Stadium For Rent: 13. Happy Holidays, Mr. Morsani

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

13. Happy Holidays, Mr. Morsani

"There's a story about a guy who climbs a tree and he finds a bobcat. He says to his friend on the ground, 'Shoot up here and give one of us some relief.' That's the way we felt."
-- Mark Bostick, Partner of Frank Morsani

Frank Morsani, more confident than ever about his baseball prospects, turned to damage control after his group's presentation in New York. He convinced the press that the two bank lawsuits pending against him were attributable to the cost of doing business. "We expect to settle within days," he said.

He flew back to Tampa from New York immediately. Morsani considered his options carefully all weekend, found they were few and on Monday morning hired a bankruptcy attorney to defend him in the suits.

As the public learned in succeeding weeks, Morsani's situation was worse than he had let on. It was also worse than his partners knew.

Two weeks after New York, Morsani, Lance Ringhaver and Mark Bostick reshuffled their roles. Morsani moved away from the public spotlight and Bostick stepped into it. They renamed their partnership the "Bostick group" but it fooled no one; everyone assumed Morsani still called the shots.

"The stuff that hit the newspapers was not positive at all," Bostick says. "It was not helpful. I didn't know the depth of Frank's problems. I believe there should be a lot of privacy to family and financial affairs. Frank was such an honest guy. He is the last guy in the world that would want to be in that situation, not being able to meet all his commitments.

"Frank or Lance or I had never really been partners in a lot of things. This was a new experience for me but it really worked out well. The chemistry between the three of us was good. I said whatever can help the group, I will be glad to do it. None of us were out there for ego reasons."

"Obviously, it was bad timing for our group," Ringhaver says. "Things were crumbling for some time. Frank had been pressured by local banks. Frank wasn't going to have any financial interest and we told that to the people in New York. We tried to camouflage [Morsani's problems]."

Rumors flew that the National League's short list would include one ownership group from every city -- except Tampa Bay, where both the Morsani and Porter groups made the cut. Expansion committee chairman Douglas Danforth even made a public reference to two groups in Tampa Bay.

"What we were hearing consistently was that the Morsani group was in but it wasn't considered a done deal," Rick Dodge says. "The reports that Frank and I got back looked good. But then I started to hear from a number of people that, 'It looks like two groups might get selected.' In the last week before the list was announced, it was reinforced by something that Danforth said. He said, 'We selected a group in each area except one and I think we are going to name two.' We went through the other groups and figured it had to be this area.

"I think there was an attitude in both groups that, 'If we both get selected, we'll figure a way,' " Dodge says. "I know at that point in time they both felt that would happen so there wasn't a mad rush to merge. Both of them felt they were going to be dumped in the bowl by Major League Baseball."

That's the way Mark Bostick expected it to go.

"The last rumor was that we were both going to be selected," he says. "We met the criteria for baseball. The word we got was they were going to name our group and the Porter group. That is what Steve Porter heard, too."
* * *

Lance Ringhaver remembers his group's assessment of its competition after New York.

"Hammons needed a lot of help," he says. "We saw them as kind of immature to handle a ball team.

"The other group, they handled themselves pretty good," Ringhaver says. "Sidney Kohl was pretty impressive. We thought they'd do a good job but not being local hurt them. And the farm team they had [the St. Petersburg Cardinals] -- there'd been some problems with the city. If they couldn't handle a farm team, how could they handle a major league team?"

The three groups in Miami were late to the party and still not of much concern to the self-presumed front-runners.

"We thought Miami made a good presentation but didn't think they could adapt Joe Robbie Stadium for baseball," Ringhaver says. "It would not be single-purpose. It would not be waterproof. Baseball knew they needed a covered coliseum. We thought [an open-air stadium] was out of the question anywhere in Florida. [The committee] even agreed with that in our meeting in New York. They said, 'You don't have to tell us about the rain and lightning.'

"Wayne Huizenga did a good P.R. job, that he could write the check by himself," Ringhaver says. "But we thought baseball did not want to be associated with the drug problems in Miami. The racial problems down there, the stadium -- and he was coming on late. Someone also said, 'That Wayne, he's a dollars-and-cents guy, he's only in it for the bucks. Baseball wants someone civic-oriented, someone with a public reputation.' We talked ourselves into thinking he would not be a good candidate."

Ringhaver later saw Huizenga on TV, wowing the crowd at Joe Robbie Stadium during a Miami Dolphins halftime. That's when he changed his tune about the video czar.

"I was positive about our chances, but to rule him out was a mistake," Ringhaver says.

"Obviously, we underestimated him."
* * *

St. Petersburg Times reporter Stephen Koff was asked to lend his bulldog investigative expertise to the newspaper's reporting on the three Tampa Bay groups that emerged as potential baseball franchise owners.

"We were interested in 'Who are these people, anyway?' " he recalls.

Koff's unrelenting digging -- alongside that of Times reporters Tom Tobin and Steve Liesman -- led to enlightening and sometimes distressing reports about individuals in all three groups. Steve Porter quickly learned to dread any stories that bore Koff's byline.

"I went everywhere they went to learn more about them," he recalls. "I went to Palm Beach and Jacksonville, pulling every record I could, including Ringhaver's father's probate record. Tom went to Milwaukee to learn about the Kohls. Liesman went to New York."

It was in California records that Koff learned a great deal about Joel Schur. "I said to Liesman, 'I've got this incredible lawsuit,' " he recalls. "That's when they began disliking us. We did our homework -- everything from the fallen trees on Joel Schur's homes to Roy Disney's homes. It just happened the article came out the day Joel was getting married in Los Angeles. They kept saying 'National' and 'Enquirer.' They saw me as 'The Snooper' after that."

Porter objected to the Times' methods. He felt that only his baseball activities were fair game for investigation; the newspaper reporters and editors believed anyone planning such a massive investment in the local community should also be subject to personal and financial scrutiny.

"They implied that we were invading their privacy," Koff says.

Koff spoke to Porter once, late at night, by telephone, when he was actually trying to reach Schur. Then about a month after the primary investigative story written by Koff, Tobin and Liesman appeared, Koff heard that Porter was flying into Tampa International Airport. "I found his plane," the reporter recalls. "I said, 'Mr. Porter ... ' I was the last person he wanted to see. He told me, 'I won't talk to you. You shouldn't have done that story.' I said, 'We'd like to sit down and talk to you.' He finally agreed to talk to Tobin or [Marc] Topkin, but he wouldn't talk to me."

While he was in California, Koff went to Schur's home and rang the bell. There was no one home, however, and all he could see of the house from the fence was a chimney. Koff later went to Palm Beach, where Sidney Kohl refused to meet with him. He fared slightly better in West Palm Beach with Abe Gosman, who gave him 10 minutes.

"We asked Gosman questions about documents that came out of Boston and he didn't mind," Koff says. "His divorce from his wife -- Steve [Liesman] got something relating to a spending order that restricted [Gosman] from spending more than $1-million -- which is important if you're going to buy a baseball team."

Koff's investigation showed Hammons had some money, but that much of his net worth was tied up in citrus groves and some valuable property on ritzy St. Armand's Key, near Sarasota.

Among the more sensational -- if at times irrelevant -- revelations under the shared Koff/Tobin/Liesman byline:

Abe Gosman once let Ethel Kennedy stay at his Palm Beach home while hers was being renovated.

Gosman sued his stepson over a $100,000 debt.

Joel Schur was sued by his mother. She accused him of stealing from his father's estate. Schur countersued his brothers; the suits were later dropped.

Schur was sued by a Los Angeles lawyer who claimed Schur lied about his worth. Schur countersued; the lawyer dropped his suit. "My net worth is not $6-million, and it was not at that time," Schur told the Times. "It is far in excess of that."

Allen Kohl's California home was on the same block where the late Lucille Ball and Jack Benny once lived.

"We had this hatchet job done on us," Porter says. "A lot of really rotten stuff. We spent hours and hours talking to Steve Koff about an article he said he was running on the three groups. I supplied him with a lot of background information and I said, 'If you want to do a due diligence job on me, here are the names that I supplied to Major League Baseball.' The list included judges, federal officials and lawyers at competing law firms. I said, 'Call them up. Whatever they say, they say.'

"Then the article comes out and what it is about? A lawsuit that took place between Roy Disney's aunt and Joel Schur over a tree that fell [onto Schur's property]. Of course, that wasn't even the case. The lawsuit was between two insurance companies. One insurance company brought a subrogation against the other. By this point I now am the head of the group. Nevertheless, that's what Steve Koff focused on. And he focused on it, in my judgment, largely because there was this tremendous local hostility toward us."
* * *

Speculation that Florida would receive both expansion teams was rampant in the days leading up to the announcement of the NL short list:

"Baseball's Prime List: Two Teams In Florida" read the front page of the late sports daily, The National.

Chicago Tribune baseball columnist Jerome Holtzman wrote that, "Tampa-St. Pete is a cinch, with Miami closing fast and now regarded as No. 2."

Baseball America correspondent Norm Clarke described St. Petersburg as "the closest thing to a lock." He predicted teams for Tampa Bay and Denver.

Meanwhile a behind-the-scenes tempest brewed. The American League, shocked at the $95-million price tag the National League affixed to its new teams, began agitating for a piece of the pie. AL owners said they would stand in the way of two teams being awarded to Florida, for instance, if the NL didn't share its booty. In exchange for cash, the AL offered to participate in the expansion draft that would one day stock the new teams.

The NL's answer: Go away kid, you're bothering us.
* * *

Porter probably knew before Morsani that the National League changed its mind in the last week and decided only one potential ownership group should represent the Tampa Bay area in the second round of the expansion playoffs.

Denver, Buffalo, Washington, D.C., Orlando, Miami and Tampa Bay -- represented by the Porter group -- all made the short list. Sacramento, Nashville, Phoenix and the traveling, four-city America's Team failed to make the cut.

Frank Morsani received a "Dear John" fax from the committee on Dec. 18, 1990, at 2:30 p.m.

Dear Mr. Morsani:

Late this afternoon the National League Expansion Committee will have a press release announcing the 'short list' for expansion. There are six prospective ownership groups in six cities. I regret to advise you that your group is not on that list. Attached is a copy of the press release for your information.

The expansion committee thanks you for your participation in this process and for all the information you provided. If you wish any of this material returned, please let me know. Your deposit in the amount of $100,000 will be returned within a few days.

Once again, may I express our appreciation for your excellent cooperation with the Committee, and best wishes for a happy holiday season.
William D. White, President
The National League

"No," Tampa Tribune sports editor Tom McEwen wrote, "they didn't even kiss him before he got it. But have a happy holiday season, Frank."

"He was dejected," Lance Ringhaver recalls. "he tried to hold himself up but he was extremely disappointed. It was such a surprise."

Up to the day before the fax was received, the Morsani group's New York attorney, Barry Rona -- a personal friend of Bill White's -- was telling the partnership "things looked pretty good despite the bad publicity about Frank," Ringhaver recalls.

"We heard that they thought if we were both named it wouldn't be easy for us to get together," Bostick says. "Well, naming one group sure didn't leave us dealing from a position of strength, getting together as equals."

Morsani was on the Cheval golf course in Tampa playing in a Toys for Tots Christmas golf tournament when he learned his fate was not inexorably tied to baseball.

"We were just getting off the golf course," he says, "and we got word there was going to be a major announcement. Major League Baseball was going to announce who was being selected. I called all the media. I went over to the clubhouse. When I got there I had an emergency call from my secretary and she read me the fax. Cedric Tallis was at my office on Florida Avenue. I talked to him immediately.

"All the press was on their way out to Cheval," he says. "But I left. I couldn't talk to the press at that time. I just drove around in my car. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I can't tell you where I drove.

"I never thought about losing. They wanted local ownership. We were told to get Bill Mack out of the thing. We met every criteria by all the commissioners. No one else met all of the criteria except us. I had a very difficult time accepting [the decision]. When you do what you're asked to do -- and beyond -- and then people take advantage of you . . . That's not how I run my life. I was very despondent.

"I knew [expansion committee chairman] Doug Danforth personally. When I was chairman of the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he was on the board. I really liked [New York Mets owner] Fred Wilpon. That still hurts me. Wilpon was a friend of Bill Mack's. I tried several times to get in touch with Danforth. The whole thing was handled very poorly. Why didn't they say, 'Hey, let's figure out how we can make it happen?' It's just incredible. I couldn't imagine Danforth and Wilpon going against me. It really gets to me because I can't imagine people that I trusted throwing me under a bus. That hurt."

Losing out on baseball was the weight that broke the auto dealer's axle. His deal with Bostick and Ringhaver had called for the partnership to take over temporary responsibility for payments on the Tampa Bay Baseball Group's land lease for the Tampa Coliseum and interest payments on TBBG notes.

"The minute we were turned down, we stopped paying that," Ringhaver says.

Baseball is a dollars and sense club. If you don't have the dollars, it makes no sense to let you in.

"These things are a matter of money," retired baseball exec Gabe Paul says. "You've got to have deep pockets. You don't have a chance if you don't have deep pockets."

After driving nowhere for hours, Morsani finally went home.

"My wife is a pretty perceptive gal," he says. "She was very upset that I was involved in it from the beginning because we had known people in professional sports when we lived in other areas of the country and she didn't think that they were very honorable men. She said, 'You're dealing with something that you don't know anything about and you're dealing with people that you really don't want to associate with.' She was never angry, she just didn't want me to mess with them. She was disappointed for me because I put so much into it.

"People had the wrong idea about me being involved," he says. "They thought I was a sports fan. If I could see where I could do something and make sense and it was good for the community that was all I was doing it for. I didn't need it for my ego, contrary to what some people would conjure up."

Morsani spoke with his partners and then he called Rick Dodge.

"Except for the death of people that were close to me, I never had a worse feeling for somebody," Dodge says, "He didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to do. He was so distraught. I felt very bad for Frank. He did so much to advance the issue to this stage and committed so much of himself personally.

"We worked together for so long," Dodge says. "I had been over to his house a couple of times socially. Frank invited me over Christmas Day. It was very thoughtful. I didn't have family here and it was typical Frank. He had an Australian cattle dog that was stolen a few months before. I asked his wife, Carol, 'What would you think about me getting Frank a puppy to replace the one he lost?' She said it would be a great idea. Do you know how hard it is to find an Australian cattle dog? What in the hell is an Australian cattle dog? I found one. I picked this dog up Christmas day all bathed and wearing a big red bow. He named the dog 'Dodger.' Well, I've had a lot of people in St. Petersburg say I was a son of a bitch, but no one ever named their dog after me."

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