Stadium For Rent: 9. Anatomy of a Fast Pitch

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

9. Anatomy of a Fast Pitch

"Just about anybody who is asked will do anything they can to assist when it comes to the baseball effort."
-- Rich Hickman, Director of Marketing and Public Information,
City of St. Petersburg

For 33 days during the fall of 1989, Tampa Bay area baseball fans rewrote the rules of competition among cities seeking teams through expansion or relocation.

The most successful marketing campaign in Tampa Bay history came from three little words uttered by Rick Dodge, St. Petersburg's assistant city manager: Join The Team. More than 22,000 people were willing to put their checkbooks where their dreams were to bring baseball to the bay area, a show of support that surprised even the optimists.

What made the effort more astonishing was that it was deftly managed by city officials and without benefit of an advertising budget and with only a small, temporary force of employees. Staff and other expenditures were covered by a $275,000 contingency in the Florida Suncoast Dome's marketing budget.

How did they do it?
* * *

Talk of a season-ticket drive had been under discussion for months. Frank Morsani, president of the Tampa Bay Baseball Group, considered likely to be the man to head any local franchise, worked with Dodge to launch the drive.

Managers of the season-ticket drive brought different experiences to the table. Dodge had a master's degree in marketing -- he cut the corporate deals. Florida Suncoast Dome administrative manager Anita Treiser was a whiz at interpersonal, marketing and management skills; a tireless worker, she oversaw sales. And Morsani? He had money and a dream.

Timing was important. October was chosen because it was the time of baseball's fall classic, the World Series. And 1989 was a non-election year, meaning none of the usual distractions.

Preparation was crucial. There were three goals:

To sell 10,000 season-ticket reservations (privately, leaders of the movement were confident they could double that amount)

Increase unity among the counties of Tampa Bay

Place another piece of the puzzle before the expected announcement of expansion by the National League in 1990.

The effort was planned from the start to be hit and run -- announce the drive on short notice and set an absolute deadline.

"We thought if we did it in 30 days, it would be impressive to baseball," Dodge says. "We talked to people involved in similar drives, like the United Way. They said, 'Great idea -- you can start in 18 months.' "

Although it should have taken more lead time, the groundwork was laid in weeks, not months.

"We were amazed at what people would do," Dodge says.
* * *

Orlando, under the direction of Orlando Magic basketball team general manager Pat Williams, tried two months earlier to steal Tampa Bay's thunder by launching a baseball season-ticket drive of its own.

Rick Dodge heard about the Orlando campaign late one afternoon after conducting a tour for media and St. Petersburg Beach officials of the still unfinished Florida Suncoast Dome. His jaw dropped slightly on hearing the news, then framed an impish grin when told the Orlando entry into the fracas would be known as the SunRays. What a silly name, he thought.

The drive fizzled.

"I followed their progress," Dodge says. "The way they launched made me feel better about us waiting. We got to go to school on how they performed. And I knew Orlando's drive would help build the right climate for us to do well."

"Rick examined the structure that had been implemented by Orlando and said, 'That doesn't make sense. It was designed to fail,' " St. Petersburg Mayor Bob Ulrich says. "He structured our drive around a pool. To gain admittance to the pool you had to enter through a 30-day window. And the price of the pool -- $50 -- was reasonable."
* * *

The strategic assault for Join The Team was initially directed by marketing consultant Russ Cline, formerly with the NFL Kansas City Chiefs. He targeted newspapers, radio and television, corporations, major events and shopping malls. The goal was to have the Join The Team message everywhere that people were.

A deadline was created to build some sense of urgency. "If you don't get in this month, you're out of the lottery." The promoters explained that, in the timing of things, they wanted to go to the 1989 baseball winter meetings in Nashville to deliver the news.

Nine people were hired to coordinate marketing. Six, from different counties, divided up the corporate entities in their back yards to rally support. Each was responsible for 150 businesses. Three people were engaged to handle programs for the public. St. Petersburg city marketing director Rich Hickman came on board, as did Bay Plaza's advertising team, Landers & Partners, led by Bob Guckenberger.

Join The Team was unleashed upon the public with careful, if unscientific, testing. Once Dodge, Morsani and Treiser agreed upon the type of campaign and timetable, they met with 100 corporate leaders across six bay area counties to test the waters on all shores. The reception was inviting.

"I was so identified with baseball, I knew they would open the door to see me," Dodge says. "I'd say to these corporate presidents, 'This is it. You said you wanted to contribute, to lead. Now's the time. We're about to jump. Will you jump with us?' That's when people stood up and said, you bet."

Join The Team asked a lot of Tampa Bay, Inc. It wanted to place posters in the workplace, establish in-house sales efforts and coordinators, and make presentations to employees. Dodge also asked for input on their marketing campaign.

"I think the corporate people, the people who market every day, were impressed," Dodge says. "We didn't get a lot of suggestions. They said, 'That works.' "

Corporate support was organized into pyramids. Les Rubin (Rubin Development), Allen Keesler (Florida Power) and Alan Bomstein (Creative Contractors), for example, were at the top of the three pyramids. They were asked to get eight to 10 fellow key business people involved, who would then repeat the procedure.

The level of commitment varied. Many companies made season-ticket pledges before the drive began. Some CEOs wrote personal checks. Others wrote corporate checks for large numbers of tickets and asked employees to buy into the corporate block. Still others invited Join The Team to come on-site and make its pitch for individual sales.

Guerrilla salesmen descended upon every corporate event, meeting and poker game so they could pitch the team, play a video and pick up checks.

There were a lot of people who bought into the dream of a St. Petersburg revival and this fit into that. And there was a natural, positive rhythm to the campaign, the beat loud and appealing.
* * *

Bob Guckenberger still can't believe how fast his advertising agency, Landers & Partners (his other clients included Taco Bell, WYNF, WTOG-Channel 44 and the Pinellas Economic Development Council), got the Join The Team assignment and produced the design logo and materials that were needed. He shows the dates on his '89 appointment calendar -- first meeting Aug. 22 at 3:30 p.m., approval of written materials Sept. 4 -- to prove he's not exaggerating the agency's haste.

"They came to us in August and said it's going to be a hassle," Guckenberger says. "It was almost impossible."

Former NBC Baseball Game of the Week sportscaster Curt Gowdy was hired for $2,000 to do a voiceover on a six-minute video. "His secretary called us on a Monday and said he had gone to West Palm Beach on business. He found a recording studio, we faxed him a script, he fed it back by phone patch and we approved it," Guckenberger says. The video was used in corporate and community presentations and also ran repeatedly on public access cable channels.

Because they were asking the media to donate commercial time and space as a public service, Join The Team made a point of providing whatever materials were necessary to fit the opportunity. Using equipment on loan from Florida Power, Landers & Partners produced a series of six TV spots showing real people around the bay area tossing a baseball. Guckenberger convinced rival sportscasters Nanci Donnellan and Tedd Webb to play catch, asked the Mystic Sheiks at Busch Gardens to play "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," organized the mayors of St. Petersburg, Tampa and Clearwater in a game of catch, and hustled opposing representatives from the Times and Tribune into playing ball.

Hooking Webb was a political bonus. The Tampa sportscaster spent years badmouthing St. Petersburg and its stadium. He never before bought into playing ball on Tampa Bay's left bank. "Tedd [Webb] was a continuous source of annoyance for us," St. Petersburg councilman Bob Stewart says.

When Join The Team began, the patriarch of professional football in Tampa Bay called Webb on the carpet.

"Leonard Levy came to me and he said, 'We gotta talk,' " Webb says. "He was pissed. I was on the radio, the TV, blasting the Dome, saying it was going to be the world's largest bingo hall. He said, 'Think community.' Leonard leaned over the table, very blunt. He said, 'If you want baseball, asshole -- and I believe you do -- you better knock this shit off.' He told me unless we got straight this area was going to miss out entirely. He asked me to help the St. Petersburg effort any way I could. He said, 'That stadium is built. If baseball is coming here, it's going to come to St. Petersburg. Or it's not coming.'

"I'm a team player," Webb says. "I want baseball here. So I got on board."

Levy made the same speech to his friend Tom McEwen, sports editor of the Tampa Tribune. It was McEwen's turn to join the team, even if he had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, all the way.

"Tom," Levy said, "you have a great legacy. But the one legacy I don't want you to have is that we didn't get Major League Baseball because Tom McEwen didn't support it."

Levy, who knew McEwen's attitude was prevalent across Tampa, believes he had some impact.

"Leonard Levy was the one guy, of all those sports-minded power brokers in Tampa, who didn't jump ship and run back across the bay," Stewart says. "I'll always remember him for that."

"We are tied together," Levy says. "Our communities are dependent on each other. When the Dome started, I was the first person in Tampa to support their efforts. Not because I wanted it there -- I wanted it next to Tampa Stadium. But they needed all the support they could get."

* * *

One of the triumphs for the Join The Team campaign managers was keeping details out of the press until the last possible minute. That was no small feat, particularly for a city government operating under Florida's nosy Government-in-the-Sunshine Law, where all government-related meetings, memoranda, correspondence and trash was public domain. Presumably, reporters could have uncovered plans for the campaign if they looked under the right rock, requested the correct document or asked the right question.

Dodge says that top corporate management at every media operation in the Tampa Bay area knew about Join The Team details and kept it under wraps until the agreed-upon release date. That included the St. Petersburg Times, which usually maintains a policy of not withholding any information by prior agreement with its sources and not taking part in off-the-record conversations.

"They knew," Dodge says. "We weren't that secretive. We talked to 150 senior leaders in area businesses. Maybe all the media silently said to themselves, 'I want this to work. I don't want to be the guy who launches this prematurely.' "

It was a very delicate operation. The (Times ') corporate people didn't tell their own reporter certain details. They knew, but they didn't tell.

"The media helped us keep it under our hats," Treiser says. "We talked to editors and publishers. They helped us keep it a secret."
* * *

A music video hastily organized by rock station WYNF set the spirit and tone for the campaign. It brought together news anchors from the three network television affiliates, the mayors of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, air personalities from WYNF and sportswriters from the St. Petersburg Times. (Other radio stations and the Tampa Tribune were invited but declined to participate.) Charlie Logan, music director for WYNF, rewrote the lyrics to Badfinger's song Come and Get It, which was then recorded by Stranger, a local rock band. The assembled celebrities and dignitaries sang in a rough approximation of harmony:

If you want it, here it is, come and get it.

Make your mind up fast.

If you want them, anytime, season-tickets,

But you'd better hurry 'cause they may not last.

The gathering itself became a news event; that so many personalities from both sides of the bay came together was unheard of and attention-getting. "Sure it was corny," Dodge, who stood front and center in the chorus line, says. "But it was fun. And it was the first visible sign that the bay was united."

Many of Tampa Bay's TV and radio stations ran special Join The Team programing that featured announcements with the campaign's toll-free phone number. Sportscaster Nanci Donnellan on WTKN and Tedd Webb on WFLA talked about Join The Team or welcomed campaign-related guests on their shows almost every day. As Rick Dodge remembers it, 15 seconds into each broadcast, every phone line at team headquarters lit up. "But 10 minutes after the broadcast," he says, "the phone went dead."

WTSP-Channel 10 sportscaster Al Keck kicked off the campaign with a live one-hour broadcast from The Pier in St. Petersburg. WTVT-Channel 13 sportscaster Andy Hardy hosted a one-hour telethon before the start of a World Series game. WTOG-Channel 44 ran public service announcements. And WFLA-Channel 8 broadcast the film, Take Me Out To The Ball Game, donating half the commercial time to spots provided by Join The Team.

Channel 13's effort may have been the most successful. More than 800 reservations were sold in an hour.

The broadcast time was all the more valuable because it was free. Dodge estimated the total value of donated commercial time at $700,000 for the month.

Newspaper promotions were less effective than organizers had anticipated. On the second day of the campaign -- a Sunday -- 1.2-million Join The Team brochures were inserted in the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune, Bradenton Herald and The Ledger (Lakeland). Several weekly papers also carried the literature, including the Weekly Challenger, Florida Sentinel-Bulletin, Winter Haven News Chief and five more in Sarasota to pick up the slack when the Sarasota Herald-Tribune declined to participate.

"We internally had a battle over which day's paper it should go in, daily or Sunday," Anita Treiser says. "The numbers double for Sunday, but how many people reach in first and throw out all the ads? There must have been eight of us around the table, arguing about it."

Join The Team paid for printing the brochures; newspapers waived their insertion fees. Still, the team estimates that less than one percent of the brochures distributed were returned.

In terms of news coverage, a decision was made early on that sales figures would only be released on a weekly, rather than daily, basis. Organizers recognized the reluctance of editors to print daily updates and, more important, hypothesized the public would become indifferent. So press conferences were staged every Thursday to announce the latest totals. (A conference was added on a Monday to announce the 15,000 mark had been surpassed.)

A real coup was a late burst of enthusiastic support from the editorial page of the Tampa Tribune, delivered on word that the drive had met its announced goal of 10,000 reservations with two weeks to go. The Tribune had been a long and loud vocal opponent to St. Petersburg as a home for baseball; its Oct. 22 editorial page told readers they were faced with a choice between St. Petersburg and Orlando. The Trib announced it was finally climbing aboard the St. Petersburg bandwagon.

Why was the media so unanimous in its generosity?

Frank Morsani says the campaign was unique. "There was nothing competing with it," he says. "Selling automobiles, you've got people all up and down the boulevard. We didn't have competition [for baseball]."

This was also different than a marketing campaign for private purposes. If Join The Team was viewed as being for Frank Morsani's benefit, promoters would not have sold 22,000. But it wasn't Frank Morsani's team they were joining. It was bigger than one person; There was community pride involved. But beyond community support, promoters convinced the media that consumer interest would prove lucrative if Tampa Bay had a baseball team. Few things could happen to Tampa Bay that would have a bigger impact.
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