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Only one man possessed the charisma and drive to keep St. Petersburg locked in
its pursuit of a pro baseball franchise: Jack Critchfield, chairman of the
board and chief executive officer of Florida Progress.
Within hours of Steve Porter's rejection by the National League and
uncomfortable, defiant appearance at the Florida Suncoast Dome, Tampa Bay area
business leaders, newly elected St. Petersburg Mayor David Fischer and members
of the Pinellas County Commission pleaded with Critchfield to take a leadership
role.
Why Critchfield?
"Florida Progress is one of the biggest corporations in our area," Fischer
says. "They're geared for major efforts which enhance their service areas. Jack
Critchfield led a fund-raising drive at the University of South Florida two
years earlier. They were going to raise $4-million; he raised $9-million. He
was the logical leader to do it; We were lucky to have him."
Critchfield resisted the mayor's advances -- but just a little. In fact,
Fischer and the rest of the community wanted the Florida Progress boss to play
the only game he ever really loved. Maybe he asked for a day to think it over,
but the answer was always going to be yes.
"Had it not been for my ability to throw a baseball pretty hard, I'd still be
in a coal-mining town," the native of Rockwood, Pennsylvania (population
1,300), says. "Baseball was my ticket out. Baseball was my life."
As for Fischer, he took office too late to develop a meaningful relationship
with Steve Porter. During Porter's negotiations with the city for a Florida
Suncoast Dome lease, the mayor received daily briefings. 'I'd say, 'Let's try
this,' or, 'Why haven't we tried this?' and they [city negotiators] would say,
'He'll take a walk.' Porter was a very tough negotiator. It was not easy. So,
St. Petersburg got into desperate shape at the end and had little or no control
of the final event. That was a sad document to have at the end of 14 years of
effort."
Fischer says that when the NL rejected Steve Porter, he realized that after 14
years of controlling its own destiny, St. Petersburg had handed off its future
to an outsider and paid a stiff price. It needed its own hometown, heavy
hitter.
"As a city," Fischer says, "we not only did as much as we could, I think we
probably did more. It was awfully hard in the last week of the expansion effort
to go around to the business community and say, 'How would you like to join
this outside group?' We were talking millions of dollars! You just don't jump
at that. It was very unrealistic."
Many observers were impressed that Fischer convinced Critchfield to take
control of the city's baseball destiny and accept the mayor's mandate to bring
back a team.
"It's hard dealing with major league sports," Fischer says. "We figured we
might as well go after other cities' teams and go after them as hard as we
could. Other cities could jerk us around, but it couldn't be any worse than the
way baseball jerked us around, because we lost.
"We didn't want to let any days follow between the National League's decision,
Porter's appearance and our reaction. We wanted to keep the momentum going, get
the message out to the baseball world: St. Petersburg was under control; the
phone lines were open."
Forty-eight hours after Porter's last word on the subject, Critchfield and
Fischer stood before the press at the podium last occupied by the Washington,
D.C., lawyer. They announced St. Petersburg would not quit. Critchfield would
lead a new effort, dubbed "The Game's Not Over," with specific goals:
Sell 10,000 additional season-ticket reservations;
Sell out reservations for the 50 planned skyboxes at the Dome;
Sell out advertising positions within the stadium;
Organize potential ownership groups to stand ready and deliver enough
cash to buy out and relocate an existing team at a cost of up to $100-million,
or purchase a significant minority interest -- up to $40-million -- in an
existing team.
* * *
Jack Critchfield spent his first few years in St. Petersburg quietly,
maneuvering his way through local political landmines as a vice president of
the Florida Power electric utility. By early 1988, when he moved up to the role
of president and chief operating officer of its holding company, Florida
Progress, Critchfield looked around and saw a community at odds with itself,
one county fighting the other over every little thing, disagreeing just to
disagree.
"This just won't do," he said.
Critchfield seized upon the issue of "bridging the bay," political slang for
making the neighboring counties of Pinellas (St. Petersburg, Clearwater and 22
smaller cities) and Hillsborough (Tampa) work together as one market.
"Until we act as one region, the rest of Florida is going to have our lunch,"
Critchfield told local groups in his stump speech.
He brought movers and shakers from opposite ends of the bay's bridges together
to talk about mutual problems and to seek joint solutions. Certainly he knew of
the yearning for baseball -- he shared it -- but Critchfield, who described
baseball as "glue for bay area unity," figured the game was in able hands with
Frank Morsani, and then Steve Porter.
"My perception coming into the community was the baseball effort was so strong
that without my help we were going to get an expansion franchise," he says. "It
was a slam-dunk. How could they choose anywhere else?" Indeed, the only people
who felt Critchfield and Florida Progress should have been involved earlier
were those looking backward from June 1991.
But that June, Critchfield, angry, shaken and determined, aimed to put his
community back in the game. "I chose to find out why baseball made the decision
they did," he says. "A couple people from the business community said, 'We
can't afford a letdown. Will you get involved?' The mayor asked and the city
council asked. And the county commission." How could he say no?
* * *
As a boy, Critchfield went to work in the coal mines of Rockwood,
Pennsylvania, with his father. There had to be a better life than this, he
thought, breathing the harsh air, listening to the hacking and congested
breathing of the older men around him. Maybe baseball would be his ticket to
bright lights and big cities. A hard-throwing high school pitcher,
Critchfield's only desire in life became reaching the big leagues.
"I was very small but I worked hard at it," Critchfield says. "I was never any
taller than I am now [5'9"] and I only weighed about 140 pounds. But I had an
excellent high school baseball coach who was also my history teacher. I was
scouted in my junior year by the old Philadelphia Athletics. In those days they
couldn't talk to you so the scout watched me pitch and then he talked to my
dad. He said, 'If your son weighs 160 pounds when he graduates a year from now,
he's got a Class A contract with Philadelphia."
Tryout invitations also came from the St. Louis Browns and Critchfield's dream
team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Meanwhile, he played high school basketball in
addition to baseball. Every morning his mother fixed him a calorie-laden
breakfast of hash browns, eggs and toast to fatten him up. He drank milkshakes
full of eggs and ate everything that wasn't moving for an entire year. But
Critchfield gained just two measly pounds.
"I just could not gain weight," he says. "I had an opportunity to sign a Class
B contract with one or two clubs and was tempted to do it but my high school
coach said, 'You better get an education because you are not very big.' He
convinced me I should go to school."
That wasn't an easy decision. Ohio State and Duke both offered partial
baseball scholarships but the Critchfield family couldn't afford to make up the
difference. Buzz Ridl, baseball coach of Westminster College, a little school
in northwest Pennsylvania (where Critchfield later was director of admissions
for a year) contacted the high school senior.
"He wanted me in the worst way; I still have the letter," Critchfield says.
"It was signed by the president of the college: 'We are pleased to invite you
to come to Westminster next fall. You will receive a scholarship that is $200
per semester if you are able to make the baseball team and sing tenor in the
choir.' "
The Critchfields piled into the family's '39 Plymouth and went to visit
Westminster.
"My dad got lost," Critchfield recalls. "He got off the turnpike somehow and
we wound up in Slippery Rock. We pulled into the university and I ran in to get
a catalog. I had heard of this school because a couple of my teachers had gone
there. It was a state teachers college, fewer that 1,000 students. It cost
$664.33 for everything, but you made a commitment to teach school for at least
two years. Well, I already saved $1,000 and I planned to work in the summer so
I filled out the application and sent it in and that's how I got to Slippery
Rock."
Not that Slippery Rock lacked a ball team. But nobody there knew the coal-town
pitching phenom and 140 guys were already going out for the team, including six
returning lettermen pitchers. And the coach carried only an eight-man pitching
staff because the season was just 20 games.
The very last day of tryouts was not necessarily Critchfield's best on the
mound but he did hit a home run in an inter-squad game. "That's how I made the
team," he says.
Critchfield studied history and economics. With that, dating and pitching,
college life was swell.
But his route to the majors was short-circuited.
Critchfield ripped the cartilage in his left knee playing basketball during
his junior year, halting his career plans. He continued to play for Slippery
Rock, but his injury took 30 percent off the speed of his fastball. Even so, he
was named team captain in both his junior and senior years and the Boston Red
Sox offered him a contract. But he knew it was not to be. Critchfield
re-evaluated his post-college plans, considering what life might be like
without baseball.
He earned his bachelor of science degree from Slippery Rock then spent two
years in the U.S. Army as a cryptographer. After the service, Critchfield
worked 20 years as a college administrator, first at the University of
Pittsburgh, then as president of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.
During this time he earned a master's in psychological counseling and a
doctoral degree in education administration, both from Pitt.
Critchfield stepped into private industry for the first time at age 45 when he
became president and director of United Telephone in Central Florida. Feeling
he had accomplished all he could there, Critchfield accepted a position with
Florida Power in 1983, eventually moving up to the holding company, Florida
Progress, where he took the role of CEO in February 1990. He added the title
chairman of the board a year later.
* * *
The Critchfield Gang -- orchestrated by Rick Dodge and including
Dodge's usual city hall cronies Anita Treiser, Herb Polson, Rick Mussett and
Rich Hickman -- revved up the ever-ready baseball support team, immediately
putting Critchfield on a five-county rubber chicken circuit as if he were
running for office. He made speeches and tried to be a cheerleader for a team
that didn't exist. He did everything short of kiss babies and promise to reduce
taxes.
"My intent," Critchfield says, "was to make it a regional effort because
regionally we are an extremely strong baseball market; if you don't look at us
regionally, we are not. I think I gave 27 talks in two months."
The Florida Progress boss also contributed relocation strategy. He wanted to
make Tampa Bay the most attractive place in America for any baseball team ready
and able to leave its current city by generating a financial package so juicy
that troubled baseball owners would fight to be there first.
Why did the CEO of one of Florida's 10 largest public companies ($2-billion in
revenues in 1991) set business aside to play ball?
"We're here," Critchfield says. "We have a major presence in St. Petersburg
and Tampa Bay. I was disappointed baseball passed us by. We deserved a team.
The mayor came out and said, 'Let's get it done.' I decided if he was willing
to do it, so was I.
"Baseball is important to the Tampa Bay area," he says, "not just to St.
Petersburg and Pinellas County. We needed something good to happen to us. A
baseball team would not just be good for the economy, it would be a great
spiritual uplift. MacDill Air Force Base was under fire, threatened with
closing, baseball didn't come of its own accord. There was a general malaise.
To me, baseball coming to this area would be a major stimulus."
It marked the second time Florida Progress took a leadership role in St.
Petersburg's efforts to land a team. The first time, Andrew Hines was running
the company and the utility's holding company pledged up to $30-million to buy
a team. Critchfield made it clear in 1991 that Progress no longer desired to
own any part of a team, but was willing to provide leadership, resources,
influence and organizational strength.
"What I concentrated on was building a regional response that said we, Tampa
Bay, want baseball," Critchfield says. "If 35,000 tickets in a 43,000-seat
stadium were sold in advance, we would be very attractive. We were going to
sell out the skyboxes. That would provide a significant cash flow to an
ownership group."
As a final part of that program, he organized investors who could put up
$500,000 to $2.5-million apiece toward a $20-million limited partnership.
"There was a strong likelihood that any team that relocated here would bring
its own ownership with it," Critchfield says. "We were trying to build a war
chest of $20-million in a limited partnership to offer any owner who wanted to
replace his debt with equity. That made him profitable right off the bat."
Critchfield's back-up plan was to organize an ownership group with deep enough
pockets -- and arms long enough to reach into those pockets -- to buy any team
that came onto the market. He formed a second consortium of partners, able to
invest a total of $20-million to $40-million.
"If we had to buy a team,"Critchfield says, "we would already have done what
was necessary to make it feasible."
Realistically, Critchfield considered the down side.
"None of us was idealistically drawn into a feeling this was a slam-dunk," he
says. "We did not get an expansion team. We had a stadium. We had owners
putting pressure on for relocation in our favor. That we might get used as a
pawn was a reality. We might have had another Chicago White Sox situation. But
I wanted to be able to say we did everything we could to make it happen. I
wanted to be sure we had the best dance floor and were the most attractive
dance partner."
* * *
Then there was a ray of hope: almost as soon as the expansion issue
was settled, Seattle Mariners owner Jeff Smulyan confirmed that his team was
hemorrhaging red ink and might be forced to leave Seattle if he couldn't
generate enough revenue to bring the M's in line with the league average.
Smulyan estimated he needed nearly $16-million a year to keep operating in the
jewel of the Pacific Northwest.
It wasn't a sure thing for St. Petersburg's dusty Florida Suncoast Dome but
suddenly "Tampa Bay Mariners" had a friendly, cozy ring to it.
Rick Dodge, the man of a thousand phone calls, knew far in advance of
Smulyan's impending doom. "We were in contact with Seattle well in advance of
the expansion decision," he says. "We started working Seattle not as a backup
but because we were working anybody, anytime, anyplace. I thought we were in a
very precarious position, like we were on a bubble."
Working through Jerry Reinsdorf -- who mentored Jeff Smulyan through life in
The Show -- and Chicago White Sox executives, Dodge began funnelling data about
the Florida Suncoast Dome and St. Petersburg to Smulyan in Seattle.
"As early as March 1991," Dodge says, "we saw a scenario where it was possible
for Miami and Denver to be selected. Always kind of planning ahead, we learned
a little bit about how badly it was going in Seattle. We started sharing
information through the White Sox. Jeff sent word back that he was committed to
trying to make it work in Seattle. A committee had been formed and they were
gathering commitments to revenue streams and he wanted no interpretation in
Seattle that he was doing anything other than trying to make baseball work. He
was very clear to us about that. We just continued to keep in touch
indirectly."
Lawyers in St. Petersburg warned Dodge not to be overzealous in his wooing of
Smulyan, concerned about a legal issue known as "tortious interference." In
this case it meant St. Petersburg could not induce the Mariners to break the
team's stadium lease; to do so would incur severe legal penalties. The city's
attorneys obtained and analyzed Seattle's Kingdome lease to make sure that
Dodge went about his activities in an appropriate way.
"We were always in a position of being a willing recipient," Dodge says, "but
we couldn't be out there inducing somebody with something that was
inappropriate."
* * *
Jeff Smulyan grew up with a love of radio. The voices, music, humor
and infinite variety of formats kept him interested for hours on end. He knew,
somehow, it was his destiny.
Born April 6, 1947, in Indianapolis, Smulyan fled the Midwest for the West
Coast after high school, studying history and law at the University of Southern
California. But once he earned his attorney's pinstripes, Smulyan went back to
Indiana, where his father, Sam Smulyan, bought radio station WNTS for $400,000
in 1974 and named Jeff vice president and general manager. One of Smulyan's
first decisions was to give TV weatherman David Letterman his first break as a
talk show host.
But WNTS failed as a talk station and went religious, a format Jeff Smulyan
had no interest in managing. Late in the decade he left the station in an angry
snit with his father and the two didn't speak for a long time.
In 1980, Smulyan formed Emmis Broadcasting Corporation, of which he became
president and principal shareholder. His first acquisition was WENS in
Indianapolis, followed by WLOL in Minneapolis, KSHE in St. Louis and KPWR in
Los Angeles. In 1986 he bought WQHT and WFAN in New York and WAVA in
Washington, D.C., which made Emmis the largest privately held radio company in
America, according to The Pulse of Radio. Two years later, Emmis
acquired five NBC stations: KXXX (San Francisco), WKQX (Chicago), WJIB (Boston)
and WYNY/WNBC (New York). At age 41, Smulyan owned 11 radio stations. He spent
$24-million to buy a twelfth, KNRJ in Houston, then sold it a year later for
$30-million. Emmis also diversified by buying Indianapolis Monthly
magazine.
Smulyan's claim to fame in broadcasting -- besides the financial success of
his rock 'n' roll stations -- was as pioneer of the all sports radio format. He
took a tremendous amount of heat in July 1987 for converting WFAN to
all-sports, all the time. There was nothing like it on the air. And progress
was slow until he moved the WFAN call letters and sports format to a new
acquisition, the former WNBC. The format took off.
Besides broadcasting live play-by-play of New York sports teams -- WFAN
started with rights to the New York Mets games -- it generated listener call-in
shows, coaches shows and niche sports programs. Skeptics criticized the move as
half-assed. Who wanted to listen to sports all the time?
All-news was different, they said. You need news. But Smulyan
disagreed. Cable television's ESPN proved there was a market for an all-sports
video channel and Smulyan stuck by all-sports radio.
Named Cosmopolitan's Bachelor of the Month after his 1988 divorce, the
father of two received thousands of proposals. Radio executives also fell in
love with the handsome young pioneer. In a 1991 editorial in The Pulse of
Radio, publisher B. Eric Rhoads wrote:
Jeff Smulyan is more to our industry than just another broadcaster. He
represents something that is within each of us. Coming from humble
beginnings, he was one of the first to leverage his group into a thriving
company with glamorous major market properties.
. . . . He is young, smart, aggressive and also a nice, unassuming,
average guy. His success attracted successful people. His instant clout
catapulted him into industry leadership. . . . The man had the magic, and
everything he touched turned to gold.
For Smulyan it was natural to move from broadcasting somebody else's games to
owning a team of his own.
"I always loved baseball," he says. "I felt that baseball was a great
programing source and I also loved the game. I talked to one team and then I
heard that the Mariners might be available. I fell in love with the project."
Along with the one-third interest of New York investment firm Morgan Stanley
-- which also held a large stake in $250-million Emmis Broadcasting -- Smulyan
made a successful $75-million bid to buy the Mariners in 1989 from George
Argyros.
Argyros was despised in Seattle, a city that loved to chastise its sports team
owners. After rooting for the NFL Seattle Seahawks, the second favorite sport
in Seattle was hating Argyros.
Surely such a fickle city would be delighted to receive Smulyan, the handsome,
self-made man with good business judgment and a quarter-billion-dollar radio
empire.
The process of due diligence is a legal term describing the research a
business person engages in before making a major purchase. Sometimes due
diligence will turn up reasons to nix a deal. Often a business person will
ignore these signs if he or she is determined to go forward no matter what.
Like Jeff Smulyan and the Seattle Mariners.
"We studied it," he says, "but we became convinced that the market was big
enough. There was enough tourism and corporate headquarters located there. We
sort of got deluded in the sense that we thought if we put a better product on
the field and worked hard that we could get the revenues to be commensurate
with the market size."
Interestingly, an unwritten condition of Smulyan's approval as owner of the
Mariners was that he not buy television stations. Although baseball
commissioner Fay Vincent didn't strictly prohibit such an acquisition, Smulyan
got a strong message that the creation of more superstations such as Chicago's
WGN and Atlanta's WTBS was not in baseball's best interests.
Smulyan's honeymoon with Seattle was a sweet one, though short-lived. KIRO-TV
put Smulyan's head on Superman's body in a promo for its sports reports.
Pacific, the Seattle Times' Sunday magazine, tried a similar
trick, superimposing the new baseball team owner's face on a box of Wheaties
("The Breakfast of Champions") for a cover story that straightforwardly
suggested Smulyan might one day wind up in the White House.
Despite the hoopla, it didn't take long for Smulyan to learn that Argyros'
problems in Seattle were not just due to his personality.
"By the end of our first year we saw some sides of Seattle that we knew were
major problems," Smulyan says. "Even when we doubled and later tripled the TV
ratings, the TV stations had absolutely no interest in carrying our games. The
cable company never had an interest in paying anything commensurate with any
other market. Our relationship with the government was very positive but it
didn't make any difference. The government was just sort of indifferent."
Smulyan fell in love with the City of Seattle but the market's stubbornness to
embrace baseball discouraged him from relocating his permanent residence and
the headquarters of Emmis Broadcasting away from Indianapolis. Although he
turned over the day-to-day operations of Emmis to its president, Steve Crane,
Smulyan resisted buying a home in Seattle, renting a downtown penthouse
instead. He didn't consider acquiring a radio station in the city, either. It
was not a striking endorsement of the team's future on his part.
"I agreed that I would have that as my principal location and for almost three
years it was," he says. "I have custody of my kids and I would be with them on
the weekends but during the winter -- when many of the people in Seattle who
talked about local ownership ended up in Hawaii or Palm Springs or Scottsdale
-- I was there every week. I would drop my kids off at school Monday mornings
in Indianapolis and jump on the plane to be at the office by 11:30 a.m."
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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