Stadium For Rent: Ch. 1. About Last Night

STADIUM FOR RENT:
Tampa Bay's Quest for Major League Baseball
By BOB ANDELMAN

1. About Last Night

CONTINUED . . .

"The next day, Eddie and I went to see the governor. We told him the same thing. And the governor said, 'That's a great idea -- now we'll get the mayor to focus on this.' Each guy was pointing the finger at the other one."

Finally, in October 1987, Harold Washington and Jim Thompson agreed on a chairman -- Thomas Reynolds Jr. One month later, Washington died of a heart attack.

Washington's death made matters worse for the Sox. "There had been a tremendous change in baseball's economics," Reinsdorf says. "So when we sat down to negotiate the deal with the stadium authority, we needed a better deal than we originally thought." But interim Mayor Eugene Sawyer was more interested in keeping his new job and being re-elected, than in supporting a poorly timed, over-priced baseball stadium for the White Sox, who by late 1987 had returned to their losing ways.

Quietly, the White Sox began investigating other options. Vice president of park operations Terry Savarise visited baseball boosters in Denver and Washington, D.C. to see how serious they were in bringing the game to their cities.

"We looked at a lot of different cities," Reinsdorf says, "Denver, New Orleans, Buffalo, St. Petersburg and Washington, D.C. We had very serious talks with Denver. Extremely serious. With New Orleans, we had talks with people at the Superdome; we realized very early on that wouldn't work. We had some serious talks in Washington, D.C. And we just peripherally looked at Buffalo. Didn't think it would work. We concluded St. Petersburg was the best place to go."

* * *

That St. Petersburg wanted a baseball team was hardly a secret in baseball. The city was a regular at baseball's annual meetings, passing out literature with breathtaking beach photos and demographics and getting close to all the team owners and executives. And St. Petersburg's long-simmering, internecine battle with nearby Tampa over which city was a better location for Major League Baseball was an old joke in baseball circles.

But there were also those in baseball who gave St. Petersburg credit for having big cojones. Despite baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth's explicit discouragement, the St. Petersburg City Council committed $83-million to building a domed stadium in 1986.

The very night of the affirmative vote to build, a contingent of city officials flew first to Cleveland and then to Chicago to acquaint the leadership of the Indians and White Sox with their plans.

"We left that very evening, elated," recalls former St. Petersburg councilman Bill Bond, "and flew to Cleveland and had discussions with Peter Bavasi, who was then president of the Indians. We even did an interview with the Cleveland press to assure them we were there to see old friends. We weren't talking about the Indians in any way.

"The next morning we flew to Chicago and got bombarded by the press. There was talk about the White Sox and their inability to stay in Comiskey. It was 'conveniently' leaked to the press that we were coming. We stepped off the plane -- I never saw so much [media] equipment.

"We went to Reinsdorf's office," Bond says, "and just talked conceptually about what we were doing and introduced [Reinsdorf and Einhorn] to the project."

According to Bond, Reinsdorf said, "No matter what happens with us, you did the right thing building that facility."

* * *

Although the stadium was approved, the private sector seemed to stall in its efforts to attract financing to buy and relocate an existing team or to acquire a future expansion franchise.

Assistant city manager Rick Dodge decided to have a chat with his boss, city manager Bob Obering.

"We had better try and make something happen," Dodge said, "because it won't matter who did or didn't do it. It will matter only that we didn't get it done."

Dodge had heard that the Chicago White Sox were having problems with their stadium. He suggested a roundabout approach: hire two White Sox executives, Terry Savarise and Howard Pizer, to come down and give the city a program to recruit a team. A little consulting job, Dodge called it.

"I knew these guys were very skilled," he says. "If we got them intrigued

. . . ."

Savarise and Pizer did the job for which Dodge hired them, providing advice and direction to the city's efforts as well as significant insight into the current thinking of baseball toward expansion and relocation. Dodge also learned a great deal more about the White Sox's problems with Comiskey Park.

"I asked them, 'Can you get me 10 minutes with Reinsdorf?' "

A small party from St. Petersburg, led by Dodge and city councilman Bill Bond, immediately flew to Chicago. The meeting went okay, a friendly discussion in which the Chicago and St. Petersburg situations were compared and contrasted.

On the flight back, Bond repeated to a St. Petersburg Times reporter something Reinsdorf had said. "It appeared in the paper the next day and Reinsdorf went ballistic," Dodge recalls. "He said, 'I'm not going to talk to you people ever again. I am never going to talk to any politicians down there again.' It caused big problems in Chicago. Bill felt terrible."

Dodge immediately went to work trying to soften Reinsdorf and re-start their dialogue.

"I will come on any terms," Dodge told Savarise and Pizer. "Do you want the mayor? I will bring the mayor."

"No politicians," came the answer. "We know you; Reinsdorf will talk to you. Only you can't talk to the media."

Dodge said he had to bring someone along and the White Sox agreed to let St. Petersburg city attorney Mike Davis participate. A presentation was customized for Reinsdorf and off went Dodge again, back to Chicago, accompanied by Arnold and St. Petersburg businessman Jim Healey.

"I rehearsed the night before the meeting. Healey was in my hotel room. He couldn't go to the meeting but Jim coached me," Dodge says. "He was just great, getting me all fired up. We had asked Dick Dailey to do a run on what the media numbers would be because we knew that it would be important. Jim took a call from Dailey and handed me a piece of paper that says '$10-million.' I had no idea what the number meant. Not a clue. I put it in my pocket.

"The next morning, Jim walked me down to the cab. He got in the cab and said, 'Don't fuck it up.' "

The meeting was set up at another Chicago hotel. Savarise and Pizer met Dodge ahead of Reinsdorf's arrival, convinced they made a bad call in making the meeting happen. St. Petersburg? Had they lost their minds? Reinsdorf was going to be pissed off for wasting his time.

Reinsdorf came in and Dodge ran through his presentation. The White Sox owner asked a few polite questions but he simply wasn't buying what Dodge was selling.

"I was dying," Dodge says.

When the topic turned to the dimensions of the TV, radio and cable market, Reinsdorf became a little more interested.

"Oh, we had a consultant look, preliminarily, at what the rights would be worth for local broadcasting," Dodge said

"How much?

"$10-million."

"That's gross, right?"

"No, it's net."

"Bullshit. $10-million?"

"Yes -- $10-million, net."

"If that number is right," Reinsdorf said, "you're a candidate we will seriously consider."

Suddenly the meeting came alive. Reinsdorf began barking instructions at Savarise and Pizer. Do this, this and this. "Work with Dodge."

As they left the hotel, Dodge turned to Davis and said, "I don't know if that was net or gross but whatever it was it was the right answer."

* * *

The City of St. Petersburg commissioned broadcast consultant Dick Dailey to do a bona fide research project for the White Sox: was it $10-million net or gross? Dodge told Dailey to "make this number real."

Dailey's findings were presented to Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn at a top-secret, off-the-record Sunday meeting between representatives of the Chicago White Sox and the City of St. Petersburg at the Bradenton Holiday Inn, 30 minutes south of St. Petersburg, during the winter of 1987. The city made a presentation on the economic benefits of relocating the baseball team to Florida.

"I did most of the talking in Bradenton," Dailey says, "because the difference was not ticket sales, not how much money they're going to get nationally, but the broadcast dollars. People in Chicago and around the country did not appreciate this marketplace."

Dailey's research backed up the $10-million figure as net after expenses. But now Reinsdorf wanted more. "If it's worth $10-million, do you have somebody who will guarantee that for 10 years?" he asked. A $100-million guarantee. To which Healey replied, "Well, if all we have to pay is $10-million a year, I think I could probably get some people together who would do that."

(Healey had little at risk; the White Sox's own research later valued the Florida media market at almost $16-million annually, net.)

Reinsdorf and Einhorn had a lot of other questions. But they also discussed Chicago politics, how they might get out of their stadium lease, timetables for relocation and where they might play their first year because the Dome wouldn't be finished for another year. They also addressed what would happen if information about the meeting got out: Nothing. No team, no talk.

"I do remember what we told them from the very beginning," Reinsdorf says, "is that our first choice is to stay in Chicago. But we had to have a stadium or we wouldn't have a place to play and we were going to go bankrupt. And that if we couldn't get a stadium, we were serious about moving. But we wanted them to understand they could end up being used, they could end up being the vehicle for us getting a stadium in Chicago.

"They already had committed to start construction on the Suncoast Dome. What they said to us was, 'Nobody is taking us seriously.' Ueberroth told them, 'Don't build it,' Steinbrenner wanted a team in Tampa. They said nobody is taking St. Petersburg seriously, everybody thinks it's a city of old people. Our deal was yes, we would move there, but we really didn't want to. If we didn't get a stadium in Chicago, they'd get a baseball team. But if we didn't move, at least St. Petersburg would get some recognition. They said they had no other chance to get a team; this was a chance."

The story of Sox meetings with St. Petersburg broke in the Chicago media almost immediately. It didn't leak out of Florida, though; chances are Reinsdorf himself tipped off the press to turn up the heat. Few people took it seriously. Relocation threats are old news in sports; they rarely occur and when they do, events happen fast, such as the overnight flight of the NFL Cardinals from St. Louis to Phoenix and the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis.

Whether the public cared or not, Terry Savarise, vice president of park operations for the Sox, and Howard Pizer, executive vice president, proceeded with high-visibility trips to St. Petersburg and meetings with city officials.

"Terry was our point man," Reinsdorf says. "Terry, at the time, worked in our accounting department. He was doing all the financial analysis and ultimately became one of our negotiators. Howard Pizer is our executive vice president and my right hand since 1972, going back to when I was practicing law. Terry reported to him. Eddie and I were involved in negotiating concepts and major things; Howard and Terry worked the details out."

Once, the St. Petersburg delegation secretly went to a Chicago office building waiting to make a presentation to the White Sox. In the same building, on a different floor, the Sox met with the Chicago stadium authority.

"They had us on one floor negotiating and they had the Illinois Sports Facilities Commission on another floor," Dodge says. "Reinsdorf was going back and forth. We knew that Illinois was there but I don't know if they knew we were. Knowing Jerry, I think they did, just because he was trying to wedge both ways. Jerry and Eddie took me aside to a smaller room. 'We want this, this and this.' They were incredible. They wanted us to provide guaranteed ticket sales. I said, 'I can't do that. I'm going home.' They went back upstairs, thinking I was just kidding. But I got my briefcase and told their attorneys. I walked out the door, got a cab, went to the airport and flew home."

Reinsdorf and Einhorn eventually came back. "Where's Dodge?" they asked. Reinsdorf couldn't believe the assistant city manager's nerve. The next week the White Sox owners came to St. Petersburg for the first time and the deal came together.

Near the end of April, the White Sox put together another deal with the Illinois Sports Facilities Commission which required financing by the Illinois Legislature. The initial reaction to the deal was unabashedly negative. It crossed party lines. Financing seemed unlikely to pass.

Illinois' elected officials and the public failed to believe the Sox would seriously consider giving up Chicago for St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg? Leave the Second City for the Gray Lady? Isn't that where Uncle Max and Aunt Bessie went to die? Then there were those (some would say Cubs fans) who characterized the White Sox attitude toward the city as blackmail and said, in effect, "Let them go." Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn were not popular owners to begin with.

* * *

St. Petersburg Mayor Bob Ulrich was invited to meet Reinsdorf and members of his family after they toured the Dome construction site.

"It was a private meeting," Ulrich recalls. "Jerry exuded enthusiasm about the Dome. He and his sons were there, hovering over the plans in the construction office, comparing them to what they saw out the window. He was not only enthusiastic, he was excited. His mood was one of elation. He was excited about the engineering innovations. He was pleased there would be no rainouts. I'm not sure he would describe it this way, but he was captured."

Members of the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce's ever-eager baseball committee went into high gear, cranking up an intense letter-writing campaign directed at Reinsdorf and Einhorn. "The baseball committee made sure the White Sox knew they would be welcomed with open arms," retired chamber general manager Howard DeFreitas says.

In the team's executive offices, a growing justification for leaving was financial. "There were some of us who thought that without a suburban stadium outside Chicago, we couldn't be profitable anyway," former Sox senior vice president of marketing and broadcasting Mike McClure says.

When the Chicago stadium plan was announced, there was a flurry of activity in both cities as well as the White Sox executive offices. The negative response from lawmakers to the deal indicated it was time to seriously consider the St. Petersburg alternative. For the first time, Florida marketing plans were seriously discussed.

Dick Dailey, who provided rough estimates to the City of St. Petersburg as to the potential radio and television value of the Tampa Bay area and Florida for a hometown baseball team, was recruited now to work directly for the White Sox. Dailey began earnest research on the region, broadcast data and demographics. He also scoured the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune daily and faxed stories of interest north to Chicago. "I spent half my day for six months doing nothing but that," he says.

"My name is big in Chicago," Dailey jokes. "I'm not. Anybody I called in Chicago, they put me through right away."

The Sox gave Dailey their broadcast contracts as well as their Miller Beer sponsorship contract. "They said, 'Here's what it is here. What's it worth down there? Your $10-million is nice but now we've got to make it real.' "

Dailey set up a company to be the team's broadcasting arm -- "Florida White Sox Broadcasting, Inc."

"Looking back," Dailey says, "I guess I'm the only guy who came out ahead on this, because the White Sox paid me."

* * *

April 1988 marked the turning point in the White Sox attitude toward relocation. Mutual exploitation be damned; the baseball team realized it needed a serious option as the politics of building a new stadium in Chicago soured like week-old milk.

Employees were polled to see how many would consider moving with the team; at least 60 percent were prepared to pack their socks and fly south. A polarization of the staff took place, however; people who worked for the team -- and lived in the neighborhood -- saw the White Sox as that neighborhood's salvation.

"The same thing was probably true of our players," McClure says. "But the majority was probably ready to go in a minute."

A different dilemma faced the team ownership. Reinsdorf and Einhorn were the guys out front, but the White Sox were also owned in part by 70 limited partners. Some of them invested out of civic pride, some were lifetime Sox fans and couldn't bear the thought of their team leaving town.

* * *

One little-discussed aspect of the proposed relocation was a land deal which the City of St. Petersburg cooked up for Jerry Reinsdorf.

The city owned a piece of property it offered to the White Sox owner as an inducement to move. It was especially appealing to Reinsdorf, who already had an interest in several Tampa Bay real estate properties. The first property acquisition made by Reinsdorf's former real estate company, Balcor, was the Starcrest Apartments in Clearwater. Over the years, Balcor acquired four major apartment complexes in Clearwater, St. Petersburg and Largo and a couple office buildings. "I was very familiar with the area," Reinsdorf says. "I had been there several jillion times. Plus my in-laws spend the winter in Clearwater."

* * *

Skeptics weren't hard to find.

Some, like Tampa Bay sportcaster Tedd Webb, had more powerful soapboxes than others.

"You'll see God in St. Petersburg before you see the White Sox," he told his listeners.

* * *

A newspaper war of words -- columnists and advertising, that is -- heated up when the Chicago Tribune published a full-page advertisement that read: "ST. PETERSBURG WANTS CHICAGO'S WHITE SOX! SO . . . . LET'S SEND SOME! LET'S SEND OUR WHITE SOCKS TO FLORIDA . . . . AND KEEP OUR WHITE SOX SAFE AT HOME!"

The ad exhorted readers to send white socks " . . . . one, or a pair . . . . striped or plain . . . . clean or dirty," to St. Petersburg Mayor Bob Ulrich. An address for Ulrich was given, although readers were also invited to drop their socks off in the newspaper's main lobby.

Ulrich sent a kindly, pre-printed postcard to every Chicago fan who wrote him or sent socks, no matter how dirty the words or the socks.

Days later, hard-boiled Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko followed up by attacking St. Petersburg for courting his beloved White Sox.

"I am declaring a personal war on the state of Florida," Royko wrote.

He bemoaned the fact that even though Chicagoans consume 10 percent more orange juice than other Americans -- spending $80-million annually on Florida oranges and $10-million more on grapefruit -- Floridians were lousy ingrates trying to steal one of Chicago's baseball teams.

"I've called upon Chicagoans, and any others who might be sympathetic to this cause: If you are planning a vacation in Florida, why not consider going somewhere else? . . . .

"As for orange juice, try to buy the good stuff from California. It's just as good."

Finally, Royko encouraged his readers to send a copy of his column to Florida Gov. Bob Martinez. "You might want to enclose a note," he wrote, "saying, 'Dear Florida Guv: Steal Chicago's team and you've seen the last of my money. By the way, I hope a snake gets you.' "

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