Stadium For Rent: 17. Deep Pockets, Short Arms

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

17. Deep Pockets, Short Arms

"The only place baseball plays by the rules is on the field."
-- Rick Dodge, Baseball Point Man, City of St. Petersburg

All of the national baseball columnists weighed in with opinions on who would receive the two National League expansion franchises, all based on inside sources and educated guesses.

Sports Illustrated announced Miami and Tampa Bay were a 1-2 punch for expansion.

USA Today conducted two polls, one of a six-member professional panel, the other a survey of readers. Denver topped both polls as the No. 1 pick. The panel picked Miami as No. 2; readers chose Washington, D.C. One of the national newspaper's panel members, baseball consultant Peter Bavasi, picked Tampa Bay and Miami.

USA Today baseball writer Hal Bodley went with Denver and Miami.

The Sporting News did a three-part study of the potential expansion cities. "If The Sporting News were picking the two expansion teams," Paul Attner wrote, "they'd go to Miami and St. Petersburg. But if baseball decides to put only one club in Florida, Washington should get the second. What will baseball do? Pick St. Petersburg and Denver. And they better pray Denver can survive."

ESPN's Peter Gammons first guessed St. Petersburg and Washington, D.C., then switched to Miami and St. Petersburg.

Las Vegas oddsmakers listed St. Petersburg as a 1-5 favorite, Miami at 2-1, Denver at 4-1, Orlando and Washington, D.C. at 8-1 and Buffalo at 20-1.

Sen. Tim Wirth, D-Colorado, chairman of the U.S. Senate task force on baseball expansion, said he received information indicating teams would be awarded to St. Petersburg and Denver.

The Washington Post reported St. Petersburg, Miami and Denver leading the pack.

New York Daily News columnist Bill Madden wrote that Miami would beat out Tampa Bay due to a larger TV market and a single local owner. He foresaw the second team going to Denver.

The Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post separately polled active ballplayers to learn which cities they preferred to see receive teams. Tampa Bay came out on top, followed by Denver, in both polls. Miami finished third in the polls.

Denver Post columnist Woody Paige asked his readers, "Don't you think that when Miami and Denver are chosen as the National League expansion teams, Seattle will move to St. Petersburg?"

Baseball America columnist Tracy Ringolsby wrote, "Miami has made the strongest push at the finish to land a team, but St. Petersburg is the emotional favorite. The folks there put their money where their mouth is, building the stadium to prove a commitment. . . . Each time, the Florida folks accepted their role as patsy without causing legal headaches for Major League Baseball. Loyalty says it's time to repay the kindness and give the folks the baseball team they have wanted for so long."

In the Tampa Bay area, there was no lack of prognosticators and daydreamers.

"Denver is no place for baseball because of the altitude," Earle Halstead Jr. said. "They don't publicize it much, but all the scouts know that. When I scouted there, we gave pitchers a break because they couldn't throw the curveball. So the guy who could hit 40 home runs there, it would be about 24 at sea level. And his average would change from .380 to .310. Batters never would see a good curveball. It'd be like playing in Mexico City.

"I've got a feeling it'll be Tampa Bay and Miami," Halstead said. "The main thing they've got going against them is putting two clubs in the same state at the same time. What they have going for them is they're the two most viable areas. It'll be devastating to this area if they don't get a club."

If St. Petersburg failed to get a team, what did Halstead suggest the city do next?

"I'd recommend Chapter 11."

Rick Dodge hoped in May 1991 that Florida's harsh summer weather -- sudden, drenching downpours, thunderstorms, waterspouts, tornadoes, et al. -- would work in favor of St. Petersburg's enclosed Florida Suncoast Dome over South Florida's open-air Joe Robbie Stadium.

"We live in a state that didn't develop until air conditioning was invented," he said. "When General Norman Schwarzkopf, the biggest United States hero since Dwight D. Eisenhower, drew less than half capacity at a Tampa Stadium welcoming celebration because it was too hot, that should have sent a message."

Dodge said he was "confident, but not comfortable" about chances for success.

"The two sides of the coin are, one, the awarding of a team would be the culmination of a long, involved civic and community effort. As important as that would be, it is not a panacea for every issue the region faces.

"If we are not awarded a franchise," Dodge said, "we will endeavor to find out why. That will have a lot to do with how we proceed. Within the confines of baseball, we will work very hard to relocate an existing franchise. If you think about the other candidates, we're the only one that can provide an instant solution to somebody.

"But we expect to have our prayers answered on June 12."
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Unbeknownst to area baseball fans, the last weeks in the expansion chase were actually St. Petersburg's darkest, most desperate hours. Steve Porter, Mark Bostick and representatives from Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks ran door-to-door, tattered dreams in hand to Tampa Bay's largest corporate bodies pleading for last-minute investors. (SunTrust organized a limited baseball partnership and sold shares to investors.)

How could it have come to this?

While fans entered a "Name The Team" contest and tried to decide whether they would select season tickets along the first or third base lines, the businessmen entrusted to bring home the franchise were frantic.

"The truth of it was they were cash short," Rick Dodge says. "I think Steve Porter about killed himself trying to get a partnership structure.

"I thought a couple of times that Steve was going to have a heart attack and die," Dodge recalls. "We would be negotiating the stadium lease and he would just explode. He'd come apart. I don't mean he's childlike but when he hit a threshold of exhaustion he was out of control. The guy had so much pressure on him."

Baseball booster and local businessman Mike Davenport saw the Porter group in a far less charitable light.

"The Friday prior to the expansion announcement, four of the major financial institutions in town were presented a loan request for $20-million each," Davenport says. "These assholes needed to raise $80-million and it was the Witching Hour!"

Earlier on, one of the people Porter turned to for cash was Lance Ringhaver, Frank Morsani's former partner who declined an earlier invitation to join Porter's group.

"Near the end they were putting together a prospectus with SunTrust [which once was supposed to do the same thing for the Morsani group]. I said I might go for half a share," Ringhaver says.

Ringhaver wondered what happened to Sidney Kohl's cash. After all, the shopping center magnate had privately told the Morsani group in New York that he was going to invest up to $60-million in the team.

Porter, Bostick and the bankers were very tentative with potential new investors. Some they wouldn't show a prospectus without certain guarantees; others, they showed the prospectus to but refused to leave it overnight for fear of leaks.

"My impression of Porter was the same I had of [Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner] Hugh Culverhouse," attorney Doug Williamson says. "They're tax attorneys, cut out of the same cloth. They run the show their way. Now, I don't know that it hurt the effort with Major League Baseball but it hurt with the community, with the fans. Porter was not a cheerleader, not a Pat Williams or a Wayne Huizenga. Once Peter Bavasi left, we should have hired another baseball person as a consultant.

"None of this may have made a difference," Williamson says. "But when you look back, you want to feel you gave it your best shot."
* * *

When Florida Progress first stepped forward to develop an ownership group for baseball in the mid-1980s, it considered being a nominal, minority player. Its chief aim was to provide a legitimate base for drawing together other investors.

As the years went on, Progress divested itself of non-utility divisions and concentrated on its primary business, producing electricity. Andrew J. Hines turned over the chairman's seat to Jack Critchfield and the likelihood of Progress investing cash in a ball team diminished even further.

Steve Porter may not have known all that when he went to see Critchfield. He smelled cash.

RICK DODGE: "I set up the first meeting. Jack said to me in advance of the meeting, 'I think they're looking for some sort of financial assistance. But I can't be an equity partner. We'll do for them what we would have done for the White Sox [a $10-million bridge loan], or I will help them find people that might want to be equity partners if that's what they want.'

"I don't know what was represented in their meetings but I never heard Jack say anything other than, 'We can't be an equity partner. My stockholders would go after me.'

"Jack said, 'I played baseball in college. I loved the sport. If I were in a position to invest myself, I would, but Florida Power can't.' "

CRITCHFIELD: "I never gave any signal that Florida Progress would invest in a baseball team. From the outset I told Porter that baseball does not provide a steady earning streams even in the best environment that would satisfy the people who own this company and whom I represent.

"The idea that we ever discussed the possibility is pure fiction. There was never a discussion.

"What we did talk about was exactly the same offer that had been made by Florida Progress to the Chicago White Sox. They were in need of a bridge loan to get from Chicago to Tampa Bay until they could get their permanent financing in place. Because we had a finance division, we indicated our willingness to provide them with up to a $10-million loan as a bridge. I made the same gesture to Mr. Porter. That is the only financing I ever discussed.

"Porter showed me a plan the day after they got [on the short list]. He was here asking us to make a major investment, like $20-million. I explained that that would be the dumbest thing I could do because our shareholders expect regular dividends and baseball doesn't pay them.

"His [Porter's] philosophy was to borrow all the money for the franchise and have the names he brought with him [Kohl and Disney] secure those loans. Then they'd take all that debt and put it into the baseball corporation. They were calling all that debt 'equity.' The only money they eventually had was Bostick's. When I saw that structure, I was sure that they would be rejected.

"The first document I saw was at our second meeting and it was quite clear that there really was no equity. It was debt against their own individual financial strengths submitted from the holding company into the ballclub as equity. I was shocked at the time but as I learned how other ballclubs are structured -- I won't say it's par for the course but it's not unusual. Real honest-to-goodness equity in most Major League Baseball clubs may be less than 20 percent, which is no big deal as long as the individuals who had the financial strength on paper to support those loans continued to do well to underpin a pretty regular loss on an annual basis.

"I went out and told [Progress executive vice president] Joe Cronin, 'We're not getting baseball.' I thought we were dead in the water."

PORTER: "Rick Dodge called and said, 'Come down and see Jack Critchfield. They can either make a very low interest loan available to you or subordinated debt or maybe they'll even take a capital piece of this thing.' I went to see [Critchfield] and he laid on the table what might amount to $20-million to $30-million worth of subordinated debt. We were home free with that. It was done.

"As time went by, the money got trimmed back from one number to another number to ultimately they were prepared to loan us money at prime with our personal signatures. We didn't need that. We asked them to loan the money to the holding company. They said, 'No, we have got to have the collateral of the team.' That violated baseball rules. The money ultimately dribbled away.

"The last week [before the final announcement of expansion cities] Critchfield and someone else were scurrying around, presumably trying to put together an ownership group. Acting like local heroes. 'We're going to save this whole thing.' If it didn't work they could look like they tried to bail out the bad guys from up north who weren't putting it together.

"In the end, you know what they offered? To take a skybox! To this day, I'm incredulous about it. That was described to me as the biggest company down there."

CRITCHFIELD: "I think he needed a scapegoat."

"Porter tried to key in on, 'If we don't get a major corporation we're not going to get baseball'. He tried to hang the loss on a number of us. I never thought we were going to get a franchise once I met that guy."

DODGE: "I talked to both men after the first meeting and I don't think either of them thought it was a successful meeting."
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