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The Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies were born on June 10,
1991 -- two days earlier than anticipated -- dashing Tampa Bay's hopes once
again.
H. Wayne Huizenga -- who paid Tampa's Frank Morsani $10,000 for the rights to
the name "Florida Panthers" but didn't use it -- told reporters he chose the
statewide name "Florida Marlins" to take advantage of being the first baseball
team in Florida.
His first major hiring decision as a team owner didn't please or surprise
Tampa Bay fans who felt the "fix" was in from the start: Carl Barger,
Blockbuster Entertainment board member and president of the Pittsburgh Pirates,
agreed to move south and take the helm of the Marlins.
"That didn't seem to pass the smell test," Porter group investor Mark Bostick
says.
South Florida -- which couldn't care less what Bostick thought -- fell at
Huizenga the Conqueror's feet.
"The baseball owners are very much like a club," Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez
says. "Huizenga was ideal for them. He was a very likable guy, low-key and
soft-spoken. He was the kind of guy who would not come blustering into
meetings, would not be too aggressive. And he put his money where his mouth
was."
* * *
Jack Lake's young nephew Bob Sanders works for the St. Petersburg
Area Chamber of Commerce. He sums up the experience better than anyone.
"This community was lifting a 500-pound barbell for 15 years and the Porter
group came in and said, 'We'll hold it for a while,' so the community took a
rest. I think we fell asleep," Sanders says. "When we heard everything was
okay, we believed it. Anybody would. At that point we should have been
skeptical. But we were told we were No. 1. ESPN and The Sporting News
said Tampa Bay was a virtual lock; we took that for granted."
"I'm not one who understands how baseball works," Fred Guest, developer
behind the $93-million restoration of the Stouffer Vinoy Resort on downtown St.
Petersburg's bayfront, says. "But I'm astonished that baseball could pick a
group for St. Petersburg and then we find out they were a house of cards. I
wondered where the investigative St. Petersburg Times was.
"If St. Petersburg came in third, then we were the No. 1 place for relocation.
The St. Petersburg market had been proven. The only thing we lacked was
$100-million in cash," Guest says.
"As long as the City of St. Petersburg was running the baseball effort,
we were perceived as No. 1 by baseball," Florida Power president Allen Keesler
says. "It was only after the selection of the ownership group -- and the city
had to bow out -- that we failed. Rick Dodge did a first-class job. It was only
when the ball was taken away from them that nothing happened.
"I hand it to Wayne Huizenga," Keesler says. "He did a masterful marketing
job. None of that was going on in St. Petersburg. But the city couldn't do it;
they no longer had responsibility."
"It would have been extremely difficult for baseball to squirrel out of
the commitment had the ownership group been strong," Florida Progress chairman
Jack Critchfield says.
He says it was only natural that people took out their anger against baseball
by directing it toward Porter. But with the passage of time, Critchfield's view
mellowed.
"Porter became our scapegoat just as he had attempted to use Florida Progress
and me as one of his scapegoats. He became the victim. I must admit Mr.
Porter's personality did not cause anyone to endear themselves to him. And the
pressure didn't enhance his personality. He was desperate. Probably more
desperate than I recognized at the time, looking for somebody to bail him out.
I don't think at the outset he ever intended to come to me or anyone else in
St. Petersburg and look for $20-million or $40-million. I think it became the
only alternative he had."
"Major League Baseball said this ownership group wasn't good enough!"
Tampa Bay football patriarch Leonard Levy says. "Hell, they picked it!
"[When the NFL expanded] it selected the best two cities, with no regard to
ownership. Had baseball's interest been picking the two best locations, St.
Petersburg would have been selected. And they wouldn't have had any trouble
finding ownership."
"It boiled down to, who's got the bread and who doesn't," former St.
Petersburg Mayor Bob Ulrich says.
"Baseball ultimately made its decision not upon where was the best place to
play, but who could best withstand failure. Not where did baseball have the
best chance of success, but who had the best chance of withstanding failure,"
Ulrich says. "We had always assumed baseball would pick the place it had its
best chance of success."
Tampa Bay was madder than hell at Porter and Co. The Kohl brothers,
especially, were targets of intense hatred, as a song produced by rock 'n' roll
radio station WYNF's "Ron & Ron" morning show illustrated (Sung to the
tune of Paul Simon's "(There Must Be) Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover." )
Kill the Kohls
There must be fifty ways to kill the Kohls.
You just stab 'em in the back, Jack;
Blow up the house, Klaus,
You shoot 'em in the 'nads, Brad;
And just kill 'em for me.
Oh, hit 'em with a bus, Gus,
You don't need to discuss much
Just go for the whoszit, Susit,
And kill 'em for me.
Two days after baseball made its choices of Denver and Miami known, the St.
Petersburg Times ran a front page story by reporter Stephen Koff bearing
the headline: "Baseball investors found better opportunity; Dome left reeling."
Koff quoted a South Florida partner of the Kohls as saying "something better
came along" to explain the reduction in the Kohls participation in Porter's
group.
And expansion committee chairman Douglas Danforth told Koff, "The ownership
composition was not quite what we liked, not what we preferred. I think that
the target kept changing in Tampa Bay. It kept moving. Who was the principal
owner? Who would be the equity partners? First it was X number of people. Then
it changed, and the amounts of money changed."
Steve Porter held a press conference at the Florida Suncoast Dome the same day
that Koff's story appeared. Porter played to a packed, phasers on stun, gallery
of reporters, baseball boosters and public officials. The conference was
carried live on local television and radio.
Porter wore a Jackson Pollock-inspired bowtie. He was in a combative mood.
So was sports radio talk show host Nanci Donnellan.
"I wanted to pull that bowtie until his head popped," she says. "I wanted to
kill him. My peers protected me. They made me sit in the back, with [Tom]
McEwen in front of me. I wanted to slap him silly. On the air later, however,
all I could say was, 'Liar, liar, pants on fire!' "
Porter didn't have to call a press conference. The losing team usually closes
its locker room to the press after the World Series, leaving the spotlight to
the victors. Porter was in Washington, D.C., when he learned the bad news but
still he went to St. Petersburg to stand before a hostile press corps and take
questions for which he either didn't have answers or couldn't provide answers
to satisfy the bloodthirsty judge, jury and executioners.
It made for very bad, unsettling theater. But it was another example of the
bay area uniting its might to face a common foe. Too bad for Steve Porter.
Among his comments:
STEVE PORTER: "When our ownership group was selected in December to be
on the short list of six cities, I was asked in my Washington office by
reporters that day why I didn't seem more ebullient. I told them then that I
felt a tremendous weight on my shoulders as the managing partner of our group
to bring Major League Baseball to Tampa, and with that responsibility I could
not be joyous until we were victorious. It was just this outcome about which I
was concerned.
". . . Perhaps we were out-politicked. We heard of the concern about the
National League taking two Florida cities. We heard that some western clubs did
not want two teams in the eastern time zone. . .
"Perhaps baseball believed that in these difficult economic times that they
needed either a single billionaire or a multibillion-dollar company to cushion
an expensive expansion franchise against the possible coming of hard times in
baseball. We don't know why Denver and Miami appeared more attractive to
baseball. Maybe the names Blockbuster and Coors had more impact.
"I can report to you unequivocally that we were never told that our equity was
inadequate. Mr. Danforth publicly stated that our plan was well within the
guidelines of baseball, the only guidelines with which we were ever supplied.
When Bill White, president of the National League, called me two days ago, he
too reasserted that our financial plan was perfectly adequate. I can report to
you today that our group was prepared to put up the money necessary to bring an
expansion franchise here . . .
"I heard some radio program this morning [play a song called] 'Kill the
Kohls.' Very clever, very cute. It's not the way this community should behave.
You should cut that stuff off right now. I don't mean to get up here and
lecture to you but you should cut that stuff off. It's just not useful. The
fact is a group gave it its best shot. Victory has a thousand fathers and
defeat is an orphan and I am the guy here who has to come up and publicly admit
it to you, but that was my job . . .
"One thing is for certain: I offer you no apology for not being successful in
this round. There were only two winners. Four cities, including the nation's
capital where I currently live, were disappointed."
When St. Petersburg Times reporter and long-time Porter nemesis Stephen
Koff rose to ask a question, the Washington attorney boiled over.
STEPHEN KOFF: "Mr. Porter, you have today refuted some of the things
said by important owners of Major League Baseball and from members of the St.
Petersburg community who said they were very familiar with your group's
finances. The bottom line is that St. Petersburg does not have a baseball team.
Who should the public believe?"
PORTER: "Mr. Koff, I think the public should believe you because you
write whatever you want. You're calling Mr. [Allen] Kohl at 5:30 in the morning
and you're writing a completely phony story this morning that got headlines. I
think they really ought to believe you. Because I think you are the greatest
expert down here and you have been for several months.
Q. (Another reporter): "If the Kohls feel that they have been so
maligned . . . why have they not come forward themselves . . . We haven't heard
a word from them."
PORTER: "I'm sorry, I can't speak for the Kohls. The Kohls have been
private people from the very beginning. It wasn't my job to come down here
today and just say that the Kohls have done this and the Kohls have done that.
I told you my perspective. They were my partners in this deal and I denied here
publicly with respect to what people reported have been their commitments and
what have not been their commitments. Sidney and Allen Kohl don't like
publicity. Unfortunately, they're getting plenty of it right now. They simply
have taken a back seat position in this enterprise from the very beginning.
"They're paying for that now by appearing indifferent to it. I've spoken
frequently with Sidney Kohl. I speak with him almost every day and I've spoken
with him this morning. He's certainly not indifferent to this and he's
certainly outraged by the lead story in the St. Petersburg Times this
morning which implied that he made another investment. Not implied, flat out
stated that he made another investment, and therefore reduced his involvement
from $50-million to $5-million, which is why I so sharply answered Mr. Koff. I
expect press stories to have at least some modicum of accuracy."
KOFF: "Mr. Porter, are you going to answer the question?"
PORTER: "Forget about it, Mr. Koff. Maybe we just don't like you."
"I was shocked," Koff says. "It was the last thing I expected. I asked a
question: 'You said this, baseball said differently. Who should the public
believe?' And he said, 'They should believe you, Mr. Koff.'
"I called [Sidney Kohl's South Florida partner August] Urbanek," Koff says,
"and said, 'Why wouldn't Kohl put up the money?' He said, 'Something better
came along.' "
But after Koff's story came out, Urbanek told the Palm Beach Post that
Koff misquoted him. Even more aggravating for Koff, Kohl gave an interview to
the Post a few days later, saying he was being made a scapegoat for St.
Petersburg's problems.
Koff, despite being publicly bullied by Porter, felt compassion for the man.
"It appeared it genuinely pained him to go through what he went through, to be
cast -- or regarded -- as a villain," the reporter says.
* * *
"I'll give you a different theory," Rick Dodge says.
"If there was a misunderstanding, [Milwaukee Brewers owner] Bud Selig must
have had it," Dodge says. "The way I understood it, the connection was Kohl to
Selig to [expansion committee member] Fred Wilpon. That was the way the
committee got influenced. I went to Selig afterward. This was a guy who felt
responsible for us to some degree in not getting the franchise and I think he
was.
"Selig would never have gone with Kohl as a minority limited partner.
Nobody spends their chips on a friend so they can climb on board as a limited
partner. Selig spent big chips to get Kohl selected. Selig told me Kohl had the
money, so Kohl was the guy. My view was Kohl didn't want to come to that
meeting at the Dome [in February] because he didn't want to stand on the spot
and make a commitment or equivocate. I think he had already changed his mind at
that point. If he hadn't shown up, all hunting signs would have been posted on
that group."
What really happened?
Dodge says there are two distinct possibilities.
"One," he says, "is that Kohl walked. The other is that Steve Porter is
stupid.
"I don't believe Steve is stupid. He is a very smart, savvy guy. So Kohl
walked. He saw the risk. He talked to people in baseball and learned about
spiraling salaries and disappearing revenues and I think Kohl saw that as a
very marginal investment, an investment that could lose a ton of money in a
hurry. I think his initial enthusiasm waned as he started to run through the
numbers and take a cold, dispassionate look at it.
"Steve did everything he knew how to do to get this done," Dodge says.
* * *
Continue Reading?
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
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