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The major players -- minus Jeff Smulyan -- met a second time in
December in Jack Critchfield's office. Rick Dodge believed agreement was
reached on 85 percent of lease issues. He and Critchfield felt good; completing
a lease was going to be the least of their problems.
"Jeff was easy to negotiate with but he was tough to score points off of,"
Dodge says. "He had all the leverage and understood how to milk it all the way
and did so. Jeff started from the point of, 'Here's the Chicago White Sox
lease; we need you to do better than that.' Both sides were shuffling toward
that point where lines cross. It was a tough negotiation, very fair-minded,
everybody trying to get to the same spot. They kidded with me that they were
going to hire me to negotiate their player contracts."
The Mariners held one more wild card -- St. Petersburg's negotiators never
knew what deadline they were working against as Smulyan allowed the City of
Seattle grace at every opportunity. Need more time on that 120-day deadline? No
problem. It drove Dodge batty because he couldn't complain or do anything about
it.
"First we thought it was going to be very quick," he says. "Then I sensed that
their legal strategy changed in terms of the timing, what they were going to do
and how they needed to go about it. They were afraid of pulling the trigger and
not being able to get out of Seattle. Yet a lame duck season or two would have
just ruined them. They were at great risk and great peril."
Smulyan couldn't bring himself to back moving trucks up to the Kingdome in the
middle of the night and take flight to Florida.
"It was a remote possibility," Smulyan says, "but it was discussed. There were
people who said you've got to go now. When you are doing something like this
you have to consider every possibility. That was one of them. If somebody says
you've got a chance to buy out of a situation where you are losing millions of
dollars a year and go to a place where you can break even or make a profit you
may consider it.
"I told Rick Dodge, 'I am the worst kind of guy you could ever deal with in
something like this because I'm not the kind of person who is ever going to
move a baseball team in the middle of the night. It's not my personality. You
couldn't find two people who are further apart than [NFL Los Angeles Raiders
owner] Al Davis and me. He is smart. He made money in sports and I'm dumb; I
lost money in sports. It just wasn't my nature.That's a strength and it's also
a weakness. It's hard to run a business and be ruled by emotion like that."
* * *
During the winter meetings in Miami Beach, Dodge had checked in with
representatives from AstroTurf and other companies likely to outfit the Florida
Suncoast Dome, asking questions and confirming timetables. The suppliers mapped
out exactly what they could do and in how much time. Like any eager contractor,
they said that whether it took regular work hours or triple-overtime, they'd
get the job done.
That was important because as late as February, Smulyan kept hope alive that
he'd field a team at the Florida Suncoast Dome in Spring 1992.
"We worked through all of those scenarios," Dodge says. "We charted it out so
if they got to us by 'X' date, here is when we can play. Here is the last date.
They were very bullish about being here."
Back in Seattle, all manner of schemers and dreamers revealed plans to keep
the Mariners. A Juneau, Alaska, businessman proposed his state purchase the
team but keep them in Seattle. In Portland, Oregon, an attorney proposed
turning the Mariners into a real Pacific Northwest team, playing home games in
Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.)
offered legislation in the Senate to force Major League Baseball teams to share
broadcast revenues the way NFL teams do. And Washington Gov. Booth Gardner
considered providing state aid to the team or even buying it outright.
A day before New Year's Eve, Smulyan decided it was time to get involved
first-hand. He invited Dodge and Critchfield to their first face-to-face
meeting on December 30, 1991 in a Boca Raton, Florida, condominium.
Dodge reconstituted and updated the entire dog and pony show from the 1990
presentation to the National League expansion committee and gave Smulyan the
works, focusing particularly on media consultant Dick Dailey's updated
projections for the Tampa Bay television market. He took an entire team along
plus every portable collateral material short of the Florida Suncoast Dome
model itself.
"Jeff walked into the room," Dodge recalls. "Here was a guy who I had been
talking to on the phone for six months. I felt like Stanley finally finding
Livingstone."
The standby lease deal was approaching 90 percent agreement.
"Rick really understood the basic issues," Smulyan says. "All we wanted was a
franchise that generated enough revenue to give us a team we could be proud of.
I got into baseball because I loved it. I thought that the long-term economics,
because of baseball's tie into broadcasting, made good sense but it is clearly
not an investment you made because you wanted to get rich fast. What you don't
want to do is lose everything you ever had doing it. You want a franchise you
can be proud of. I didn't want to do this again.
"There wasn't any question we could work out a deal with Rick Dodge," Smulyan
says.
In fact there was only one significant stumbling block.
"One of the few points that we bickered about was Mr. Smulyan's showmanship,"
Critchfield says. "He wanted a scoreboard that cost more than some baseball
stadiums used to cost."
"My first trip to the Toronto Skydome," Smulyan recalls, "I had my kids with
me. They are products of a different generation. I watched them watch the
scoreboard. I realized if you had a scoreboard that big and you had some
high-tech wizards, you could hook a whole different generation on the game, the
consumers of the future. The consumer of the future is going to want a
different experience at the ballpark and I was a nut to get the biggest video
screen. I kept saying if I ever do a ballpark, that's the first thing I am
going to do."
"We finally convinced him that the configuration of the Dome, which he had not
yet seen, was such that a scoreboard the size of the one they had at the
Toronto Skydome would not make any sense at all," Critchfield says.
* * *
Running side-by-side with Tampa Bay's efforts to lure a baseball team
to the Florida Suncoast Dome was Phil Esposito's tortured dream of establishing
an NHL hockey franchise in the same market.
Esposito, the hall of famer and former star of the New York Rangers and Boston
Bruins, couldn't buy a break. In the days leading up to the NHL Board of
Governors' December 1990 vote on expansion in Palm Beach, Esposito's financial
sweethearts, the Pritzker family of Hyatt Hotels and Spectacor fame, hit him
with the slapshot of his life and pulled out of their deal. If Tampa Bay was
going to get pro hockey, it looked like Espo's arch-rival, Detroit-based Peter
Karmanos of Compuware, would be awarded the franchise.
With hours until the board of governors met, Esposito put together an iffy
commitment of Japanese financing and went to Palm Beach. His proposal, held
together with spit and Ace bandages, lacked polish, but the NHL bosses loved
Espo. He was a living legend, the embodiment of modern hockey. Karmanos, on the
other hand, owned minor league hockey teams and paled in a comparison of
stature within the game. Karmanos also misjudged the board of governors by
proposing his own timetable for paying the league's NHL franchise fee.
Esposito won the rights to create a hockey franchise for Tampa Bay. The
Lightning began play in fall 1992.
He contracted with a group of former Tampa Bay Baseball Group members -- minus
Frank Morsani and Cedric Tallis -- to build an indoor arena on the land next to
Tampa Stadium, that once was intended to house the TBBG's baseball stadium. But
the Tampa Coliseum group couldn't rub two matches together to spark a fire.
They muddled through all of 1991 without financing for the facility, making and
breaking promises to Esposito, the public and Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman so
many times even the most ardent hockey fans tired of hearing from them.
Whereas the Lightning once thought it could be a substitute for baseball in
the affections of Tampa Bay sports fans, it was no longer taken seriously.
Tampa Bay must be cursed, the sportswriters complained: first the God-awful
Buccaneers, no baseball team and now this.
When it became obvious to Esposito there would be no Tampa Coliseum in time
for the Lightning's first season, he and Lightning minority owner George
Steinbrenner opened conversations with the Florida Suncoast Dome about its
playing temporary host to the team. This, too, drew hoots from the sports
community. Esposito already tried sponsoring hockey exhibitions in the Dome
using portable ice rinks; the ice melted, canceling one match and shortening
the playing time of two others. That the Dome could seat 30,000 for hockey
meant little if the ice couldn't be kept frozen.
Negotiations with the City of St. Petersburg -- Rick Dodge, mostly -- dragged
on into 1992, overlapping Mariners talks. St. Petersburg, which was Esposito's
original choice for a temporary home to the franchise until he had a falling
out with Dodge, fretted that committing to hockey might cause conflicts with
the Mariners. The city dragged its feet, hoping to strike a deal with Jeff
Smulyan before signing on the bottom line with Phil Esposito.
Another problem: engineers informed stadium management it could cost millions
to keep the Dome cold enough to sustain ice six months a year. As a result, the
city would lose even more money on the Dome with a tenant than
without.
Esposito grew antsy. He initiated talks with the 10,000-seat Florida Expo Hall
in Tampa. Most people saw it as a negotiating tactic; Tampa Tribune
sports editor Tom McEwen believed it a stroke of genius and used Esposito's
move to start a new war of words between Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Dodge took his problem to Smulyan. We want to accommodate baseball, he said,
but today, right now, the Lightning are here. What can I do?
"Make George [Steinbrenner] happy," Smulyan said. "If he wants to come over
we'll work it out."
Smulyan saw his Mariners as the Dome's long-term future tenant; the Lightning
would be temporary. Do whatever it takes, he told Dodge; we'll handle the
little details later.
"It was a very strange and delicate time," Dodge recalls. "We decided to get
the hockey deal done but the date the city wanted to take a special council
meeting was the day we had people flying into Indianapolis [Smulyan's radio
headquarters] from all over the country to finalize the baseball details. We
stayed up until 2 a.m. finishing everything on hockey, got on a Florida
Progress jet at 6 a.m. and flew to Indianapolis.
"In St. Petersburg," he says, "my staff was putting everything together for a
special council meeting that afternoon. Jack Critchfield and I were at Jeff's
house negotiating the last pieces of the baseball deal. We got it basically
done except for one or two issues; a very productive and good meeting. We
talked to Jeff about relocating all his companies so it would be a double hit
for the area. We flew back to St. Petersburg. Critchfield dropped me on the
steps of city hall because there was not enough time to do anything else. I
walked right into council chambers and sat in my chair to take up the hockey
lease.
"All I could think was, 'They think this is the story? The hockey
deal? Hah!"
But the last laugh was on Dodge. While Steinbrenner negotiated in good faith
on a one-year Dome lease for the Lightning, Esposito was cutting his teeth at
the Florida Expo Hall in Tampa. While Steinbrenner accepted plaudits for
bridging the bay and putting aside old prejudices about St. Petersburg and its
stadium, Esposito was screwing him.
The "agreement in principal" to play at the Dome became moot as the Lightning
announced its intention to play its first two seasons at the Florida Expo Hall.
Esposito said he didn't want to be blamed if St. Petersburg didn't get a
baseball team because certain dates were promised to the Lightning.
Dodge was furious. And Steinbrenner, livid, backed out of the Lightning faster
than the Tampa Coliseum group could repeat its promise to break ground "any day
now."
* * *
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
Tampa Bay Devil Rays Home Page
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