|
The death in 1989 of Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie, the man who brought
professional sports to Florida, might have dealt a crippling blow for baseball
expansion in the southern part of the Sunshine State had it not been for the
emergence of H. Wayne Huizenga.
Huizenga was the embodiment of the American dream. A college dropout who
dreamed large, he bought a garbage truck in Fort Lauderdale and formed his
first company, Waste Management Inc. It became the largest garbage company in
the world, of course; Huizenga didn't do anything small.
He left the company in 1984 with 4-million shares of stock worth an estimated
$150-million. In February 1987 he bought into a Texas video rental company with
a handful of retail outlets and a fuzzy notion of becoming a nationwide chain
of video superstores. Two months later he took over the company and fine-tuned
the picture. Soon, Blockbuster Video became as synonymous with renting videos
as McDonalds is with Big Macs.
Blockbuster caught on quickly, expanding across the United States by building
new stores or buying competitors. Almost every day, a Blockbuster Video store
opened somewhere. By mid-1992 there were 2,935 stores in operation and
more coming on-line daily. Other chains competed on a regional basis, but none
could match the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, chain's name brand recognition
coast-to-coast. In 1991, with Huizenga as its chairman of the board and chief
executive officer, Blockbuster Video grossed $1.5-billion in sales.
Entertainment Weekly abruptly ranked Huizenga the ninth most important
person in the U.S. entertainment industry.
And Blockbuster was mighty in other ways. Early on, Blockbuster management
made a decision to avoid X-rated and even some R-rated films. Its refusal to
stock The Last Temptation of Christ in the mid-'80s made news and
deflated the grosses for the film's producers. The chain stressed family values
and themes. A movie that wasn't stocked on video by Blockbuster after its
theatrical run wasn't going to earn much money.
Anyone who earns blockbuster bucks -- U.S. News & World Report
estimated Huizenga's net worth at $600-million in 1991 -- is going to have a
few dollars left over. But Huizenga isn't a man to spend money freely. He
spends money only to make more. That's why Huizenga bought half of Joe Robbie
Stadium (JRS) for $5-million (and assumed responsibility for half its debt) and
a 15 percent interest in the Miami Dolphins for $12-million in March 1990.
"When I approached Joe Robbie about buying into the stadium -- or
buying the stadium, because at first I wanted to buy it -- he showed me
drawings and a model of the stadium," Huizenga says. "That stadium was designed
for baseball from day one. The only thing was, the retractable seats weren't
put in. I looked at the economics of bringing baseball to the stadium. You put
another 81 events in the stadium, bring another two and a half million people
in, all of a sudden that made the stadium investment look very attractive."
He called his good friend Carl Barger, a member of the Blockbuster board of
directors and, more important, president of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
"The more questions I asked, the more [buying into the stadium] looked like a
good thing to do," Huizenga says. "When I signed the agreement with the
Robbies, there was about a three-month lag from the signing to the closing.
[During that time] I got more and more interested in baseball. So when word got
out that we were going to close the deal, not only did we say we're going to
buy part of the stadium but we're going to go forward and try to get an
expansion team."
One of the first people Huizenga told about his baseball plans was Frank
Morsani, the man who tried to bring a team to Tampa Bay.
"I met with him in Jacksonville before he ever made his bid," Morsani says. "I
know Wayne pretty well. People say well, he had this thing with Barger already
done. I don't know whether he did or not unless he is an awful good con artist.
We were on the Florida Council of 100 together and we had a meeting in
Jacksonville. He and I spent a couple of hours together talking about it. He
said, 'You deserve baseball. For all you have done ... but I have to put in a
bid. I am not going to go to anything elaborate. I am not even going to do
anything, just tell them we are here.' That's exactly what the man told me. I
was concerned but I didn't think we could lose."
Once he jumped in and formed South Florida Big League Baseball Inc., Huizenga
entertained second and third thoughts about the cost. Every time another
superstar ballplayer signed a multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal, Huizenga
winced. For a man who ran his company by the bottom line, baseball's salary
structure looked insane.
"We hired [the accounting firm of] Arthur Andersen & Co., which had
experience doing auditing for several different teams," he says. "We ran the
numbers and ran the budget. We looked at that and came to the conclusion that
we wouldn't be interested in baseball in any city but South Florida."
Several factors coalesced in South Florida, Huizenga says. A lot of young
people, drawn by the neon excitement and international flavor of Miami and Fort
Lauderdale, relocated from the Northeast to South Florida. Many are baseball
fans. The ever-growing Hispanic population was devoted to the game. And South
Florida was the U.S. gateway to South America, Central America and the
Caribbean regions, where baseball was often more important than politics.
Research showed Huizenga that the vacation pattern of South and Central
Americans coming to South Florida arrive in the summertime rather than the
winter -- perfect for baseball. He also figured a South Florida team could
create weekend getaway appeal.
"Put that together with the fact South Florida is home to more than 4-million
people, with the fact we're growing by about 100,000 people a year so that in
five years we're going to have another 500,000 people," Huizenga says. "We've
got a pretty good-sized market. We went into it with our eyes open."
Owning a sports franchise was not always a goal of Huizenga's. A native of
Evergreen Park, Illinois, and a one-time Cubs fans, he no longer followed the
game. "I lived on the South Side and the Cubs were the North Side team, but I
was a Cubs fan," he says. "The only reason I really wanted to go after it was
to be sure that we got it. There were two other groups looking for a team; I
wasn't sure they could get the job done."
* * *
The two South Florida groups competing with Huizenga each had its own
strengths.
Mike Schmidt, retired Philadelphia Phillies star, lent his celebrity and
knowledge of the game to Rick Horrow's group. Horrow -- who was credited with
bringing the NBA Miami Heat to town -- formerly served as director of the Miami
Sports and Exhibition Authority and as president of the Caribbean Baseball
World Series. Other members of the group included Arthur Hertz, chairman of
Wometco Enterprises; accountant Stephen Feldman; and New York investment banker
J. Morton Davis. (Davis made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the New York Mets
in 1986.) Their plan was to get a team, then decide where it would play.
"They were pushing all the right buttons in downtown Miami" Ric Green,
director of sports development for the Broward Economic Development Council,
says.
Another group, led by Miami banker Abel Holtz, declared its intention to see
an open-air baseball stadium built on the waterfront in downtown Miami. Holtz's
group included Miami banker Lou Pollard.
"Abel Holtz had a rather arrogant demeanor about him," Green says. " 'This is
Miami. This is where baseball belongs. This is my town and we are going to have
it in my town and it is my team.' "
Holtz and Horrow appealed to parochial Miamians who not only wanted the
baseball team in their piece of South Florida but who also were still angry at
the late Joe Robbie for relocating the Dolphins from the downtown Miami Orange
Bowl to his own stadium on the Dade-Broward county line.
"I don't think anyone thought Joe Robbie Stadium would turn out to be a good
ballpark," Green says. "Joe Robbie had irritated so many people when he left
the Orange Bowl. That caused a lot of bad feelings."
* * *
All three potential South Florida ownership groups traveled to New
York and stated their case to the National League expansion committee.
The expansion committee liked Huizenga instantly. They wondered aloud, did he
plan to take on partners?
"My answer was that I preferred to do it alone," Huizenga says. "If they
wanted me to take in a partner, one from Dade County, one from Palm Beach, I
would have considered that. Their response was, 'No, we like the fact you're
going alone.' That made me feel good."
Weather wasn't as easily dismissed. Huizenga acknowledged rain as a potential
problem, but told the committee the harsh South Florida rains usually came in
the afternoon, ending by 7 p.m. "There will be those times it doesn't," he told
the committee. "We will have rain-outs, no question about it. We'll just have
to figure out how to make those up on days off."
Giving Huizenga support were reports from the Class A Fort Lauderdale Yankees
and Class A Miracle. The minor league teams lacked sophisticated grounds crews,
but indicated that as long as their dirt infields were covered during rain,
games picked up as soon as a storm passed. (The outfield warning tracks at Joe
Robbie Stadium are artificial rather than dirt.)
* * *
Huizenga's attitude toward the expansion process foresaw a
win-win-win situation for himself and Joe Robbie Stadium:
1) He might be selected to purchase an expansion franchise that would play 81
games at JRS.
2) Someone else from South Florida could be chosen and be convinced to play at
least their first few seasons at JRS.
"On the one hand, we had a facility, such as it was," Huizenga says. "But
remember, it was a multipurpose facility. Baseball said, 'We would prefer to
have baseball-only, open-air, grass.' The mayor of Miami said, 'We'll build
that facility, well build it right down here on the bay.' We thought the other
guys may have had the inside track.
"[The Schmidt/Horrow group] said, 'We'll decide where to put the team after we
get it.' They figured they'd sign a lease with us once they got a team. And
then maybe they'd build [their own stadium] five years later. You see, the
other two groups knew we were spending the money to remodel our facility to get
it ready for baseball. So if we didn't get baseball, it would only make sense
for us to lease them the stadium for a couple years, even if they were going to
build their own facility. And we could recover some of our investment."
3) Tampa Bay would host the only team in Florida, but in doing so would make
South Florida number one in line for relocation of an existing team.
"That was our game plan from day one," Huizenga says. "We assessed what would
happen from reading the newspaper reports and listening to all the people that
had been in this thing a long time. St. Petersburg had been in this a long
time, Buffalo had been in this a long time. Denver -- it seemed obvious that
somebody felt obligated to put one out in the western part of the country
rather than two more in the eastern part. There happened to be this time zone
without a baseball team and whether that meant anything or not I didn't know
but everybody was making a big deal out of it. I felt that politically, Denver
was going to get a team.
"I figured St. Petersburg would get a team," he says. "And with the economics
of baseball, some of the small market [teams] had to be sold. Carl and I had a
conversation about small markets in big trouble and that people didn't really
realize the trouble they were in. Some teams make money, but a lot of teams
don't make money. It's pretty bad for that guy at the bottom of the barrel. The
bottom is in deep trouble."
* * *
Once Huizenga made the National League owners' short list in December
1990 to represent South Florida against Tampa Bay, Orlando, Washington, D.C.,
Buffalo and Denver in the battle for an expansion franchise, he became the
pack's front-runner, surprising even himself.
Tampa Bay, which had pursued a team for 14 years, found itself in the
unaccustomed position of playing second fiddle to South Florida and Huizenga.
Although the Tampa Bay area -- and its two daily newspapers -- didn't take
Orlando, Buffalo or Washington, D.C., very seriously, South Florida was a
different threat entirely. It was a genuine metropolis, urbane, sophisticated
and international; everything Tampa Bay dreamed of being.
Tampa Bay baseball fans, already thrown a curve when baseball picked Stephen
Porter's group to represent the region over hometown favorite Frank Morsani,
shook their heads in dismay when "Captain Video," Huizenga, paid Morsani
$10,000 for the rights to use the name "Florida Panthers" if he were selected
by the National League.
Unlike the battle of wits engaged between the Miami Herald 's Dave
Barry and the Orlando Magic's Pat Williams in 1989, the St. Petersburg Times
and Tampa Tribune each went for H. Wayne Huizenga's jugular. The
slightest bit of controversy or bad news about Huizenga or Blockbuster Video --
the Carl Barger connection, Blockbuster's business dealings with Phoenix
Communications and Major League Baseball -- took on great significance. No
matter how insignificant.
Huizenga denied that Blockbuster Video's five-year exclusive deal with Phoenix
Communications to sell licensed Major League Baseball videos improved his
chances with the owners. Blockbuster also became a sponsor of national baseball
telecasts in 1990.
And Huizenga's 20-year personal friendship with Pittsburgh Pirates president
Barger rocked the boat, too.
"All the bad stuff came out of Tampa/St. Petersburg," Huizenga says. "Those
guys did not get all their facts. They wrote from their emotions rather than
from the facts. Okay, fine, they can write what they want to write. But they
had Carl Barger influencing Danforth. I mean, not in a million years could that
happen. You gotta know Doug Danforth. He's chairman and CEO of Westinghouse. He
was used to getting pressure all his life from people -- 'I need this, I want
that.' Doug Danforth was one of the leading CEOs ever in this country. He was
not going to let somebody else make up his mind. Plus, it is not only the
expansion committee that makes the decision. The ownership has got to vote. To
think that Carl Barger, one guy, who's not even an owner, just a president, an
employee -- to think that one employee on one team could go around and
influence 26 owners -- there was no way that could happen. Baseball guys
couldn't care less what some general manager or president tells them. Plus, it
worked just the opposite for us, because Danforth was reading these same
newspaper stories and he ended up keeping this thing at arm's length. The other
guys [Fred Wilpon, Bill Giles and Bill White] were friendly. They talked to me,
they talked to Denver, they talked to St. Petersburg. But because Doug was
worried about the perception, he wouldn't even return phone calls."
Barger wasn't Huizenga's only friend in the National League. Tom O'Donnell,
president and publisher of the Fort Lauderdale-based Sun-Sentinel
newspaper, which is owned by The Tribune Co., parent of the Chicago Cubs,
introduced the Blockbuster Video boss to Stan Cook, president of the Cubs.
Huizenga dealt with expansion by deliberately keeping a low profile. He
avoided the media as much as possible, concentrating on Blockbuster and his
other businesses. He also steered clear of most rallies and other baseball
events.
"You could have the whole community 100 percent behind you but the community
doesn't vote. Only the owners vote," he says. "What's the point of spending all
your time and effort preaching to the choir?"
* * *
There remains considerable speculation that Huizenga was told early
on he would receive one of the two franchises and that's why he confidently
invested $10-million out-of-pocket to convert JRS from football-only into a
baseball stadium.
"The conjecture fits with what most people thought to be the economic decision
analysis," Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez says. "Anybody spending $10-million, plus
a $100,000 application fee, probably had to expect the outcome. He had a very
good idea that he fit the parameters of what they were looking for. But I lost
my bet. I thought he'd begin work and not follow through. I didn't see a lot of
back-up use for all that [construction] without a baseball team."
When Joe Robbie gave Huizenga his pitch about baseball in JRS, he showed the
video magnate a model of the stadium in which the left field seats were
removable for baseball. Unfortunately, Robbie had built left field with
permanent seats, not knowing when or if baseball would ever come. Huizenga,
once he owned a 50 percent interest in the stadium, decided JRS would be a
whole lot more convincing as a baseball venue if the movable seats were in
place.
"It's difficult to take someone to the stadium and you look out there and you
see the goal posts and say, 'Just picture those left field seats coming out.'
Well," he recalls, "somewhere along the way, we decided -- 'Why don't we just
spend the money and do it.' "
Huizenga calls it "a roll of the dice," but Ric Green, the Broward EDC's
sports director, says Huizenga would not spend $10-million on chance.
"Wayne Huizenga is a very smart businessman," Green says. "He didn't get where
he is by not doing everything possible. He prepares 120 percent. I don't want
to claim the fix was in and I don't want to cast any aspersions on Carl Barger.
Everything that Wayne Huizenga could legitimately do I will guarantee you he
attempted to do. His people over-prepare him for everything. I would imagine it
would be foolish to not say he went to his good friend Carl Barger and said,
'Who could I talk to?' "
"I thought the team was going to St. Petersburg," Huizenga says. "I thought
that [converting JRS for baseball] was a long-term decision. Sooner or later we
would get a team. Let's say disaster happens somewhere, there was a fire in a
stadium, an earthquake, and all of a sudden someone has to move. They're going
to have to have a place to go. The stadium in St. Petersburg is booked, because
I figured St. Petersburg was going to get the team. So where else are you going
to play? We'd be ready. Or if you wanted to buy a team and you could get
permission to move it, okay, fine, you better do it quick. You wouldn't want to
buy a team and play in a town for two years saying, 'We're going to move two
years from now.' That wouldn't work."
As usual, Huizenga's roll of the dice turned up lucky. Two hastily arranged
exhibition games in late spring brought out 125,013 fans to JRS, a show of
community support that backed up Huizenga's open wallet. The numbers spoke for
themselves.
"There were a lot of rumors coming out of Washington [which sponsored spring
exhibition games at RFK Stadium] that we had given a lot of those seats away
for nothing," Huizenga says. "So we gave [the expansion committee] the
attendance figures. I had a video made. We provided the total amount of money
taken in on concessions, parking and seat revenue. The only seats we sold
cheaper were the seats in left field. You can't get a clear shot in left field
because it's moved back. If you were in the upper deck and the guy was catching
the ball up against the fence, you couldn't see him. So we sold those as
restricted viewing for $2. We probably shouldn't have sold them at all."
Huizenga says the exhibition games let South Florida fans sent a message to
Major League Baseball. And baseball heard them, loud and clear.
The spring games came after a bilingual, multicountry campaign to drum up
support, including petition drives from Panama to Brazil, Key West to the
Dominican Republic.
Volunteers inundated local sports agencies, offering to do anything they could
do to help. A group called Baseball Maniacs formed in Fort Lauderdale. Pep
rallies were held at the Bayside marketplace in downtown Miami. Sports bars
across South Florida participated. So did the Cuban and Latin communities.
Suarez did everything he could -- both as mayor and baseball fan. "One time I
was watching This Week in Baseball," he recalls. "They had a segment on
broadcasting baseball games in Latin America. I sent copies of that segment to
the expansion committee. I tried to convey that this would be very important
for Major League Baseball. Forget Miami -- this would be a stage to the world,
I told them."
Through the first few months of 1991, Huizenga says he understand South
Florida to be running second to Tampa Bay in the minds of the expansion
committee. "Everybody knew the Kohls had lots of money," he says. "And
everybody told me [Roy] Disney was in that deal. I don't know if he was or not.
But I kept seeing the propaganda out of Tampa, that their group's net worth was
a billion-five or something. And the guy in Orlando [Richard DeVos], he was a
heavy hitter, worth a billion or so. So we weren't the heavy guy in the pot,
that's for sure. I figured, we've got to keep plugging away and do our thing,
see what happens."
In late May, something happened to Huizenga, something painful. Despite
explosive store growth and impressive earnings, Blockbuster's stock tanked,
dropping from $14.50 to $8.87 a share in nine weeks. Huizenga personally lost
$115-million on paper, about the cost of a National League expansion franchise
-- not including players.
The Tampa Bay and Orlando media purred as it lapped up the bad news, making a
final attempt to pump up local efforts for one last push. But Huizenga
addressed investor concerns about his company's future, convincing Wall Street
it had panicked. Slowly, the price edged back up and Huizenga earned back
$40-million of his loss.
Maybe Wall Street lost faith temporarily in the video star -- but baseball
didn't. Rumors flew that Huizenga was in.
"I started getting phone calls saying, 'Hey, I hear you guys are looking
good,' " Huizenga recalls. "It might be an acquaintance. Or I might go to Wall
Street on Blockbuster business and I'd bump into some guy and he'd say, 'I was
with somebody the other day who works over at the Mets or the Yankees and the
word around there is you guys are looking good.' Well, you don't put much
credit to something like that. When you stop and think that that's some
third-level person in the Yankees organization -- they don't know anything. But
then a couple days would go by and I'd hear the same rumor two or three times
and I'd say, 'Whew, there's too many rumors.' "
* * *
Guys like Ric Green, the Broward EDC's sports director, and his
counterpart, Bill Perry III, executive director of the Miami Sports and
Exhibition Authority, were easier to reach than Huizenga and his lieutenants.
So they heard all the latest rumors.
Outrageous rumors had it that Huizenga made a deal with (University of Miami
baseball coach) Ron Fraser to be his general manager, Green recalls. "They said
he offered Blockbuster Video franchises to Bill White. Friends and reporters
called me with this stuff. He was going to build a brand new stadium. He
offered to put a dome on the stadium. Not one person was reliable. There was an
article in [the failed sports daily] The National. They interviewed Mike
Veeck -- Bill Veeck's son -- who has a Florida State League franchise [The
Miracle]. Mike was closely tied into this whole process because he owned the
team that had the local baseball rights. Mike talked about how baseball will
love South Florida. I told [Huizenga assistant] Don Smiley, 'This is a great
article, wouldn't you say?' and he said, 'No, I hate it because baseball owners
hate Bill Veeck.' Oh, shit. Here you think you got some good publicity and ...
Oh boy."
* * *
Anyone living in or visiting South Florida in May 1991 that
didn't know the region had a chance to get a baseball team must have had his
head in the sand. The anticipation was palpable.
Instead of wondering where the two expansion teams would be placed, the
question became who would be number two to South Florida. Would baseball place
two new teams in Florida -- with Tampa Bay second -- or would it go with
geographic diversity and make its second pitch to Denver?
"By the end of the whole process, everybody was saying South Florida didn't
have any weaknesses," Mayor Suarez says. "I spoke to Doug Danforth and he said
South Florida sounded good to him."
END CHAPTER 16
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Meanwhile, in San Francisco . . .
One. Where Did All My Friends Go?
Chapter 1. About Last Night
Chapter 2. For a Team to Be Named Later
Chapter 3. Is It Later, Yet?
Two. Blame It On Bowie
Chapter 4. The Egg
Chapter 5. The Chicken
Chapter 6. Don't Build It. We Won't Come.
Chapter 7. Taking Away Tom's Bone
Chapter 8. Don't Screw With Mr. Dodge
Chapter 9. Anatomy of a Fast Pitch
Three. We Are the Competition
Chapter 10. Can't Tell the Players Without a Scorecard
Chapter 11. Such a Bargain!
Chapter 12. The Pitch
Chapter 13. Happy Holidays, Mr. Morsani
Chapter 14. The Dog and Pony Show
Chapter 15. That's Not Funny, Pat
Chapter 16. H. Wayne's World
Chapter 17. Deep Pockets, Short Arms
Chapter 18. Heartbreak City
Four. Dream On
Chapter 19. Something's Got to Give
Chapter 20. Wish I May, Wish I Might
Chapter 21. The Gameboys of Summer
Five. Take a Giant Step
Chapter 22. The Artful Dodger
Chapter 23. Do You Know the Way to San Jose?
Chapter 24. Four Guys Named Vincent
Chapter 25. Make The Check Payable To Bill White
Chapter 26. Bottom of the Ninth, Two On, Two Out, Winning Lawyers in Position
Epilogue
About the Author
Tampa Bay Devil Rays Home Page
St. Petersburg Times Devil Rays Page
Tampa Tribune Devil Rays Page
MLB @Bat Devil Rays Page
Visit St. Petersburg!
|
