall of 2003 when the owners decided to sell the Nets and break up. Once the YES Network had been established and stabilized, Steinbrenner and his Nets partners saw little need and had little desire to maintain the joint ownership.92

The divorce settlement allowed the Nets contingent to keep the proceeds from the team’s $300 million sale, while in return the Yankees would get back most of the equity in their franchise. The ownership interests in the YES Network remained unchanged with the YankeeNets investment being distributed pro-rata among the owners. What had appeared revolutionary and prescient only a few years earlier was now just an unworkable clash of disparate personalities. The two franchises didn’t need to have joint ownership of their franchisees to air their games on a regional network and share in its ownership.93

Once the Nets owners had moved on, Steinbrenner and his executives morphed YankeeNets into its successor entity, Yankee Global Enterprises, as the umbrella company to own both the Yankees and the team’s share of the YES Network. The ex-Nets owners retained a minority, nonvoting interest. Technically, the Yankees were owned by Yankee Holdings — the entity controlled by Steinbrenner and including his family and the pre-YankeeNets limited partners — and it was this entity that fell under the YGE umbrella.94

In the 1990s as the lease for Yankee Stadium neared its end, Steinbrenner began angling for a new ballpark. It had been a couple of decades since the remodel of 1970s, and the aging ballpark compared poorly with the new retro ballparks coming on the scene in many markets. Moreover, Steinbrenner disliked the stadium’s location in the Bronx and was lobbying for a site in Manhattan. But as the difficulty of finding a suitable, affordable site in Manhattan emerged once again, Steinbrenner reconciled himself to a new stadium in the Bronx across the street from the existing Yankee Stadium. The huge attendance increase in the late 1990s, jumping well over 3 million in 1999, lessened Steinbrenner’s concern over the Bronx as a stadium location.

In December 2001, as his term was expiring, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced a $1.6 billion plan to build new stadiums for both New York baseball teams. Given all the other issues in New York City at the time, most notably the ongoing recovery from the September 11 attacks, incoming Mayor Michael Bloomberg allowed the stadium proposals to languish. Eventually the Yankees and public authorities negotiated a revised deal for a Bronx site next to the existing Yankee Stadium, with a memorandum of understanding reached in June 2005. The official groundbreaking occurred just over a year later, on August 16, 2006, and the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009.95

Under the stadium financing plan the Yankees were responsible for $800 million, while the public sector covered around $210 million, mostly in the form of infrastructure and neighborhood improvements. When factoring in less-publicized subsidies and other potential savings, such as the deduction available from baseball’s revenue-sharing program, commentators noted that the Yankees’ net contribution was less than the stated amount, but in any case, it was still significant when compared to stadium arrangements elsewhere.96

The new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009 next door to the original. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

Hal Becomes the Boss

Steinbrenner lost consciousness on December 28, 2003, at a memorial service for Hall of Fame quarterback and Cleveland legend Otto Graham. Though Steinbrenner and the Yankees publicly professed that it was just a fainting spell, thereafter the 73-year-old Steinbrenner began to slowly relinquish more authority to his deputies, President Randy Levine, CEO Lonn Trost, and Steinbrenner’s son-in-law Steve Swindal, a process that accelerated after a second overnight hospital stay in October 2006.97

The makeover of the brain trust also brought some tidiness to the front office. General manager Brian Cashman, originally named to post in 1998, quickly found himself besieged by many Yankees executives with the Boss’s ear, several based in Tampa, where Steinbrenner had a home. In October 2005 Steinbrenner signed Cashman to a three-year, $5.5 million extension, and the beleaguered GM explained: “I’m the general manager and everybody within baseball operations reports to me. That’s not how it has operated recently.”98

In 2005, Steinbrenner named Swindal as his heir-apparent to direct the Yankees, though some observers felt one of his sons would eventually be advanced into the role. The question became moot in 2007 when Swindal and Steinbrenner’s daughter Jennifer divorced, effectively terminating Swindal’s stint with the Yankees.99

In September 2007 the Yankees clarified the post-Swindal picture, electing Hal Steinbrenner chairman of Yankee Global Enterprises, with both Hal and Hank being made co-chairmen of the Yankees in July 2008. Their brother-in-law Felix Lopez, married to their sister Jessica, was also added to the Yankee Global Enterprises board of directors.100 Hal’s promotion to the top spot became official in November 2008 when MLB formally designated him as the individual with the Yankees’ controlling interest. Thirty-five years after buying the team, George Steinbrenner had relinquished authority of his beloved franchise to his younger son. Two years later he died at age 80 in Tampa.101

At the time of his death the Yankees were baseball’s most valuable franchise by a considerable margin: According to the Forbes annual team valuation in April, the team was worth $1.6 billion, far outdistancing the second-place Boston Red Sox at $870 million. The team also boasted revenue estimated by Forbes at $441 million, well above the second-place Mets at $268 million. But just as in the days going back to Jacob Ruppert, the Yankees continuously reinvested their profits back into the team: the team’s 2010 payroll of $211 million far exceeded the other franchises; Boston had the next highest payroll at $165 million.102

The Yankees owners also still retained a considerable interest in the extremely valuable YES Network, which in 2006 had revenues of $340.5 million and cash flow of around $186 million.103 Over the four years from 2005 to 2008 the network went through three rounds of capital raises in the debt market, totaling about $2.5 billion, a sizable minority of which was distributed to the partners, including the Yankees, who owned roughly 36 percent.104 In 2012 the partners in the YES Network finally decided to cash out much of their remaining equity, selling 49 percent of the company to News Corporation for $584 million, implying a total enterprise value of equity and debt of roughly $3.8 billion, and reducing the Yankees ownership stake (technically Yankee Global Enterprises) to around 25 percent. In January 2014 News Corporation exercised its option to purchase up to 80 percent of the network, further diluting the Yankees ownership but providing another influx of cash to the owners.105

Last updated: November 28, 2017

DANIEL R. LEVITT is the author of several award-winning books, including “Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way” (2003, with Mark Armour); “Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty” (2008); “The Battle That Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy” (2012); and “In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball” (2015, with Armour). In 2015, he was selected as the receipient of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor. He served as editor of The National Pastime convention journal in 2012, focusing on baseball in Minnesota, and has been President and Officer of the Halsey Hall Chapter. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two boys.

MARK ARMOUR is the founder and longtime (2002-2016) director of SABR’s Baseball Biography Project. He was the recipient of SABR’s highest honor, the Bob Davids Award, in 2008 and the Henry Chadwick Award, honoring baseball’s greatest researchers, in 2014. His book “Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball,” published by the University of Nebraska Press, was a finalist for the prestigious Seymour Medal in 2011, as was “In Pursuit of Pennants,” also published by Nebraska, which he co-wrote with Dan Levitt in 2015.  Mark has written or co-written several other books and many articles for publication. In 2016, he and Chris Dial resurrected SABR’s Baseball Cards Committee.

Notes

Ken Griffey Jr. slides in with the winning run for the Seattle Mariners on Edgar Martinez’s 11th-inning double to beat the New York Yankees 6-5 in Game Five of the American League Division Series on October 8, 1995. The excitement of the Mariners’ first playoff appearance helped fuel a political effort to build a new stadium, Safeco Field, and keep the Mariners in Seattle into the 21st century. (Courtesy of MLB.com)

In many ways, the Seattle Mariners history begins on April 1, 1970, when federal bankruptcy referee Sidney Volinn declared the expansion Seattle Pilots insolvent. It was just six days before Opening Day, but the decision cleared the way for the club to relocate to Milwaukee, with an ownership group headed by a car dealer, Bud Selig.

A few months before the Pilots departed, after correctly assessing Seattle’s baseball situation as dire, the state’s attorney general, Slade Gorton, and King County Executive John Spellman asked Seattle attorney William Dwyer if he would represent the state and the county in making a legal effort to keep the Pilots in Seattle.1

Dwyer’s case was filed in the fall of 1970. He argued that a contract had been created between the American League, on one side, and the state, county and city — in effect, the people — on the other, and his contention that the American League had violated it. He alleged breach of contract, fraud and antitrust violations, even though baseball was exempt from prosecution under antitrust law.

Dwyer argued that the “implied contract” called for the American League to place an expansion franchise in Seattle and keep it there. In return, citizens, through the government, would spend money to repair an aging Sicks Stadium for the team’s temporary use and also support a $40 million bond issue to fund a domed stadium.

The case didn’t get to trial until January of 1976 because it was continued a number of times in order to give the American League and Washington state’s government entities an opportunity to reach a settlement with the aim of securing for Seattle a new major-league team.

Confident that major-league baseball would return to Seattle within a few years, King County built the multipurpose Kingdome, which would become home to the NFL‘s expansion Seattle Seahawks in 1976.

At trial, the American League offered to give Seattle an expansion baseball franchise in return for dropping the suit, and details were ironed out over the next year. To keep the league with an even number of teams, a formal expansion proceeding was held, with a second team, the Blue Jays, being awarded to the city of Toronto (also allowing both leagues to have a team in Canada, the National League‘s Montreal Expos having been established in 1969).2

The expansion vote by the American League, conducted in advance of any settlement, was held on January 14, 1976. American League owners voted 11 to 1 to place an expansion franchise in Seattle for the 1977 season provided that owners could be found and that the city provide a suitable ballpark.

On February 6, satisfied with the Kingdome as a suitable baseball facility, the AL awarded an expansion franchise to a group headed by Seattle businessman Lester Smith and entertainer Danny Kaye. Other partners included Walter Schoenfeld, Steven Golub, Jim Walsh, and Jim Stillwell. The partners paid $5.53 million for the franchise.

The formal settlement of the case, however, was not reached until February 14, as the Seattle legal team argued that the plaintiffs were entitled to damages, including reimbursement of legal fees. Considering the success of Dwyer in presenting his case and the overall damages the American League faced if it lost, the league on February 14 agreed to pay damages to the State of Washington, King County and the City of Seattle. It marked the first time that a major-league franchise had been secured through litigation.3

American League President Leland S. MacPhail (left) awards the Seattle Mariners’ charter to co-owners Danny Kaye (center) and Lester Smith. In addition to being a Hollywood star, Kaye co-owned a California-based radio network with Smith. (Courtesy of David S. Eskenazi)

Initial Ownership

When Seattle was awarded the new baseball franchise in 1976, the investor group financed the team for $6.5 million, giving the team some initial working capital beyond the franchise fee.4 Lester Smith had built a radio-station group with business partner Danny Kaye, the Hollywood entertainer. The business was known as Kaye-Smith Enterprises and also included a concert-promotion company (Concerts West), a recording studio and film-production company (Kaye-Smith Productions, and a radio syndication company).5

Other owners included Stanley Golub, a local jewelry wholesaler; Walter Schoenfeld, founder of the designer jeans company Brittania Sportswear and a founding partner of the Seattle Supersonics and soccer’s original Seattle Sounders; and James Stillwell, owner of Stillwell Construction, which was active in highway construction in the Pacific Northwest.

The formation of the Seattle Mariners was the beginning of a franchise whose general lack of success on the field has not necessarily matched its historical accomplishments. Despite never making a World Series appearance, and despite a long-term losing record, this franchise has generated interest beyond its accomplishments on the field. From unique plays to special players to a few exceptional seasons, the Mariners have earned attention beyond their on-field success, or lack thereof.

During the early years, the fans’ image of the team centered on poor play and odd ownership decisions that invariably kept the team downtrodden. In those days, player moves were often made to make a brief boost in attendance or to save money, without always trying to improve the performance of the team. Starting with the ownership of Jeff Smulyan and then onto the Nintendo-based and local ownership groups, the team evolved into a community-based asset with many successful players.

The original ownership group set about creating its initial management team in preparation for its first season, to begin in April 1977. Their first move came on April 18, 1976, when the Mariners named Lou Gorman, then an assistant general manager with the Kansas City Royals, as their first director of baseball operations. Gorman’s roles with Kansas City were numerous and his initial position with them was in 1968, when he was named their first scouting director. Gorman brought to the Mariners experience in building an organization from scratch.6

On June 2 the Mariners named Dick Vertlieb, instrumental in the early development of the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics and NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, as the club’s first executive director, or general manager.

At this time, the team still lacked a nickname, which was solved on August 24, 1976, when the team selected “Mariners” as the winning entry among the more than 600 suggestions in a name-the-team contest. Multiple fans submitted the nickname, but the team determined that Roger Szmodis of Bellevue, Washington, provided the best reason. “I’ve selected Mariners because of the natural association between the sea and Seattle and her people, who have been challenged and rewarded by it,” said Szmodis, who received two season tickets and an all-expenses-paid trip to an American League city on the West Coast.7

With their executive team hired and a team name selected, the club began to prepare to field a team. On September 3, 1976, they selected Darrell Johnson as their first manager from a candidate pool that included Bob Lemon, Joe Altobelli, and Vern Rapp. Johnson had most recently been the manager of the Boston Red Sox, fired after 86 games of the 1976 season. His real success, however, was the season before, when he led the Red Sox to the pennant and skippered the team through the exciting seven-game World Series against the Cincinnati Reds and was named the Manager of the Year by The Sporting News.

The key day to building a team was November 5, 1976, when the Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays, the two teams set to begin play in 1977, had their expansion draft. Each team drafted 30 players from the other American League clubs, paying a fee of $175,000 for each player drafted (the fee was included in the amount of the expansion fee described above). Existing American League teams were allowed to protect 15 players in the first round, plus three more after each of the first three rounds (and two more players after the fourth round).8 With their first pick, the Mariners selected outfielder Ruppert Jones of Kansas City.

Spring training was conducted in Tempe, Arizona, and games were played at Tempe Diablo Stadium. This was the same site that the Seattle Pilots used in 1969 and 1970, prior to their move to Milwaukee. It remained the Mariners’ site through 1993, when they moved to a shared site in Peoria, Arizona.

On April 6, 1977, the new Seattle Mariners played their inaugural game, against the California Angels. It was played in the Kingdome in front of a sold-out crowd of 57,762. Seattle’s starting pitcher, Diego Segui, was the only player to play for both the Seattle Pilots and the Seattle Mariners. (He had pitched the ninth (and final) inning of what would be the final game in Seattle Pilots history.9) Segui allowed six runs in the first 3⅔ innings, and the Mariners went on to lose 7-0, the mirror image of the Pilots’ home-debut win against Chicago eight years earlier. It wasn’t often pretty, but it was major league baseball.

The Mariners, as an expansion team, struggled in their early years to build a successful team. After a relatively successful first year at the gate, attendance dwindled each year under the initial ownership group and never topped 900,000 after the first year. By the end of 1980, the team was cash-strapped and weary. While accepting a 1981 award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Stanley Golub, then a member of ownership, quipped, “When Danny Kaye and Lester Smith came to ask me to become involved in the Mariners, they said it would be a new chapter in my life. Little did I know it would be Chapter 11.”10

In 1979, in an effort to boost interest in baseball in Seattle, the All-Star Game was hosted in the Kingdome. Bruce Bochte was the Mariners’ sole representative and he entered the game in the sixth as a pinch-hitter, singling in a run. The game was a seesaw affair, with the game’s MVP, Dave Parker, throwing out two runners from right field. In the ninth inning, the National League scored the go-ahead run and held on to win 7-6. The thrilling event did not translate into greater fan interest; the team continued to struggle to win consistently.

A ‘First Nighter’ certificate from the Seattle Mariners’ inaugural game at the Kingdome on April 6, 1977. A sellout crowd of 57,762 watched as the Mariners behind Diego Segui lost 7-0 to Frank Tanana and the California Angels. (Courtesy of David S. Eskenazi)

George Argyros

On January 14, 1981, Southern California real-estate developer George Argyros agreed to purchase 90 percent of the Mariners for $10.2 million. (He subsequently bought the other 10 percent for $2.9 million.) Argyros assumed the Kingdome lease after negotiating a provision that removed his personal liability for bankruptcy.11

During his ownership, Argyros refused to put money into the franchise and constantly threatened to move the Mariners elsewhere. He famously tried to get the front office to draft Mike Harkey over Ken Griffey Jr. in 1987. Argyros hired executives from his other industries to run the team and one offseason gave his players pay cuts and suggested they attend seminars on the value of positive thinking.12

In late 1981 there was a rumor that Argyros was attempting to unload the team he had bought less than a year before.13 While he denied this, he began continual complaints about the Kingdome, its lease, and the lack of revenue sources that would allow him to field more competitive teams, all ultimately using threats of relocation.

In 1985, Argyros denied a report that the team might move or declare bankruptcy. The report suggested that the team was looking at possible bankruptcy or a move to another city unless attendance increased and the club got a better deal for use of the Kingdome.14

On March 26, 1987, Argyros announced he had offered to buy the San Diego Padres and that it has been accepted subject to “a final definitive agreement” and league approval. He said he wanted to sell the Mariners “as soon as possible.” This announcement shocked baseball and enraged Seattle fans. His relations with the city, county, and fan base deteriorated even further. Jim Street of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote that San Diego was “about the luckiest city since Beirut.”15

Immediately after the announcement, the city and the county began to study plans to keep the team in Seattle. On April 10, 1987, Governor Booth Gardner signed a law allowing Seattle or King County to buy the Mariners as a last resort. On that same day, Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth ordered Argyros to remove himself from the club’s day-to-day operations.

On May 13, 1987, Bruce Engel, a Portland, Oregon, attorney and lumber-company owner, said he’d made a $37 million offer for the team, but had been rejected by Argyros. Engel said his offer was contingent on significant minority participation from the Seattle business community. He said he would have kept the team in Seattle.16 Argyros held on.

Finally, on August 22, 1989, Argyros announced that he would sell the team to Indianapolis broadcast executives Jeff Smulyan and Michael Browning for $76 million, nearly six times what he had paid in 1981.

Jeff Smulyan

When Smulyan bought the Mariners, he was asked if, at $76 million, he had overpaid. “People say it’s the Greater Fool Theory, but we looked at the revenues and we had an idea of what we’d have to pay,” he replied. But he added: “I don’t know if the price was as much science as it was instinct.” In other words, he really wanted it.17

Smulyan had founded Emmis Broadcasting in 1979 and served as chairman and CEO since 1981. Emmis had pioneered a hugely successful new format with WFAN, New York, the nation’s first 24/7 sports radio station.

Smulyan was a baseball fanatic, and he became a quasi-hero in Seattle for buying the team from the unpopular George Argyros. However, Smulyan couldn’t overcome the challenge of making a professional team financially viable in a smaller media market. While he was more amiable to the community and marketing was focused, he lacked the deep financial pockets necessary to build a more competitive team. His optimism that he could make baseball successful in Seattle was undercut by two financial reversals. First, he had believed that the financial penalty from the collusion lawsuits filed by the players union would be no more than $1 million. The actual penalty was $10.77 million. Second, payroll skyrocketed from $8 million, when he purchased the team, to $23 million after only two years of his ownership.18

Compounding Smulyan’s financial dilemma was the lease for use of the Kingdome. He quickly came to Argyros’ conclusion that the Kingdome was a substandard venue for fielding a competitive baseball team.

The Kingdome was a domed, multipurpose stadium built just south of the downtown area of Seattle (Sodo) in anticipation of obtaining an NFL and/or a major-league baseball franchise. Construction began in 1972 through voter-approved bond funding of $40 million. It opened in 1976.

Over the years, very few improvements had been made. When Smulyan purchased the team in the late 1980s, he began additions such as an upgraded sound system and a new scoreboard. However, in general the overall lack of improvements led the Smulyan and the other tenants of the stadium to begin to lobby for construction of a new ballpark and to threaten relocation if this wasn’t approved.

Despite significant attendance increases, and the Mariners’ first winning season, in 1991, revenues remained well below those of other American League teams. After steady losses under his ownership, Smulyan announced that the Mariners were for sale. It was rumored that he wanted to move the team to Tampa.19

In his announcement, on December 4, 1991, Smulyan said that the team was for sale for $100 million. He had been ordered by Security Pacific Bank to repay a loan of nearly $40 million or find a buyer for the team.20 Smulyan said the team would be offered to local buyers first, which was required by its lease with the Kingdome. Officials in St. Petersburg, Florida, who had failed to gain a National League expansion franchise, said they were set to lure the Mariners to Florida to play in the Florida Suncoast Dome.

Independently, Slade Gorton, now in the U.S. Senate, contacted prospective purchasers, including Hiroshi Yamauchi, owner of Nintendo Co., in an effort to keep the team in Seattle.21

Under the terms of the Kingdome lease, local investors had 120 days to come up with a purchaser to keep the team in Seattle. Senator Gorton, in his capacity as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, had worked to assist Nintendo, a Japanese-owned company with U.S. headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to curtail counterfeiting of their video games. Early in December 1991, he called Howard Lincoln, senior vice president of Nintendo’s American division, to ask for a meeting to talk about an investment.

On December 23, 1991, Gorton received a call from Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa, head of Nintendo’s American division and Yamauchi’s son-in-law. Nintendo was very grateful to the United States and to the State of Washington for its successes there. If Seattle needed $100 million to keep baseball in town, Yamauchi would contribute it out of his own pocket.22

Gorton was thrilled with the offer, but he realized that local ownership was instrumental to keeping baseball in Seattle for the long haul. He set to work putting together a group of local investors to join Nintendo as minority partners. A key goal was to overcome opposition to foreign ownership, especially a Japanese owner. He and Howard Lincoln brought in John Ellis, then head of Puget Sound Power and Light (later Puget Sound Energy), to craft the plan.

On the brink of leaving the Northwest, the Mariners received an offer from Yamauchi to contribute $75 million toward the purchase of the team as a gift to Seattle. Controversy ensued when some baseball traditionalists raised their voices against what they saw as selling out America’s pastime to the Japanese. Major League Baseball ultimately agreed to a 60 percent acquisition by Yamauchi on condition that he limit his voting interest to 49 percent. Local investors contributed the remainder of the $125 million total sale price.

The Kingdome was home to the Seattle Mariners from 1977 to 1999. (Courtesy of David S. Eskenazi)

Nintendo

On July 1, 1992, under the restrictions set forth by Major League Baseball, The Baseball Club of Seattle, LP, assumed control of the Mariners. Chuck Armstrong returned as president and chief operating officer, while the board of directors included John Ellis (chairman), Minoru Arakawa (representing Hiroshi Yamauchi, whose reluctance to fly kept him from ever attending a single Mariners game), Chris Larson, Howard Lincoln, John McCaw, Frank Shrontz, and Craig Watjen. Rumblings also began about the need for the Mariners to have a new ballpark to truly attain long-term success in Seattle.23

The new group’s first full season of control saw them begin to put the pieces in place for future Mariners success, on the field and at the box office. It began with the hiring of Lou Piniella, who would go on to become the most successful and longest tenured manager in Mariners’ history.

This new ownership group would burn through $77 million in losses during their first seven seasons and received criticism from the media and some sectors of the public over the fight to get a new ballpark approved and built. But the singular goal of this management team was to keep the Mariners in Seattle, which they ultimately achieved. Additionally, over time, the stability of this ownership group would allow the Mariners to grow into a vital local team, as judged by positive community support, buttressed with a few outstanding seasons.

In 1993 Peoria, Arizona, finalized an agreement between the city, the Mariners and the San Diego Padres to build the Peoria Sports Complex.24 This was the first spring-training site to host two major-league teams. It contained 12 practice fields, two team clubhouses, and office facilities for both teams. The site has since become a destination for Seattle fans looking to escape the wet winters of the Pacific Northwest. A 2014 upgrade, which coincided with a lease extension until 2034, renovated clubhouses, added dining space and improved the fan experience.

The 1994 season proved to be a debacle. The season was shortened by the players strike, although by game 65, Ken Griffey Jr. had already hit 30 home runs. At the time of the strike, the Mariners, despite a record of 49-63, were only two games out of first place in the American League West Division. Then the roof fell in, literally. On July 19, 1994, an hour before the Mariners were to host the Baltimore Orioles; a four-foot-long acoustical ceiling tile fell 180 feet from the roof of the 18-year-old Kingdome. Additional tiles fell and before long it was realized that all 40,000 fiberboard tiles needed to be replaced before the ballpark could be used again.25

The Mariners were forced to play the last 20 games of the 1994 season on the road after the players union vetoed playing the “home” games at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia, or some neutral site, as the union believed its members should play only in major-league venues. The extended road trip could have lasted over two months, but was shortened by the players strike, which began on August 12.26 It was the team’s longest road trip ever — 20 games in 21 days spanning 10,425 miles. “It was the longest road trip, the biggest laundry bill, and the most suitcases,” Edgar Martinez said with a smile. The incident further inflamed the debate about the Kingdome’s suitability as a baseball facility and the Mariners’ quest for a new ballpark.27

The next year, 1995, turned out to be a critical one for the Mariners, with ups and downs on the field, the return from the players’ strike, playoff drama as exciting as ever seen in sports, and the off-the-field angst of Kingdome replacement votes and local politics.

It began with the suspension of the strike on April 2, 1995. Under the terms of an injunction issued by Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the players and owners were to be bound to the terms of the expired collective-bargaining agreement until a new one could be reached. The start of the season was postponed for three weeks for an abbreviated spring-training period, after which the teams would play a 144-game season instead of the normal 162.28

On March 30, 1994, King County executive Gary Locke had appointed a task force to assess the need for a new ballpark to replace the rapidly deteriorating Kingdome. Many feared that the Mariners would leave Seattle if a new one wasn’t built. In January 1995, the 28-member task force recommended to the King County Council that the public should be involved in the financing of the ballpark. The task force concluded that a sales-tax increase of 0.01 percent would be sufficient to fund the ballpark. King County held a special election in September 1995, asking the public to approve the sales-tax increase.29

The voting came amid a run to the Mariners’ first playoff appearance. The run began on August 24. That day, in the first of a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Griffey blasted a two-run walk-off home run to win the game. From that day, the Mariners went 25-11 to the end of the regular season, seemingly discovering a new hero each night. “Refuse to Lose” became the mantra of the team and its fans, as the Mariners battled from their deficit to catch the Angels and force a one-game playoff.30

On September 19, while the Mariners pulled off another “Refuse to Lose” win, the King County referendum to fund a new ballpark failed by a tenth of a percentage point. It was remarkable that the vote count was so close, as polls only a month earlier had shown support from only a third of voters. The 1,082-vote margin of defeat (out of nearly half a million cast), however, had signaled a dramatic change of public opinion. County officials would meet over the next several months to draft funding plans for a new ballpark despite the ballot failure. 

The team entered some of its greatest years. Under the leadership of Lou Piniella, they built their team around Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Edgar Martinez. After the magical 1995 season and building on the momentum of the dramatic playoff series against the Yankees, the Mariners and their supporters in the community were able to pressure the Seattle City Council into a special session in which they devised a new stadium plan that sidestepped the results of the previous year’s failed ballot initiative and approved construction of a retractable-roof ballpark in downtown Seattle.

On October 14, 1995, a special session of the state legislature authorized a different funding package for a new ballpark that included a food and beverage tax in King County restaurants and bars, a car-rental surcharge in King County, a ballpark admissions tax, a credit against the state sales tax, and sale of a special stadium license plate. Nine days later, the King County Council approved the funding package and established the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District to own the ballpark and oversee design and construction. Taxpayer suits opposing the legislative actions and the taxes failed in the courts. The new ballpark would open less than 3½ years later.31

The excitement of the 1995 season carried over at the box office, as the team’s attendance exceeded 2.7 million in 1996.

On September 9, 1996, the site was selected for the new ballpark, just south of the Kingdome. In late fall, several members of the King County Council asked the Mariners to consider postponing construction and the opening of the projected $384.5 million stadium. In response, the Mariners said they would either sell the team or move it from Seattle.32

“Reluctantly, after more than five years of work, (we) have concluded that there is insufficient political leadership in King County to complete the new stadium by 1999,” the owners said in a five-page statement that Mariners CEO John Ellis read at a downtown news conference. “This is not a bluff.”33 After a public outcry, the King County Council voted to reaffirm its cooperation with the Mariners in building a new ballpark, and the Mariners contributed $145 million to cover cost overruns, ending this short-lived threat.34

Construction officially began on March 8, 1997, with a ground-breaking ceremony featuring Ken Griffey Jr. The construction, overseen by Mariners chief financial officer Kevin Mather, who later became president of the Mariners, continued until July 1999, when the new ballpark officially opened.

Ken Griffey Jr. was the face of the Seattle Mariners, and arguably all of baseball, in the 1990s. The Kid’s popularity helped usher in a new era for the franchise, including the building of a new, open-air ballpark called Safeco Field. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

In 1999 the Mariners hosted two home openers and one stadium finale. The first home opener was the traditional Opening Day, April 5, in the Kingdome against the Chicago White Sox. On June 27 the team played its final game in the Kingdome when more than 56,000 fans watched the Mariners defeat the Chicago White Sox.35 Griffey hit the final home run during that game. Nearly three weeks later, on July 15, the second home opener was played, christening Safeco Field.

Seattle’s new ballpark was built to resemble the great ballparks of the past. It was open-air and had real grass, but also featured a retractable roof that covered the ballpark without enclosing it. The roof kept fans, 47 percent of whom come from outside the immediate Puget Sound area, protected from the wind and rain.36

The 2000 season saw lots of new faces who would make positive impacts for the Mariners over the next few seasons. The key to the offseason was the trade of Griffey to the Cincinnati Reds.

During 1999 Griffey had become disenchanted with the Mariners and demanded a trade. He told the club that Seattle had become inconvenient for his family, which lived most of the year in Florida.37 He declined a $148 million extension. As a 10-and-5 player (10 years in the majors, 5 consecutive years with the team), he had a right to veto any trade, and exercised that right in potential deals with the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves before agreeing to a trade to his hometown Cincinnati Reds.38

The Mariners’ 25th season since their inception, 2001, was a remarkable year in which they tied the major-league record for wins by an American League team, with a record of 116-46. They led the majors in runs scored and fewest runs allowed. Fans adopted a slogan “2 outs, so what,” because the Mariners were so successful scoring runs after there were two outs. They scored a franchise-record 339 after there were two outs.39

The season actually began in the offseason. While they lost Alex Rodriguez to free agency, the Mariners signed Ichiro Suzuki, who had played for the Orix Blue Wave of the Japan Pacific League.40 They followed by signing second baseman Bret Boone, an original Mariner draft pick in 1990.41

The team had a strong lineup and deep bench. It led the league in hitting, pitching, and defense. Four starting pitchers won 15 games or more and Kazahiro Sasaki saved 45 games. The 2001 All-Star Game, played at Safeco Field, saw eight Mariners selected to play, including four starters. Ichiro Suzuki won the batting title and was voted both the American League MVP and Rookie of the Year. Bret Boone, who hit 37 home runs and drove in 141 runs, was third in the MVP voting and set a record for most runs driven in by a second baseman. Lou Piniella was the American League Manager of the Year.

But the team lost to the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

During this period, the team had the benefit of an enchanting new ballpark and a period of winning teams, so the Mariners were among the league leaders in attendance. In three consecutive years attendance exceeded 3 million, with a high of 3.27 million in 2003.

In 2004 Yamauchi ceded control of his shares to Nintendo of America for estate-planning purposes so the team could continue functioning normally in the event of his death.

Attendance remained strong in 2004, approaching nearly 3 million fans. However, performance on the field fell badly; the team lost 30 more games than in the previous season, finishing last in the American League West at 63-99.

From 2004 through 2006, the Mariners experienced losing seasons, and attendance correspondingly dropped. The decrease averaged over 250,000 fans each year. The 2007 season saw a reversal on the field (88-74, second in the NL West) and a reversal at the gate (2.67 million, up 200,000). Despite the team’s improvement, there were concerns about the size of the payroll, which exceeded $105 million. It was essential that, at a minimum, the team challenge to make the playoffs. Both the ownership and the fans were concerned about the team’s performance and expected more.

Overcoming the concerns about payroll, there was hope and anticipation about the 2008 season after the Mariners’ success in 2007. The owners demonstrated their endorsement by taking on extra salary, highlighted by the addition of pitchers Erik Bedard and Carlos Silva. Obtaining these players resulted in the loss of key minor-league talent.42 However, the team fell flat during the 2008 season, as Bedard pitched in only 15 games and Silva ended up with a 4-15 record and an ERA of 6.46.

That season, the team started slowly and never recovered, finishing with a 61-101 record, last in the American League West. The season was marred by key leadership changes, starting with the firing of general manager Bill Bavasi on June 16 and the appointment of Lee Pelekoudas, the team’s vice president/associate general manager, as the interim GM. “Change is in order,” Mariners CEO Howard Lincoln said. “We have determined new leadership is needed in the GM position. With a new leader will come a new plan and a new approach. A search will begin immediately for a permanent GM, and Lee will be a candidate for the position.”43

On October 22 Milwaukee Brewers executive Jack Zduriencik, who was most notable for his drafting skills and was credited with turning the Brewers into a playoff team, was named the Mariners general manager.44

Fan enthusiasm had been on the wane for several years. Attendance fell below 2 million in 2011 for the first time since 1995 and dropped to as low as 1.7 million in 2013.

On September 19, 2013, Hiroshi Yamauchi died. He was 85 years old and had never attended a live Mariners game, including declining to travel from his home in Kyoto to Tokyo in March 2012 when the Mariners played a series of exhibition games there and later opened their season against the Oakland Athletics.

However, Yamauchi had retained titular control. His death meant Lincoln, the former Nintendo lawyer and cherished Yamauchi friend and confidant, retained almost full control and decision-making power in the organization.45

In recent years, powered by the earning capability of Safeco Field, the value of the Mariners had surged. The team in early 2013 partnered with DirecTV to form Root Sports NW, a regional sports network that covered six states and was believed to add at least $200 million to the team’s value. The Mariners’ official valuation would rank eighth in baseball on the annual Forbes list, nestled between the $1.6 billion St. Louis Cardinals and the $1.34 billion Los Angeles Angels.46

John Stanton

This led Nintendo, which had retained majority ownership of the club, to consider selling the franchise. On April 27, 2016, a 17-member local group led by John Stanton bought a majority interest in the baseball team in a deal that valued the team at $1.4 billion. While Nintendo sold its majority interest, it kept a 10 percent minority interest in the club.47

Stanton, who replaced Howard Lincoln as chairman and CEO, was raised in the Seattle area. He was a wireless industry pioneer who worked with John McCaw to form the first nationwide cellular network in the 1980s. He also led Western Wireless and VoiceStream Wireless, the predecessor to T Mobile.

Marketing, Promotions and Fan Experience

Part of the character of the team has been ownership’s ability to create a positive fan experience. The goal was to create a friendly and lively atmosphere at the ballpark. The team also looked to translate this atmosphere to its broadcasts, both on television and on the radio. This goal was confirmed as the team garnered excellent ratings for televised games.48

The marketing focus began under the ownership of Jeff Smulyan. After he sold the club in 1991, the marketing and community focus was continually enhanced, especially as the team become ensconced in its new ballpark, enjoyed some on-field success and removed the threat of relocation.

The marketing plan included highly regarded TV commercials and unique promotions. Beginning early in their existence, the Mariners used team personnel to build its personality and improve fan recognition. Commercials were initially shown each year during spring training. Examples of these ads can seen here.

On April 13, 1990, the Mariners unveiled its first mascot, the Mariner Moose. The Moose was selected after a contest in which more than 2,500 entries were submitted by children 14 and under from throughout the Pacific Northwest. The winning idea came from Ammon Spiller, a fifth-grader from Central Elementary School in Ferndale, Washington, who wrote: “I chose the Moose because they are funny, neat and friendly. The Moose would show that the Mariners enjoy playing and that they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. It shows they’re having fun no matter what the situation.”49

Over the years, besides traditional ballpark fare, the team has offered several creative food items or eating establishments at the ballpark:

• The Ichiroll, a sushi roll made of spicy tuna with black sesame seeds, wasabi, and daikon radish sprouts and named after Ichiro Suzuki.
• Edgar’s Cantina, a two-level restaurant and bar located on the Home Run Porch, named after Edgar Martinez.
• In 2017, the team introduced Oaxacan chapulines, or toasted grasshoppers covered in chili-lime salt, which sell for $4 for a 4-ounce cup.
• Ivar’s, a prominent Northwest seafood restaurant that offers menu items such as clam chowder, salmon sandwich and the Ivar dog.

The team has always offered traditional promotions to bring fans into the ballpark, such as bat day, little league days and bobbleheads. The team has also created many unique promotions such as the following:

• Funny nose and glasses — Former Mariners outfielder Tom Paciorek was well known for his sense of humor. When the Mariners were creating their commercials for 1981, they produced a spot promoting Jacket Night that had Paciorek asking, “What am I going to do with 30,000 pairs of funny nose glasses?” The Mariners say the spot generated many calls and letters from fans wanting to know when Funny Nose Glasses Night would be. In fact, some fans came to the Jacket Night game and were disappointed, as they wanted a pair of funny nose glasses. They finally got them in 2012 when the Mariners held a special day to celebrate their 35th anniversary.50
• Buhner Buzz — Of all the Mariners promotions, perhaps the most popular was Buhner Buzz Cut night. In a celebration of outfielder Jay Buhner’s signature bald pate, all bald fans got in free, and others could get their head shaved outside the ballpark for free admission to the game. It was first held at the Kingdome in 1994 and every year through 1999, then again in 2001. Buhner even buzzed some fans himself. Over the years, more than 22,000 people took advantage of the buzz.51
• King’s Court — In 2011 the Mariners launched the King’s Court. Whenever Felix Hernandez pitched, fans could buy tickets for a special section, a yellow T-shirt and a yellow “K” card. During the game, a chef brings a turkey wing to the most spirited fan in the section.
• Beard hat — With so many players (and Seattle hipsters) sporting facial hair, someone thought it would be fun to give away a knit hat with faux facial hair. Needless to say, Beard Hat Night was a hit.
• Turn ahead the clock — Inspired by the Back to the Future movies, in 1998 marketing director Kevin Martinez (now a club vice president) came up with Turn Ahead the Clock night. It featured the Mariners and Royals in futuristic uniforms designed with the help of Ken Griffey Jr. As ESPN recounted, the game featured the Kingdome getting renamed the Biodome for the night, a ceremonial first pitch delivered by a robot from the University of Washington, and a first pitch thrown out by James Doohan, who played Scotty on the original Star Trek, making his way to the mound in a DeLorean, the auto that was featured in the movies.
• Larry Bernandez — This character was a Felix Hernandez alter-ego born from a commercial released in 2011 in which Hernandez disguised himself to try to pitch more often. From this commercial, the Mariners continued to promote Bernandez, including a Larry Bernandez bobblehead giveaway, a Facebook page, and a twitter feed.
• Barry White night, August 6, 2000 — White threw out the ceremonial first pitch and was the public-address announcer for part of the game.

During the seventh-inning Stretch, following the traditional chorus of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, the Kingsmen’s version of the cult song “Louie Louie” is played.

Robert Ruvkun was an employee of the Kingdome in the early 1990s when he began dancing during a game against the Minnesota Twins. He was encouraged to take the act out into the stands and became known as “Bad Dancer.” After he was no longer a Mariner employee, he continued to attend five to ten games each season and was highlighted on the scoreboard when his song was played between innings. He performed in Cooperstown at a Mariners party when Ken Griffey Jr. was inducted into the Hall of Fame.52

In 2007 television color commentator Mike Blowers noticed that a spectator had dropped his fries in an attempt to catch a foul ball. He and play-by-play announcer Dave Sims sent an intern down with free garlic fries. After this occurred, the Mariners rallied and won the game. The next game, a different spectator brought a sign to Safeco Field asking Blowers for free fries. Blowers obliged, and the M’s went on to score five runs that inning, winning 9-4. They also won the rest of the games on that homestand. Fans began asking Mike Blowers for Rally Fries and a tradition was born. (Rally Fries were retired in 2012.)53

For several years through 2015, several members of the Safeco Field grounds crew dance to a popular song. The choreographed routine changed over time.

Last revised: October 23, 2018

Safeco Field has been home of the Seattle Mariners since 1999. (Photo by David Schott via Flickr.com. Creative Commons, CC BY 2.0)

Notes

1 David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman, “Wayback Machine: Dwyer KO’s American League,” SportsPressNW, October 25, 2011, http://sportspressnw.com/2124781/2011/wayback-machine-bill-dwyer-kos-american-league.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Baseball Club of Seattle LP, International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 50 (Farmington Hills, Michigan: St. James Press, 2003).

5 Lester M. Smith obituary, Seattle Times, October 27, 2012.

6 Larry Stone, “Former Mariners GM Lou Gorman,” Seattle Times, April 1, 2011.

7 David B. Bissell. Can You Name That Team? (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 64.

8 MLB Expansion Drafts History, https://baseball-reference.com/draft/1976-expansion-draft.shtml.

9 Seattle Mariners Baseball Information Department, From the Corner of Edgar & Dave, marinersblog.mlblogs.com/on-this-date-mariners-play-inaugural-game-4984af8e53e3.

10 Carol Beers, “Stanley Golub, 85; Jeweler Was Part Owner of Mariners,” Seattle Times, October 19, 1998.

11 SPNW Staff, Mariners: Ownership, Organizational Timeline, sportspressnw.com/2163322/2013/mariners-ownership-organizational-timeline.

12 David Schoenfield, “The Top 10 Worst Owners in MLB History,” ESPN.com, June 27, 2011.

13 UPI Archives, “George Argyros, Principal Owner of the Seattle Mariners, Denied…,” December 1, 1981.

14 UPI Archives, “Seattle Mariners Owner George Argyros Friday Denied a Report…,” February 1, 1985.

15 SPNW Staff, Mariners: Ownership, Organizational Timeline.

16 “Mariners’ Owner Rejects $37-Million Bid,” Los Angeles Times May 13, 1987.

17 Richard Sandomir. “Mariners’ Ex-Owners Make Off with Booty,” New York Times, June 12, 1992.

18 Glen Drosendahl. “A Group of Local Investors Announces Plans to Buy the Seattle Mariners on January 23, 1992,” HistoryLink.org, Essay 9562.

19 Mike McKay. “The Unlikely Champion Who Saved the Seattle Mariners,” Seattle Times, May 11, 2016.

20 Larry LaRue. “Owner Scapegoat in Mariners’ Financial Woes,” McClatchy News Service, August 25, 1991.

21 Ibid.

22 McKay.

23 FundingUniverse.com, “The Baseball Club of Seattle, LP History,” https://fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/the-baseball-club-of-seattle-lp-history/.

24 ThebaseballPHD, https://thebaseballphd.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/peoria-sports-complex-20th-anniversary/.

25 Jordan Miller, “King Dome — Roof Performance Failures and Ceiling Collapse,” Pennsylvania State University, July 19, 1994.

26 Bob Condotta, “Ten years after the Kingdome tiles fell,” Seattle Times, July 19, 2004.

27 Ibid.

28 Mark Maske, “Baseball Strike Ends,” Washington Post, April 3, 1995.

29 David Wilma, “Voters Reject a Stadium for the Seattle Mariners on September 19, 1995,” historylink.org essay 3429, July 5, 2001.

30 Jerry Brewer, “‘Refuse to Lose’ Season Spawned Generation of Young Mariners Fans,” Seattle Times, December 28, 2009.

31 Steve Campion, “Refuse to Lose: The Last 36 Games of the 1995 Mariners Season,” WA-list, September 13, 2015.

32 Glenn Drosendahl, “Safeco Field, the Seattle Mariners’ Long-Sought Stadium, Opens on July 15, 1999,” HistoryLink.org, September 11, 2010.

33 Elliott Almond, David Schaefer, Richard Seven, Stephen Clutter, “Mariners Put Up for Sale — Owners Blame Council Members for Discussing Ballpark Delay,” Seattle Times, December 15, 1996.

34 Ibid.

35 https://baseball-reference.com/boxes/SEA/SEA199906270.shtml.

36 https://ballparks.com/baseball/american/seabpk.htm.

37 Dean Paton, “Fans Weep at the Idea of Seattle Sans Junior; Ken Griffey Jr.’s Desire to Leave the Mariners Has Left Many Fans,” Christian Science Monitor, January 7, 2000.

38 Dave Sheinin, “Mariners Trade Griffey to Reds,” Washington Post, February 11, 2000.

39 Steve Rudman, “Mariners Revive Slogan: ‘Two Outs, So What!’” SportsPressNW, April 9, 2017.

40 Associated Press. “In a First, Mariners Sign Japan’s Suzuki, an Outfielder,” New York Times, November 19, 2000.

41 https://baseball-reference.com/teams/SEA/2001-transactions.shtml.

42 Associated Press, “Orioles Trade Bedard to Mariners for Five Prospects,” ESPN.com, February 9, 2008.

43 Geoff Baker, “Mariners Fire GM Bill Bavasi,” Seattle Times, June 16, 2008.

44 Larry Stone, “M’s Hire Brewers’ Jack Zduriencik as GM,” Seattle Times, October 22, 2008.

45 Geoff Baker, “Mariners Sale: How John Stanton’s Seattle Group Struck a Deal with Nintendo of America,” Seattle Times, April 27, 2016.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Geoff Baker. “Better Baseball Means Better TV Ratings for Mariners,” Seattle Times, September 22, 2014.

49 Mariners.com, https://mlb.com/mariners/fans/mariner-moose.

50 MarinerPR, “Tom Paciorek and ‘Funny Nose Glasses Night,’” Marinersblog.com, August 31, 2012.

51 Michael Clair, “One of the Greatest Baseball Promotions: Watch Jay Buhner Shave Heads for ‘Buzz Cut Night,’” mlb.com, May 19, 2015.

52 Kipp Robertson. “Seattle Mariners Fan Keeps His Bad Dance Alive,” mynorthwest.com, March 24, 2015.

53 https://baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Rally_Fries.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays Opening Day program from March 31, 1998. (Courtesy of the Tampa Bay Rays)

Nestled along Florida’s Gulf Coast, St. Petersburg exudes a charm that has captivated both residents and visitors for decades. However, beneath its sun-soaked exterior lies a history enriched by the sport that has captured the hearts of many: baseball. From its modest beginnings on neighborhood sandlots to its pivotal role as a hub for spring training and culminating in the present-day triumphs of the Tampa Bay Rays on the field, the story of baseball in St. Petersburg is one of resilience, community, and a profound connection to the national pastime.

The origins of baseball in the St. Petersburg area can be traced back to the latter half of the 19th century, when veterans returning to Florida after the Civil War reintroduced the game that they had learned during quiet moments amid battles. Various towns started organizing teams to engage in friendly competitions. In 1892, Tampa established its own team during the inaugural but short-lived Florida State League. These contests laid the foundation for a deep-rooted sporting tradition. As the city gradually grew and matured, so too did its passion for the game.1

The baseball fervor in St. Petersburg gave rise to the semipro Saints in 1902, who eventually grew into a minor-league team in the Florida State League before folding in 1928. Rekindling this spirit nearly two decades later, a resurgent club under the same name injected new life into the city’s baseball landscape, playing in the Florida International League and the Florida State League. This team underwent two more name changes—first to the Cardinals, and later the Devil Rays following a brief affiliation with Major League Baseball’s expansion franchise—before ceasing operations after the 2000 season.2

The starting point for baseball’s prominence in St. Petersburg came in the early 20th century when the city embraced its role as a spring training destination. The favorable climate and idyllic setting made it an ideal location for big-league clubs to escape the harsh northern winters and prepare for the upcoming season. The first team to recognize St. Petersburg’s potential was the St. Louis Browns, who conducted their spring training in the city in 1914. This marked the beginning of a new era, as more teams followed suit, seeking optimal training conditions.3

The influx of major league teams during spring training not only brought excitement to St. Petersburg but also invigorated the local economy. Hotels, restaurants, and local businesses thrived as fans flocked to the area to catch a glimpse of their favorite players and teams. Icons such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Jackie Robinson left an indelible mark on the city’s baseball legacy. Amidst this rich history, the idea of bringing an MLB team to St. Petersburg faced its fair share of challenges.4

While the city had proven its ability to support baseball at various levels, the major leagues were an entirely different proposition. The primary obstacle was securing a stadium capable of accommodating a big-league franchise. Al Lang Field, the waterfront stadium named after a former mayor and avid supporter of baseball, became the epicenter of spring training activities. Yet, despite its cherished historical significance, the 7,227-seat stadium lacked the size, modern amenities and infrastructure necessary for an MLB team.5

Efforts to address this issue gained traction in the early 1980s when the St. Petersburg City Council offered 66 acres of downtown land to the Pinellas Sports Authority—created by state legislators in 1977 and given powers to finance and build a domed stadium—for $1 per year. Construction on what would become the Florida Suncoast Dome began in late 1986, and the groundbreaking ceremony saw over 9,000 enthusiastic supporters wielding miniature shovels inscribed with the motto “I Dig the Stadium.”6

Construction was finished in 1990, but the one missing piece was a team.

The city came tantalizingly close on several occasions. In 1988, a potential move of the Chicago White Sox to the city seemed imminent, prompting Illinois state legislators to approve a publicly financed stadium proposal at the eleventh hour, ensuring the team remained in the Windy City. Other clubs—including the Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, and Oakland A’s—wielded the prospect of relocating to St. Petersburg as a bargaining chip to land new stadium deals. Despite being a top contender for a 1993 season expansion team, St. Petersburg was overlooked as Major League Baseball granted franchises to Miami and Denver. Then, in 1992, National League owners rejected Tampa businessman Vince Naimoli’s bid to buy the San Francisco Giants and move them to St. Petersburg. This refusal sparked a flurry of legal actions against both San Francisco’s municipal authorities and Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption.7 (Click here for the San Francisco side of the story.)

In 1994, Major League Baseball once again turned its sights towards expansion, revealing plans to add a pair of new teams to start play in 1998. St. Petersburg and Phoenix emerged as the clear favorites among the four finalist ownership groups, which also included Northern Virginia and Orlando. One of the factors working in favor of St. Petersburg’s bid was that the city already had a stadium ready for a prospective team—the Florida Suncoast Dome—later renamed the ThunderDome before eventually becoming Tropicana Field. Today, the Trop routinely finds itself ranked as one of the league’s worst ballparks, owing to its less-than-ideal location by an interstate and its gloomy, warehouse-like aesthetics.8

Naimoli—a New Jersey native who made his fortune buying struggling companies and then steering them to profitability by aggressively cutting costs and selling off assets—led St. Petersburg’s expansion push. His Tampa Bay roots traced back to the late 1970s when he became senior vice president at a major homebuilder in the region, Jim Walter Corp. He left that job in 1981 to join Ohio-based Anchor Hocking Corp. as a senior vice president in the packaging division. Two years later, he and a group of investors raised $77 million to split off the ailing Anchor Glass Container Corp. division from Anchor Hocking. Naimoli relocated the business to Tampa, and became its chairman, president and CEO. He immediately started trimming expenses. “He looked in every nook and cranny to try and find savings,” said Richard Dawson, a former corporate counsel of Anchor Glass, in a 1992 interview. “Woe be to someone who was caught Xeroxing something on only one side of the paper.” The company went public in 1986, and for a time it was Tampa Bay’s only Fortune 500 company. But it was heavily indebted and hemorrhaging money. In 1989, a Mexican manufacturing company called Vitro S. A. launched a hostile takeover bid for Anchor Glass. When the dust settled, Naimoli walked away with around $20 million. He got involved with a few smaller business ventures in the area before joining the effort to bring a major league team to the Tampa Bay region.9

Despite its frontrunner status, St. Petersburg’s expansion bid encountered a significant hurdle when the league abruptly raised the expansion fee from $110 million to $130 million, while also demanding that the expansion teams forfeit their entitlement to $5 million annually from baseball’s central fund for the first five years. Naimoli was incensed that the league had changed its terms at the eleventh hour. Despite this unexpected twist, and with the clock ticking on the expansion announcement, Naimoli agreed to the league’s demands. In the early months of 1995, at long last, St. Petersburg finally got its team.10

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were born.

Naimoli assumed the role of the managing general partner of the ownership group, which also featured five general partners: Bob Basham and Chris Sullivan, co-founders of the Outback Steakhouse restaurant chain; Mark Bostick, CEO of Comcar Industries; Dan Doyle, President and CEO of Danka Industries; and Bill Griffin, former chair of Sarasota’s RISCORP Management Services. Collectively, these general partners owned 62.5 percent of the Devil Rays, while Naimoli held a 16 percent stake. Additionally, several limited partners were involved, including Florida Progress Corp., a utility holding company headquartered in St. Petersburg; Lance Ringhaver, owner and chairman of Ringhaver Equipment Co. and Ring Power Co.; P.J. Benton, a local businesswoman who previously owned two McDonald’s franchises; Gus Stavros, a local entrepreneur known for his philanthropic efforts; Gary Markel, a prominent figure in local real estate development and dining establishments; New York-based businessman Robert Kleinert; Mel Danker, a North Carolina entrepreneur; and Claude Focardi, owner of Great Bay Distributing—an Anheuser-Busch distributor in the region.11

Fred McGriff and Wade Boggs on a 1998 Devil Rays poster. Both players grew up in the Tampa area. (Courtesy of the Tampa Bay Rays)

Taking to the field for the first time in 1998, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays faced the challenge of translating off-field efforts into on-field success. The team encountered initial struggles, often finding themselves at the bottom of the league standings. Though the roster of this era boasted notable players such as Wade Boggs, Fred McGriff, and Jose Canseco, victories remained scarce, leading to managerial changes.

The team’s financial difficulties, compounded by their lack of success on the field, gave rise to tensions between Naimoli and the rest of the ownership group. In 2001, reports emerged that this disagreement might even endanger the team’s ability to pay its players and staff. It was a tumultuous spring during which Naimoli initially declared his intention to step down from his role as managing general partner, only to later reinstate himself as managing partner and CEO a few weeks later. This move coincided with the team’s hiring of John McHale Jr., a veteran MLB executive, as Chief Operating Officer. McHale lasted less than a year, as internal conflicts among the owners persisted. During the summer of 2001, the Devil Rays hired investment banking firm JP Morgan to oversee the potential sale of the team.12

Throughout his ownership tenure, Naimoli hardly endeared himself to the local community. From demanding a substantial $750,000 fee to feature the team’s logo on a visitor’s guide, to insisting a local department store pay for the privilege of selling team merchandise—a move that backfired as the store removed Devil Rays’ products from its shelves—his interactions were often contentious. Engaging in legal battles, Naimoli sued over a $38,571 tax bill and took a confrontational stance during discussions with civic authorities, even implying the possibility of relocating the team if stadium attendance didn’t improve. The team sued Danka Business Systems in February 1999, citing outstanding payments. This lawsuit came several months after Devil Rays’ general partner Dan Doyle, who still retained a minority stake in the team, had parted ways with Danka, the company he co-founded. Reacting strongly to a newspaper’s playful casting suggestions for a team-themed movie—in which he would be played by James Gandolfini, renowned for his portrayal of a mob boss in the HBO series “The Sopranos”—Naimoli ordered the relocation of St. Petersburg Times newspaper racks from the fan concourse to the loading dock, reportedly violating a multimillion-dollar marketing agreement. His decision to charge sponsors extra for displaying signage at Tropicana Field, contingent upon the Devil Rays’ ability to attract 4 million fans in its debut season, ended up souring relationships when the team fell short of this target.13

With the city and fans of the Devil Rays yearning for change, the conditions were ripe for a new owner to step in.14

Stuart Sternberg was a hedge fund manager from New York and a lifelong Mets fan who had made his fortune on Wall Street. After retiring as a partner at Goldman Sachs, Sternberg shifted his focus to buying a baseball team. Though unsuccessful in his attempt to acquire a stake in the Mets in 2002, a different opportunity presented itself in St. Petersburg. At the time, Sternberg had no direct connection to the Tampa Bay area. At first, he was lukewarm to his bankers’ suggestion that he buy into the Devil Rays. “I was like, ‘oh, the Devil Rays? They’re pretty bad.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, but look, you’ll speak to them and maybe you’ll see something.’ So I did, I sat down with them, and I saw immediately that it could have been a real good opportunity,” he later told the Associated Press. In May 2004, Sternberg purchased a 48 percent stake in the Devil Rays for $65 million. Naimoli retained 15 percent, and the limited partners held the remaining 37 percent. Sternberg’s role as managing partner was slated to begin in January 2007. However, eager to put his own stamp on the team, Sternberg paid Naimoli a reported $5 million in October 2005 to take over as controlling owner.15

One of Sternberg’s first orders of business was to drop the word ‘Devil’ from the team’s nickname. The newly christened Rays also got a makeover, with navy blue and light blue replacing green and black as the team’s primary colours.16

Sternberg also installed a more analytically-driven front office, bringing in Matt Silverman—who helped orchestrate his purchase of the Rays—from Goldman Sachs, and Andrew Friedman from the private equity firm MidMark Capital, as his top lieutenants. Joe Maddon was later hired as the team’s manager, serving from 2006 until 2014. Friedman would eventually depart to become President of Baseball Operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Silverman remains the Rays’ co-president, along with Brian Auld.

The team’s brain trust under Sternberg elevated the Rays into one of the league’s most consistently well-run franchises, reaching the World Series in 2008 and 2020. But one lingering issue they faced was the stadium situation. The team spent more than a decade trying to get a new stadium built, exploring options in both St. Petersburg or Tampa. Locked into a lease at Tropicana Field through the 2027 season, the team’s struggle with low attendance remained a drag on the league’s revenue-sharing initiative, putting pressure on Sternberg to do something to stem the losses. Commissioner Rob Manfred repeatedly said the league would only consider another round of expansion after the Oakland Athletics—who now plan to move to Las Vegas and build a $1.5-billion, 30,000-seat ballpark with a retractable roof on the Strip—and the Rays build new stadiums. “I think there is urgency with respect to Tampa Bay,” Manfred said after the quarterly owners meetings in June 2022. “I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again, there needs to be a resolution in the Tampa Bay region for the Rays. Obviously, the end of that lease is a hard deadline. But you need to take into account that stadiums take a little bit of time to build, right?” During that same news conference, Manfred also didn’t shy away from stoking fears about a possible relocation if the Rays couldn’t get a stadium deal done. “I think a great man once said all good things must end at some point,” he said. “Right now, we’re focused on Tampa Bay.”17

With pressure mounting, Sternberg continued to explore stadium options—including a creative, though ultimately rejected, scheme that would have seen the club split its season between St. Petersburg and Montreal, which had been without a major league team since Expos left for Washington in 2004.18

In recent years, a new wave of legal complications surfaced. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Sternberg by a group of the team’s minority partners. These lawsuits claimed that Sternberg had enriched himself in an improper and hidden manner. One of the allegations was that he had transferred operational control of the MLB franchise to an entity he controlled, named “Rays Baseball Club.” The Rays have issued a statement, claiming the lawsuits are “baseless.”19

Additionally, the team’s ownership arrangement became clearer from documents submitted to the Pinellas County court. In this setup, the MacDougald Family Limited Partnership held 1.331 percent ownership, the Stephen Mitchell Waters 2020 MLB Irrevocable Trust Agreement had 0.4 percent ownership, Stephen Waters as an individual retained 0.7166 percent ownership, Gary Markel owned 2.1465 percent, and Robert Kleinert had a 5.002 percent ownership stake.20

The lawsuits haven’t diminished the enthusiasm of potential buyers. In May 2023, it was reported that local businessman Dan Doyle Jr.—son of former general partner Dan Doyle—was interested in buying the team. A month later, it surfaced that that hedge fund founder Trip Miller was working to rally a group of investors to acquire the Rays for $1.85 billion. In response to these reports, Sternberg has stated his intention to build a ballpark in Tampa Bay and continue as the owner of the Rays.21

Their long search for a new home seems to have finally ended. In September 2023, the Rays announced plans to build a new, 30,000-seat domed stadium near Tropicana Field at a cost of $1.3 billion, which would open for the 2028 season. The Rays are expected to receive around $600 million in public funds from the City of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, and the team will contribute another $700 million, which they expect to raise through private financing or by selling equity in the team to investors. Rays co-president Brian Auld expressed optimism that the new ballpark and planned entertainment district surrounding it will bring more fans out to watch the Rays. “I think the big message is that we’re keeping the team in Tampa Bay for generations to come,” he said. “I think this is gonna be our fourth stadium announcement, but this is the only one that’s had a concrete financing plan behind it. The message that we’re really trying to put out there is that St. Pete and Pinellas County specifically has grown up so much around us. We believe this new ballpark can really help us drive attendance.”22

While the journey of baseball in St. Petersburg has been marked by challenges, triumphs, and ongoing debates, one thing remains certain: the sport’s deep roots in the city continue to shape its identity. From its humble beginnings on sandlots to becoming a spring training hub, baseball has ingrained itself in the fabric of St. Petersburg. With a new stadium finally on the horizon, the coming years hold the potential for a revitalized era of baseball in St. Petersburg—one that honors its rich history while embracing the challenges and opportunities of the modern game.

Last revised: November 27, 2023

Notes

1 A.M. de Quesada, Baseball in Tampa Bay (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2000), 7; Will Michaels. The Making of St. Petersburg (Charleston, South Carolina: History Press, 2010), 125-126.

2 Jonah Keri, The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First (New York: Ballantine Books, 2011), 18.

3 Rick Vaughn, 100 Years of Baseball on St. Petersburg’s Waterfront: How the Game Helped Shape a City (Charleston, South Carolina: History Press, 2022), 35-37.

4 Vaughn, 17-22.

5 Vaughn, 88-93.

6 Keri, 19; “Tropicana Field,” Tampa Bay Times, November 10, 2007. https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2007/11/10/tropicana-field/. Accessed August 17, 2023.

7 Keri, 15-28.

8 Associated Press, “Committee Discusses Expansion,” February 25, 1995.

9 Marc Topkin, “Original Rays Franchise Owner Vince Naimoli Dies at Age 81,” Tampa Bay Times, August 26, 2019. https://www.tampabay.com/sports/rays/2019/08/26/original-rays-franchise-owner-vince-naimoli-dies-at-age-81/. Accessed September 6, 2023. Marlene Sokol, “His Success Is the Story of a Decade: The ’80s,” Tampa Bay Times, August 8, 1992. https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1992/08/08/his-success-is-the-story-of-a-decade-the-80s/. Accessed September 6, 2023.

10 Keri, 29-30.

11 Marc Topkin, “The Rays Ownership Group,” Tampa Bay Times, March 31, 1998. https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1998/03/31/the-rays-ownership-group/. Accessed August 18, 2023; Dick Scanlon, “For Rays, New Owners, Same Boss,” The Ledger, January 29, 2004. https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2004/01/30/for-rays-new-owners-same-boss/26097165007/. Accessed August 18, 2023.

12 “D-Rays Deny Financial Woes,” Salina Journal, May 13, 2001: C6; Keri, 46; “T.B. Hired JP Morgan to Handle Possible Sale,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, August 14, 2001: B3.

13 “Devil Rays React to Spoof Story by Moving Newspaper Racks,” Salina Journal, April 12, 2000; Keri, 36-38; Jeff Harrington. “Rays Cry Foul as Danka Shirks Suite Deal,” Tampa Bay Times, February 26, 1999. https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1999/02/26/rays-cry-foul-as-danka-shirks-suite-deal/. Accessed August 18, 2023; Ameet Sachdev, “Doyle Leaves Troubled Danka,” Tampa Bay Times, October 24, 1998,  https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1998/10/24/doyle-leaves-troubled-danka/. Accessed August 18, 2023.

14 Topkin, “Original Rays Franchise Owner Vince Naimoli Dies at Age 81.”

15 Associated Press, “No More Bronx Cheers for Tampa Bay Rays,” September 26, 2008; Keri, 86-87.

16 Associated Press, “‘Devil’ No Longer in Tampa,” November 9, 2007.

17 John Kekis (Associated Press), “Major League Baseball to Expand Instant Replay in 2014,” August 16, 2013; Marc Topkin, “MLB Commissioner Says ‘Time Has Come’ for Rays Stadium Solution,” Tampa Bay Times, June 16, 2022,  https://www.tampabay.com/sports/rays/2022/06/16/mlb-commissioner-says-time-has-come-for-rays-stadium-solution/. Accessed September 6, 2023.

18 Associated Press, “Rays Say Split-Season Plan with Montreal Rejected by MLB,” January 20, 2022. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2022/01/20/rays-say-split-season-plan-with-montreal-rejected-by-mlb/49677925/. Accessed August 18, 2023.

19 Thomas Barrabi, “Tampa Bay Rays Owner Stu Sternberg Sued for Alleged ‘Fraudulent Transfer’ of Team Control,” New York Post, June 29, 2022.  https://nypost.com/2022/06/29/tampa-bay-rays-owner-stu-sternberg-sued-for-alleged-fraudulent-transfer-of-team-control/. Accessed August 18, 2023; “Rays Release Statement About Lawsuit,” MLB.com, July 8, 2022. https://www.mlb.com/news/tampa-bay-rays-statement-on-lawsuit. Accessed August 18, 2023.

20 The MacDougald Family Limited Partnership, LLLP v. Rays Baseball Club, LLC, Case No. 22-003119-CI, Filing #152280652, in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit, Pinellas County, Florida, Civil Division.

21 Erik Cagle. “Art of the Deal: M&A-Minded DEX Imaging Sets Sights on Reaching $750 Million,” ENX Magazine, February 25, 2023. https://www.enxmag.com/twii/dealer-spotlight/2023/02/art-of-the-deal-ma-minded-dex-imaging-sets-sights-on-reaching-750-million/. Accessed August 18, 2023.

22 Lindsey Adler. “Tampa Bay Rays Will Build Another Dome—This Time, With Windows,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2023. https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball/tampa-bay-rays-new-stadium-15f47429. Date accessed: September 19, 2023.

The Toronto Blue Jays have played at the Rogers Centre, previously known as SkyDome, since 1989. (Creative Commons 2.0 image by Oliver Mallich)

Quest for a Franchise

Canadian sports conjure up images of ice hockey, curling and three-down football. However, baseball has a long and somewhat overlooked place in the Canadian sports scene. Prior to the arrival of major-league baseball in Canada (Montreal 1969, Toronto 1977), Toronto has had teams in baseball leagues since 1876,1 notably the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League from 1912 to 1967.

Paul Godfrey, first elected a Toronto alderman in 1968, played a key role in attracting major-league baseball to Toronto. Several factors spurred Godfrey’s initiative:2 The International League team moved to Louisville, Montreal acquired the Expos and Toronto’s entry was reduced to an intercounty league franchise3 for the 1969 season.

In 1969 Godfrey approached Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in the Fort Lauderdale hotel where the winter baseball meetings were being held and asked for a franchise. The response: “Let me tell you the way we do it in major league baseball. First, you build a stadium. And then we consider if we want to give you a baseball team.”4

Little progress was made until 1973. Godfrey had been re-elected and was selected as chair by his fellows. Godfrey promised to deliver a baseball franchise, domed stadium and conference center.5 Obtaining financing to build a ballpark did not seem feasible so the focus was on renovating the existing Exhibition Stadium, which was then used for the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts and rock concerts. In November 1973 Godfrey approached Ontario Premier William Davis with the following plan:6

• Use the existing covered north grandstand as bleachers.
• Build a new south grandstand near where home plate would be located.
• Extend a temporary fence between the grandstands to establish the outfield.
• Municipal council will contribute $7.5 million (all monetary figures in this essay are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted).
• Godfrey asked Davis for a similar amount. (Davis responded that no grant would be available, but an interest-free loan would be approved.)

Public support for the agreement was divided, likely because of economic conditions at the time. For example, according to Statistics Canada, the inflation rates for Canada from the years 1973-1975 were 7.8 percent, 11.0 percent, and 10.7 percent respectively. Notwithstanding public concerns, the Metro Toronto council did approve the renovation project, at an estimated cost of $15 million, by a vote of 23 to 6 in 1974. Further, the investment was considered a temporary facility until a domed stadium could be built. The actual renovation cost was $17.8 million.7

Now that government financial support for a temporary stadium was established, local businesspeople began assembling ownership groups to approach Major League Baseball and request a franchise. Initially three groups demonstrated interest.8 One was fronted by Sydney Cooper, owner of C.A. Pitts Engineering Construction Ltd., which specialized in large-scale energy development, multi-lane highways, bridges, dams, tunnels, and marine construction.9 Shortly after Montreal had obtained the Expos, Cooper formed the Toronto Baseball Company, comprising himself, his three Toronto business partners, and two Americans with connections to major-league baseball.10 The Cooper group, initially interested in a National League franchise, also courted franchises not drawing well and supported Godfrey’s efforts to obtain stadium renovation funding. Ultimately, the Cooper group did not obtain the franchise as “after softening the ground, Cooper stepped aside as Labatt Breweries and others took up the cause.”11 A contributing factor appeared to be Cooper’s being one of five men charged with defrauding the public of $4.2 million by bid-rigging on seven dredging contracts between 1969 and 1975. He went on trial in February 1978, was convicted May 1979, and began serving his sentence when his appeal was denied in 1981.12

A second unsuccessful group was headed by Lorne Duguid, a vice president of Hiram Walker and Sons distillers. The group included Harold Ballard, then owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League.13 It is interesting to note, as recounted in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation digital archives, that Ballard also had legal issues. He had been convicted on 48 counts of fraud, theft, and tax evasion in August 1972 for diverting business assets of $205,000 from his sport franchise for personal use. He was sentenced to nine years in prison but was released on parole in October 1973.

The successful group was fronted by the Labatt brewery. At the time the Canadian beer market was dominated by three breweries, Labatt, Molson, and Carling O’Keefe. While each brewery had a dominant market segment, Labatt did not have a strong presence in urban Ontario14 and Toronto was (and remains) the largest urban center in the province. Completion of a feasibility study in 1974 confirmed that Labatt would benefit from associating with baseball.15

Initially the Labatt group approached the Cooper group about arranging marketing rights for Labatt should Cooper obtain a franchise. Cooper, after consulting with his partners, advised, “They thought that being associated with a brewery would be a bad idea, because it would adversely affect their chances of getting a franchise.”16 The Labatt group thought this response was “kind of strange,”17 and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn confirmed that there was no issue with brewery involvement given that three clubs (Orioles, Cardinals, and Brewers) were owned by breweries.18 The Labatt board then authorized pursuit of a franchise provided the Labatt stake did not exceed 50 percent.19 To find partners, a high-level Labatt executive suggested contacting the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). The bank was interested but under Canadian law could not own more than 10 percent of a business. The bank chairman suggested a friend of his, businessman Howard Webster, who had previously expressed an interest in baseball. Labatt (45 percent) ultimately partnered with Webster (45 percent) and the CIBC (10 percent).20

During the period of the Exhibition Stadium renovations, there had been some preliminary discussions about the possibility of the Cleveland Indians, San Diego Padres, or Baltimore Orioles moving to Toronto although none of these discussions progressed to an announcement of a franchise move.21 This was not the case in 1975 with the San Francisco Giants.

The Giants and owner Horace Stoneham were in financial trouble and for sale. Labatt calculated the value of the Giants at $8 Million US. However, there were competing bids of $10 million from a Washington, D.C., group and $15 million from the still-active Ballard group. Labatt came in with a bid of $12.5 million US.22 On January 9, 1976, at 4:52 P.M. EST, Godfrey announced that the Giants’ board had approved the sale and transfer of the team to the Labatt group, pending National League owners’ approval. The price was $12 million US plus $1 million in trust for potential legal costs associated with breaking the Candlestick Park lease.23 San Francisco Mayor George Moscone immediately took legal action that led to the issuance of a temporary restraining order against the transfer. By March 2, 1976, Moscone had found a local ownership group and the National League owners approved them, keeping the Giants in San Francisco.

The existence of a natural rivalry with the Expos, combined with the near transfer of the Giants, meant that the Toronto ownership groups were focused on the National League. Little attention had been paid to pending expansion in the American League. The Seattle Pilots had relocated to Milwaukee after their inaugural 1969 season. The State of Washington had filed a $32 million antitrust lawsuit against the American League and the suit was dropped when the American League agreed to expand for the 1977 season.24 A second franchise was expected to be awarded at an American League owners meeting scheduled for March 29, 1976, to avoid complexities of a 13-team league. The owners were willing to hear presentations from any group interested in a franchise.

Having “lost” the Giants officially on March 2, the Labatt group had 27 days to prepare a bid for an expansion franchise. Beyond other cities interested in a franchise, Labatt also faced competition from a recently assembled Toronto-based corporate consortium fronted by five business entities and leaders including Carling Brewery and businessman Trevor Eyton. Jerry Hoffberger, owner of the Orioles, having had brewery business dealings with Carling, was supportive of the Carling bid.

On March 29 the American League owners met and listened to presentations from all interested bidders, including the two bids from Toronto. The Labatt bid was accepted by a vote of 11 to 1. Hoffberger, supporting the Eyton group, was the lone dissenting vote. Hence, Labatt was awarded a franchise for $7 million US.25 Eyton later became an important factor in construction of the domed ballpark.

American League President Lee MacPhail stated, “Several cities contacted us. Toronto was our first choice. Toronto is a large metropolitan area. The city has a newly remodeled stadium satisfactory to us. It’s just being completed now. For baseball, it will hold about 50,000.”26 MacPhail did not identify the unsuccessful cities that bid, but it was public knowledge that Commissioner Kuhn was interested in placing a franchise in Washington. Given that American League teams had left Washington in 1961 and 1972, it is not unreasonable to surmise that this was a factor in the American league choosing a new market in Toronto over placing another expansion franchise in Washington.

The eight-year quest for a franchise (1969-1976) had required a political and business partnership, but there was some elbowing over dividing the credit. “Godfrey was very helpful from a general point of view as far as getting the stadium and baseball going and getting people to appreciate the desirability of Toronto,” said an anonymous observer with connections “back to the franchise’s beginnings.” “But he didn’t play any role in getting the team. The guys at Labatt resent Godfrey being credited with bringing baseball to Toronto, because he didn’t put up the money. I think Godfrey deserves a reasonable amount of credit for bringing baseball to Toronto, but I think calling him ‘the man who brought baseball to Toronto’ is a bit of an overstatement. Still, Godfrey hasn’t postured to get more credit than he deserves. And I think the Labatt resentment was an over-reaction.”27

The new ownership group, fronted by Labatt, faced an early controversy over the selection of Blue Jays as the team name. A name-the-team contest reportedly generated 4,000 names from 30,000 entries. Given that a prominent beer brand for Labatt at the time was Labatt’s Blue, there was some negative media and public suspicion that selection of Blue Jays was a marketing ploy. A Labatt spokesmen replied, “It wasn’t lost on us but it wasn’t decided because of that. It was probably a 10 percent factor.”28

The ownership group also faced financial pressure because the Ontario government prohibited the sale of beer at Exhibition Stadium.29 A group calling itself the “No Booze at the Ballpark Committee” convinced the Ontario government that the sale of beer would create a rowdy environment, dangerous drivers would leave the ballpark, and it could lead to a slippery slope where beer would be sold at hockey games and other sporting events. Fans unhappy with the decision referred to the ballpark as Prohibition Stadium. The decision stayed in place until July 30, 1982, when the Ontario government allowed beer to be sold on a trial basis.

Local broadcasting rights were another area of negotiation. In 1977 there were no Canadian specialty sport channels. There were two primary national television networks. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was a Canadian Federal Corporation and served as the nation’s public broadcaster. The other network was the privately owned CTV. For 1977, CBC paid $1.2 million to broadcast 46 Blue Jays games in English and 18 in French.30 By 1980, local television rights had grown to $3 million.31

Opening Day in Toronto, April 7, 1977, as a snowstorm blankets the field at Exhibition Stadium. (Courtesy of Elliott and Helene Wahle)

The Building Years: 1977-1982

Labatt, as the public face of the ownership group, brought a business perspective to operating the ballclub. Lacking executives with major-league baseball experience, Labatt hired key personnel with such experience. Notable among the early hires were Peter Bavasi, son of Buzzie Bavasi, as general manager, and future Hall of Famer Pat Gillick as assistant general manager. In December 1977 Bavasi was promoted to club president, remaining in the post until 1981, and Gillick was promoted to general manager, serving until 1994.

The owners treated the baseball club as an operating division and required an annual operational plan. This allowed Bavasi and Gillick to demonstrate they had business sense while setting realistic ownership expectations. For example, expansion teams usually have limited success in the early years, with attendance falling as the novelty wears off. The first plan was presented in the fall of 1977 after completion of the first season.32

• The financial success of 1977 was not entirely expected and should not be expected in 1978 as novelty will be absent.
• Long-term financial success is expected based on the area’s population density, high disposable income, success of other area professional teams, perception of inexpensive family entertainment, credible ownership and good public relations.
• To maintain fan interest going forward, signs of improvement must be shown necessitating a total financial and philosophical commitment to player acquisition and development by ownership and management.

A note about exchange rates: Most of the Blue Jays revenue was received in Canadian dollars and most expenses (player salaries, travel) are paid in US dollars. Although the Canadian dollar has briefly traded a few cents above the US dollar while the Blue Jays have been in operation, Bank of Canada charts show that the Canadian dollar has trended around 80 cents to the US dollar (occasionally dipping a few cents below 70). As a result, the Blue Jays incur an expense premium that has reached as high as 35 percent. Financial tools such as forward exchange contracts are often used by Canadian companies to manage this risk and it is likely the Blue Jays would have deployed such strategies.

The ownership group, given a lack of turnover of baseball executives on the club, appeared satisfied with this approach through the 1980 season. However, the Jays, winners of 54 games in 1977, had only risen to 67 wins by 1980 and attendance had fallen from 1.7 million to 1.4 million. Further, baseball was facing labor issues culminating with the 1981 player strike. Bavasi attempted to address ownership concerns about the franchise with a lengthy address in January 1981.33

• The Blue Jays are one of a few remaining clubs attempting to make a profit and win games by developing players and trading for others.
• For long-term competitiveness, we need to start spending more lavishly to recruit better players and bind our younger players, so they can’t escape through free agency.
• This spending pattern, given present ticket pricing policies and income patterns, makes meeting the profit objective very questionable.
• The Board needs to choose between major price adjustments or accept substantial cash losses until the club performs well enough to attract high attendance.
• Average player payroll has increased at a rate of nearly 30 percent per year for each of the last four years with no end in sight.
• Ticket prices and other revenue increases have not kept pace.
• When Toronto first obtained a franchise, business plans were based on the major leagues controlling the economic environment supported by the player reserve system.
• Beginning in 1976, an arbitration decision and a new union contract has created a virtual open player market.
• The impact on the Blue Jays has seen the 25-man payroll increase from $850,000 in 1977 to $2 million in 1980.
• The choices, higher ticket prices, not knowing what the market will bear; or limiting investment in talent and creating a public impression that management is not trying to win, could both lead to a fall in attendance.

By the summer of 1981, Bavasi began to prepare his fall report to the board, aware of growing ownership discontent with the direction of the ballclub. Attendance was falling, the team finished the season with a .349 winning percentage while Bavasi had previously projected that the team would be a .500 ballclub by 1980.34 And a midseason strike had soured many baseball fans. The report cited four economic realities and four budget options.35

Economic Realities

• Of the five new owners of ballclubs in the past 18 months, three (White Sox, Cubs, and Mariners) have not shown player-spending restraint and it seems unlikely the existing big spenders will start to show restraint.
• Assuming the 1981 season had been played in full, the Blue Jays, with a payroll of $2.5 million, would have realized a profit of $1.7 million if attendance had met expectations for the unplayed games; however, if the Blue Jays had the average major-league payroll of $4.9 million, at the same attendance level a loss of $700,000 would have been incurred.
• The foreign exchange rate to the US dollar hurts profitability.
• Poor stadium lease terms (i.e. 16.2 percent of concessions and no beer sales) also hurt the bottom line.

The impact of these economic realities, the report said, is that increased spending on high-profile players, assuming they meet performance expectations and weather permitting, would lead to a substantial financial loss despite achieving a better won-lost record. A better record would increase attendance and a better local television contract; however, these increased revenues would be insufficient to cover the increased payroll cost. On the contrary, a failure to invest in better players would create a public confidence problem and a decrease in attendance would also have a negative impact on profits.

Budget 1

No major change to roster and a reduction of the farm system from six teams to five. Result, profit $600,000 with attendance holding at 1.4 million.

Budget 2

No major change to the roster and maintaining the farm system at six teams. Result, profit $400,000, with attendance holding at 1.4 million and future team advancement accelerated by results from maintaining the extra farm team.

Budget 3

Acquire two or three veteran players through trade, purchase or waiver claim and maintain the six farm teams. Result, break-even based on a slight increase in attendance.

Budget 4

Acquire two veteran players through trades, sign two free agents and maintain a farm system of six teams. Result, $1.3 million loss despite a 300,000 increase in attendance.

Bavasi recommended budget 3. However, due to friction between key parties in the front office, Bavasi resigned effective December 1981.36 The internal friction within management had been building for some time. In 1981 Bavasi advised Blue Jays board vice chair Peter Hardy that Paul Beeston, the team accountant and the club’s first hire, had resigned. Hardy recalled that he had had growing concerns about Bavasi and his management style and requested an exit interview with Beeston. A reluctant Beeston, after a lot of probing, stated his concerns. “Beeston let loose, painting a picture of a tyrannical boss, a terrified, demoralized staff, and others on the verge of leaving. Among the latter, Beeston told Hardy, was Pat Gillick, who would soon follow him out the door if Bavasi remained in place. “The killer,” Hardy said, “was that he told me that Gillick shared the same view.”37 As Hardy recalled, the choice was we keep two and lose one or keep one and lose two.

Ownership did choose to invest long-term, following budget 4, and financial rewards were eventually realized. In 1982, the first year of Bobby Cox as manager, performance improved (75-84) although attendance fell to 1.3 million. On July 30, 1982, the Ontario government finally allowed beer to be sold at the ballpark on a trial basis.38 There were conditions attached: Beer could be sold only at concession stands, with a maximum of two per sale, and no beer vendors were allowed in the stands. Further, if there were too many alcohol-related problems, permission would be revoked. The media questioned how many fans would be willing to pay $1.75 a cup, a concern that proved unfounded.

News reports from that era do not refer to public lobbying efforts to lift the beer ban. The extent of behind-the-scenes lobbying is unknown because of Cabinet confidentiality. Amendments to the The Liquor Licence Act of Ontario in 1990 allowed the sale of alcohol at professional sporting events in the province.

SkyDome

Exhibition Stadium was intended to be a temporary facility until a domed stadium could be built. The ballpark had adequate capacity, 44,649, but seating could be uncomfortable. Only the outfield bleachers had a roof. Down the right-field line, the seats were aluminum benches.

Weather was always a concern for early- and late-season games at Exhibition Stadium. Concerns were greater as the prospect of the Jays playing in the postseason became legitimate. While summers were pleasant in Toronto — average highs between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit from June through September — the average lows and highs for April (33-53), May (43-65), and October (39-44) made for some unpleasant conditions. The discomfort level was magnified by the fact that the ballpark had no cover for fans except in the north bleachers and, particularly in the spring, the warmer southerly winds were cooled by Lake Ontario, immediately south of the stadium. The phrase “cooler by the lake” is used with some frequency in spring weather forecasts for Toronto.

Official progress for construction of a domed stadium began in 1983 when Ontario Premier William Davis proposed the construction of a $150 million facility supported by all three levels of government (federal, provincial, municipal).39 After an eight-month study, a location was recommended at Downsview Park, 11 miles from downtown Toronto and adjacent to Downsview Airport, an air force base. The location was accessible by highway and public transit. However, the federal government was not interested in having a ballpark in the vicinity of the base.40 Ultimately, the Canadian National Railway offered undeveloped rail-yard land by the downtown CN Tower and the site was selected in January 1985. The site was within easy walking distance of Union Station, a major transportation hub for the Toronto subway system as well as the primary commuter and intercity railway terminal.

The federal government was also not interested in providing financing, thus necessitating a public/private partnership with a sharing of profit and risk. An August 1983 feasibility study said, “Our analysis indicates that private financing is not a viable method for the domed stadium. The main reason is projected net operating revenues are insufficient to generate positive cash flows (after debt service).”41 A 25-member corporate consortium was organized by Trevor Eyton, the CEO of Brascan and an early bidder for the team.42 Each corporate partner agreed to contribute $5 million in exchange for exclusive promotion or concession rights. To increase the potential revenue stream, the project was expanded to include restaurants, a hotel, and a health club.43 It is interesting to note that Brascan at the time was the controlling shareholder of Labatt. This meant that through the corporate ownership structure, Eyton now had a role in the ownership of the Toronto baseball franchise despite being an unsuccessful bidder in 1976.

The next task was selection of an architect. Four bidders competed for the contract to design and build the stadium, which would include a retractable roof. The award of the contract with a $225 million budget to architect Rod Robbie (six employees, zero experience in building skyscrapers, shopping malls, or convention centers) in conjunction with Canadian structural engineer Michael Allen to build the retractable roof was met with skepticism.44 From a technology standpoint, the skeptics were wrong. The roof has worked as designed since the day SkyDome opened, June 5, 1989, with a seating capacity of 50,516.

Budget management for construction of the SkyDome was not a success story. The final construction cost for the dome, including interest charges, is estimated at $650 million.45 The large budget increase was not strictly related to poor project management. Plans for a hotel and health club were added during construction. Although the original agreement was for a sharing of profit and risk between the corporate consortium and the provincial government, the government ended up protecting the consortium members from the overrun losses. This ultimately led to a $300 million write-off being incurred by the provincial government.46 In 1993 the provincial government sold the SkyDome to a private company chaired by Eyton for $150 million. In 1999 SkyDome was sold again under supervision of a bankruptcy court for $80 million to Sportsco International Limited Partnership. In 2004 the current Blue Jays ownership purchased the $650 million stadium for $25 million and renamed the facility the Rogers Centre.47

The major factor for the decline in value was the accumulation of excessive debt during construction. By 1993 the debt had climbed to $400 million due to missed interest payments. This was worrisome given the cash flow generated after the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993 while drawing 4 million-plus each season from 1991 through 1993. A recalculation of cash-flow budgets indicated that the SkyDome had to be open for events 600 days per year to cover costs and generate a small profit.48

Despite the consortium purchase price at around the original stadium budget, finances did not improve. The 1998 bankruptcy filing indicated that the owners were losing $3 million a year and owed millions in back property taxes.49

An Era of Success: 1983-1993

Ownership discipline to build a franchise and leave baseball decisions to experienced baseball executives like Pat Gillick paid dividends over this 11-year span. The Blue Jays were over .500 for 11 consecutive years and made five postseason appearances including back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993.

The 1985 season was the first in which more than 44 Blue Jays games were televised.50 Canada’s first Canadian sports channel, The Sports Network (TSN), had been launched September 1, 1984.51 Although TSN was owned by Labatt, it picked up only an additional 40 games beyond the existing 44 that had been broadcast the prior year.52

During this era, the Blue Jays were led by Pat Gillick on the baseball side and Paul Beeston on the business side. Beeston, an accountant and the first hire of the Blue Jays, grew to understand the business of baseball. As one Labatt executive commented, “Once he started to deal more with some of the other baseball ownership, he developed quite rapidly.”53 In 1989 ownership changed the operating structure of the Blue Jays from co-vice presidents (Beeston and Gillick) and named Beeston president.54

In August 1990, 45 percent owner Howard Webster died. According to the ownership agreement, the existing partners had the first right to purchase his ownership interest. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, by Canadian law, could not increase its ownership stake beyond the existing 10 percent. On November 1, 1991, Labatt purchased Webster’s stake for $67.5 million.55

The June 1989 move to the SkyDome led to greater financial success. In 1991 the second full season there, the Blue Jays became the first professional sports franchise to draw 4 million attendance in a season.56 This led to a profit of $17.5 million, up from $14 million in 1990 and $10 million in 1989.57 However, this success led to a business challenge when planning for the 1992 season. Heading into that season, the Blue Jays still had not won a World Series title and having reached the 4 million mark in attendance in 1991 meant that if the club sold out every game, attendance would rise by only 74,000.58 Management authorized additional spending, the World Series was won and in the spring of 1993, Financial World magazine estimated that the Blue Jays were tied with the Los Angeles Lakers for third most valuable franchise in sports at an estimated $115 million.59 (The top two franchises were the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees.)

The Blue Jays increased their payroll in 1993 and were the top spenders in baseball. As a result, the Jays calculated that they broke even for the year, thanks to the playoff revenue although Labatt realized profit through increased beer sales and broadcasting revenues.60

A Corporate Takeover — Interbrew Era: 1994-2000

Since the inception of the Blue Jays, Labatt was perceived as the owner. However, the true corporate ownership structure was much more complex and led to a major change for the Blue Jays after their back-to-back World Series titles.

The Labatt corporate history dates from 1847 when John Labatt first began making beer. The company was privately held until 1945, when it went public to raise capital for a major expansion following World War II.

In the 1970s an investment/holding company, Brascan, began increasing its stake in Labatt. By the late ’80s, Brascan owned 41 percent of Labatt, making it the controlling shareholder. In February 1993 Brascan sold its stake in Labatt for $993 million to investment dealers who in turn sold the shares to pension funds and insurance companies.61

By the fall of 1994, Labatt was struggling financially. An investment in a Mexican brewery was not doing well due to a fall in the peso. The Blue Jays had a losing record; baseball had a strike canceling the World Series; because of the strike, attendance fell to 2.9 million from 4.1 million despite an Opening Day payroll of $41.9 million, second highest in baseball; and Pat Gillick retired in October. The Blue Jays’ profit of $3 million in 1993 became a $10 million loss in 1994.62 Said Beeston, “The day that Brascan sold their interest, the company was in play, there was no major shareholder.”63

In May 1995 Onex Corporation, a private equity firm, launched a hostile takeover bid for Labatt.64 This was a concern to the Blue Jays because it was believed the takeover would be financed by pension and mutual fund advisers and the sale of Labatt assets.65 In June 1995 Labatt found a white knight in Belgian brewer Interbrew.66

Interbrew indicated it was not interested in owning the Blue Jays and asked Major League Baseball to approve temporary ownership. MLB agreed on condition that Beeston remain president of Blue Jay operations.67 Beeston recalled that his first presentation of an operational plan to the new ownership was different from the Labatt experience.68 He told a Belgian brewery representative in New York that 1995 attendance of 2.8 million for 72 home dates at an Opening Day payroll of $49.8 million (highest in baseball), and a losing record for the second year in a row had led to a $15 million loss. For 1996, Beeston said, the proposed budget was a small profit based on a $30 million payroll assuming projected attendance of 2.6 million and a Canadian dollar worth 73 cents US. The budget was approved.

Although ownership was to be temporary, Interbrew was unable to sell the Blue Jays until 2000. After two additional seasons of losing records, the Blue Jays had a winning record for the last three seasons of Interbrew ownership. That did not stem the tide of falling attendance; it declined to 1.7 million in 2000.

Rogers Communications: 2000-Present

Rogers Communications Inc. purchased a 70 percent interest in the Blue Jays from Interbrew and the 10 percent Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce interest in September 2000 for $165 million. A press release referred to the purchase being part of a North American trend to combine entertainment and communications companies. Rogers was Canada’s largest cable company and owned a sports channel. Paul Godfrey was named CEO of the Blue Jays, and remained until 2008.

In 2004, when Interbrew was purchased by Inbev, Rogers acquired the remaining 20 percent interest in the Blue Jays. As of 2019 ownership of the Blue Jays is officially listed as Rogers Blue Jays Baseball Partnership, a private company. As a result, there is little financial information publicly available. A review of the Jays won-lost record under Rogers ownership, in conjunction with payroll data published by USA Today indicates that the current ownership group does invest in the team through the winning record/losing record cycles. From 2000 through 2018, the Jays have had a winning record 10 of 19 years with two postseason appearances. In the same time frame, Opening Day payroll has fluctuated between $45.7 million and $164.1 million, ranking between 7th and 25th in baseball.

Rogers ownership included significant control over broadcast rights. Sportsnet, a second Canadian sports channel, was launched in 1998. Sportsnet was originally a joint venture, including Rogers Media as it was then known. By 2004, Rogers was the sole owner of Sportsnet and effective for the 2010 season, Sportsnet became the sole broadcaster for all 162 Blue Jays games.69

Last revised: April 1, 2019

An aerial view of Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays, circa 2012. (Creative Commons 2.0 image by Richie Diesterheft)

Notes

1 William Humber, Diamonds of the North (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 1995), 208.

2 Maxwell Kates and Bill Nowlin, eds. Time for Expansion Baseball (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2018), 279.

3 Intercounty Baseball League, 100 Seasons Strong (Self-published, 2018), 199, describes the league as “Southern Ontario’s top independent baseball circuit.”

4 Stephen Brunt, Diamond Dreams: 20 Years of Blue Jays Baseball (Toronto: Viking, 1996), 17.

5 Brunt, 17.

6 Brunt, 18.

7 Kates and Nowlin, 280.

8 Ibid.

9 Helena Moncrieff, “Sydney Cooper Eng.,” Canadian Jewish News Spotlight: 2.

10 Brunt, 20.

11 Moncrieff, 7.

12 Brunt, 26.

13 Brunt, 21.

14 Brunt, 12.

15 Brunt, 15.

16 Brunt, 21.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Brunt, 22.

20 Ibid.

21 Kates and Nowlin, 281.

22 Brunt, 33.

23 Brunt, 35.

24 Kates and Nowlin, 282.

25 Brunt, 47.

26 The Sporting News, April 3, 1976: 28.

27 Brunt, 19.

28 Brunt, 61.

29 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Archives, March 23, 1977.

30 The Sporting News, April 9, 1977: 38.

31 The Sporting News, April 26, 1980: 32.

32 Brunt, 66.

33 Brunt, 109.

34 Brunt, 117.

35 Brunt, 118.

36 Brunt, 133.

37 Brunt, 131.

38 CBC Archives, July 30, 1982.

39 Brunt, 150.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Brunt, 151.

44 John Mays, “Designed SkyDome as ‘a Pleasure Palace for the People,’” Globe and Mail (Toronto), January 6, 2012.

45 Ibid.

46 Brunt, 151.

47 Marcus Gee, “SkyDome’s Legacy: Not with My Money, Never Again,” Globe and Mail, June 3, 2009.

48 CBC Archives, February 9, 2011.

49 CBC Archives, November 26, 1998.

50 The Sporting News, April 9, 1984: 30.

51 History of Canadian Broadcasting, May 2014.

52 The Sporting News, April 8, 1985: 36.

53 Brunt, 191.

54 Brunt, 192.

55 Brunt, 215.

56 Brunt, 212.

57 Brunt, 234.

58 Brunt, 235.

59 Brunt, 283.

60 Ibid.

61 Brunt, 297.

62 Brunt, 298.

63 Brunt, 297.

64 Derek Decloet, “At Labatt, They Miss the Belgians,” Globe and Mail, September 15, 2006.

65 Jacquie McNish, “Strike 3 for Gerry Schwartz,” Globe and Mail, January 19, 2001.

66 Decloet.

67 Brunt, 299.

68 Brunt, 319.

69 2010 MLB Advanced Media, May 20, 2010.