Stadium For Rent: 25. Make The Check Payable To Bill White

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

25. Make The Check Payable
To Bill White

"I couldn't deal with Bob Lurie. I couldn't deal with St. Petersburg. I had to use the channels that were open to me, legally. The first one was Fay Vincent, but then he dropped out. My next option was Bill White, the president of the National League. He, himself, said he would accept information but we couldn't talk to either side. 'Bob Lurie is honoring his contract and we're going to let him honor it by using a third party.' "
-- Frank Jordan, Mayor, San Francisco

The name of the game became delay. As in, don't put off until tomorrow what you can put off until next week.

Tampa Bay partisans who once thought the only thing between them and the Giants was the crossing of t's and the dotting of i's realized they were wrong, as delays of weeks rolled into months. Consider this timeline of postponements, sidesteps and misdirection:

Sept. 3. Ownership Committee Chairman Fred Kuhlmann announced that Bob Lurie had agreed to consider possible offers from San Francisco investors. Giants spokesman Duffy Jennings immediately denied it. Despite this, Kuhlmann reiterated his understanding that Lurie would consider local offers.

This time, the chill coming in from San Francisco Bay blew clear across the country. St. Petersburg couldn't help but shiver.

Sept. 4. In a pre-emptive strike, the City of San Francisco filed suit in San Francisco Superior Court against the Giants, Bob Lurie and the Tampa Bay Baseball Ownership Group. The suit complained that the Giants breached a stadium contract with the city by entering into a contract with the Tampa Bay group. It was the same tactic successfully employed by the late George Moscone when he was mayor.

Lurie, who was on the winning side of Moscone's suit in 1976, was nonplussed by the city's '92 version. He was busy sending an open letter to the people of Tampa Bay.

Dear Giants fan,

The sheer volume of mail I have received does not allow me to answer each note personally, but I have read them all.

One important factor in my decision to sell the Giants to the Tampa Bay group was the strong evidence they presented that baseball fans in Florida are more than ready to welcome the team and will support the Giants for many years to come . . .

I know the Giants organization is looking forward to its move to Florida as much as you are. I am sure the long and rich history of the Giants will continue to thrive in Tampa Bay as it has in New York and San Francisco.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Lurie
Chairman
San Francisco Giants

Sept. 9. For weeks, San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan had claimed that, given the chance, he would make a competitive proposal to NL President Bill White for the Giants to stay in his city. But when it came time to fly to New York, his investors still didn't have their act together so Jordan stalled. What kind of structure do you want? What elements should be in the proposal?

White was disappointed that Jordan did not present a formal bid to him. Jordan said he could bring an offer to the upcoming owners' meeting in St. Louis, but White said there were other matters on the table and no decision would be reached in St. Louis on the St. Petersburg offer. This was the best news the mayor had received since getting involved in saving the Giants.

"Bill White acted in good faith all along," Jordan says. "He allowed us to come in and at least present where we were at that time, how far we had come, the concerns we had about keeping the team."

The mayor presented the league president with an impressive list of local investors. That made an impact on White; maybe Lurie had been too hasty in going out of town, maybe there was local support to keep the team.

Jordan got another break because the NL made it clear there were more pressing matters on baseball's plate, including the recent forced resignation of Commissioner Fay Vincent.

At the conclusion of the two-hour meeting, White put a twist on Fred Kuhlmann's earlier statement by saying that he -- White -- "will accept an offer from the people in San Francisco and then the league will have to decide what they will do with that offer."

The National League owners, who desperately wanted to keep a team in San Francisco, understood that Bob Lurie was contractually prohibited from considering competing offers for the Giants. They figured that since team owners were the ultimate judge of whether a team could be sold and to whom, any competing bid could be directed to them. They decided that the San Franciscans could be legally secure in funneling an offer directly to the league and that the owners would similarly be protected from action by the San Franciscans by granting them a window of opportunity to keep the team. Quite satisfied with themselves, they sent White to the media dogs to pass the message.

Aggravating the hell out of Tampa Bay's forces, White set no timetable for San Francisco to organize and present its proposal. Experience taught that time was Tampa Bay's greatest enemy in securing a team.

San Francisco apparently had all the time in the world.

While San Francisco whooped with glee, White's announcement fell flat in the Tampa Bay area. Even though officials were hesitant to be overtly critical of the NL president, it was a strain to put a positive spin on something so inherently negative.

"I didn't understand how he could both be the judge and the prosecutor," Critchfield says. "It didn't make any legal sense to me that he could do this, but I knew that he could do anything he wanted to and probably would. I also knew it wasn't his decision unilaterally. It had to be a decision reached by baseball owners for whatever reasons. He was the person to execute it because they had just fired the commissioner and had no one else to do it. I had no personal animosity toward Bill White and still don't. He was doing what he was told to do by his bosses."

White thrust himself into the role of seller and buyer. In real estate, that would be unethical; on Wall Street, that would mean jail for insider trading. Nonetheless, he worked eagerly to help the people in San Francisco formulate their bid.

It was almost like a declaration of war. The NL changed a no-brainer contractual agreement between two willing parties into an engagement of nerves, a game of days and weeks and months of nerves.

St. Petersburg's spin doctors developed different scenarios for the press to explain White's actions. The positive scenario: baseball didn't want to face a lawsuit from San Francisco. They gave them every opportunity. They knew that there wasn't a bona fide offer in San Francisco but they couldn't just move the team and face a big lawsuit. Bottom line -- baseball did not like lawsuits. The negative scenario: baseball did everything in its power to keep the team there no matter what. They said they didn't like relocation. They didn't like realignment. The West Coast teams didn't want more East Coast games screwing up their TV deals.

"My answer to that was, well, they didn't like a lot of things but they had to change with the times," Dolgon says. "They didn't hire a lot of minorities but that didn't make it right. They start games at 8:30 p.m. during the World Series and little kids can't watch it. That's not right, either."

Meanwhile, Naimoli had the only legal contract and anybody who tried to interfere with that would face a lawsuit. He made that clear.

Sept. 11. For reasons that may never be made public, baseball's Ownership Committee expressed concern with the background of two members of Tampa Bay's ownership group, Vincent Tirendi and Vincent Piazza. Vince Naimoli was directed to disassociate himself from the two if he wanted to be approved.

Ownership Committee Chairman Fred Kuhlmann told the St. Petersburg Times that something negative showed up in a security check of the businessmen. But Chicago White Sox co-owner Jerry Reinsdorf, a member of Kuhlmann's committee said, "I don't know what {Kuhlmann's} talking about." Instead, Reinsdorf said, the committee was concerned that Tampa Bay's bid relied on too much out-of-state money. Reinsdorf said Tampa Bay was stronger without the Pennsylvanians.

Taken at face value, baseball appeared to be doing a sincere job of due diligence on the Naimoli group, helping shape it to baseball's liking. And if baseball was saying it only would only give consideration to all-local offers for teams, that seemed to end North Carolinian George Shinn's attempt to buy the Giants and keep the team in San Francisco.

So the latest development was, uh, good news for Tampa Bay, right?

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley declared his strong preference that the Giants stay in San Francisco. "I'm doing everything I can to make that happen," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Sept. 13. The New York Times' Murray Chass wrote that baseball owners were miffed with Bob Lurie for cutting a deal with St. Petersburg without first informing league officials. And a dispute was growing over whether Fay Vincent had given Lurie the option of relocation or merely the opportunity to explore relocation.

Sept. 14. Naimoli, in San Francisco to learn the ropes of running the team from Lurie, found time to meet with Piazza and Tirendi. He told the press the two men were welcome in his group as long as they were welcome in baseball. On the same day, Kuhlmann changed his story. "There was no problem with the security check" on Piazza and Tirendi, he told the Tampa Tribune.

Piazza told the Los Angeles Times that he hoped his reputation was not damaged by Kuhlmann's screwing around. But, he said, "How do you unring the bell?"

The same day, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed to protect the San Francisco investment group in its quest to purchase the Giants from any subsequent lawsuits.

Sept. 18. Tampa Bay radio personality Mason Dixon wanted to send a message to George Shinn.

"I said, we ought to send him a Florida cow pie," Dixon says. "Then we called a radio station in Charlotte to get his address and they said, 'We'll help you. We don't like the guy either.' "

Dixon told Wallace Farms in Charlotte that he was with a lawn service doing work at the Shinn estate and needed more manure. "They said the smallest delivery they made was two tons," Dixon says. "Well, the bigger it got, the better. We said we'd make do."

Plotting took place live on the Tampa Bay airwaves over WMTX. Dixon didn't know how far he'd get before being discovered, but he pushed on. Someone from the Charlotte radio station waited outside Shinn's gate for the manure to arrive. Meanwhile, the local media began showing up, eager to record the delivery.

But the truck broke down. And Shinn got wind of Dixon's scheme, so his security guards were ready. When the delivery came -- all 10 tons of it -- Shinn greeted the driver and good-naturedly posed for pictures and persuaded the man not to complete the delivery.

"He played along and was a good sport," Dixon says. "But had that truck got there on time, our instructions were, 'Put it in the driveway and we'll spread it from there.' If the thing had been there on time, we'd have nailed him."

Sept. 20. "I can't continue to live like this forever," a frustrated Vince Naimoli told the St. Petersburg Times.

Sept. 26. Naimoli received artist's conceptions of the new Giants uniforms with "Tampa Bay" written in script across the front. He even dropped a hint to a Times sports columnist that the Tampa Bay Giants and NHL Tampa Bay Lightning could split the cost of a corporate jet.

Sept. 27. Would a 3-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds be the Giants' final curtain call at the 'Stick? Roger Craig tipped his hat, wiped a tear from his eye and blew a kiss to the crowd of 45, 630. "Everybody wants to know if we're nostalgic," Giants first baseman Will Clark said. "It's hard to be nostalgic when nobody knows what the hell is going on."

Sept. 30. NL President Bill White led a contingent of owners, including St. Louis Cardinals President Fred Kuhlmann, California Angels owner Jackie Autry and Boston Red Sox owner Haywood Sullivan to San Francisco for a face-to-face meeting with real estate magnate Walter Shorenstein and city officials. Curiously, George Shinn was not at the meeting. "We expect within a week or so that we will be hearing from the San Francisco group and will have an offer from them," White told the press.

At the same time, White directed Bob Lurie to release the Giants' financial records to Shinn for his review.

Naimoli was furious.

"If President White wants to continue to pursue a bird in the bush offer versus a bona fide legal offer, I wish him very good luck," the leader of the Tampa Bay ownership group told the Tampa Tribune. "But the Tampa Bay investment group is growing tired of this and, frankly, our appetite is waning."

Shorenstein told the San Francisco Chronicle that "a process was outlined and we are following that process."

Oct. 1. Naimoli waived his self-imposed October 1 deadline for NL action, backing off on a threat to withdraw his bid. "Our feeling is that if the loyal fans and supporters in St. Petersburg have waited 10 years, and President White says he needs another week or so, then we could probably bear waiting another week," Naimoli told the Times.

Meanwhile, Naimoli met with U.S. Senator Connie Mack (R-Florida) to discuss Mack's growing attacks on baseball's antitrust exemption in Judiciary Committee hearings. Publicly, Naimoli had to discourage Mack from proceeding. Privately, he cheered him on.

Oct. 4. The San Francisco Examiner reported that three issues divided the San Francisco group: price, leadership and responsibility in the event of a lawsuit. Neither Shorenstein's nor Shinn's autocratic leadership was winning friends and influencing enemies, so members of the group were calling on Safeway Chief Executive Officer -- and 12-year Giants board of directors member -- Peter Magowan to take charge.

Shinn was also being threatened by an exterior source: Alan Taylor Communications, the New York public relations agency hired to pump St. Petersburg's case to the nation and baseball owners.

St. Petersburg reacted to Shinn's transferred allegiance like a bride left at the altar. At a time when it could have been pressing the offensive in a positive way, the city and the Naimoli ownership group put Taylor exec Howard Dolgon on the attack. And George Shinn was his target.

Mean-spirited rumors and sound bites began to fill the San Francisco and Tampa Bay media covering the baseball story. The allegations were endless: Shinn's business practices were shady. His business manager was disbarred from the legal profession in Florida. And the big bomb for San Francisco: Shinn was a homophobe who investigated the sexual preferences of his Charlotte Hornets mascot and a potential college draft pick, Christian Laettner.

Howard Dolgon orchestrated a smear campaign against George Shinn. The idea was to destroy the basketball team owner's credibility in San Francisco and, more important, in the eyes of Major League Baseball.

Every day, just enough dirt on Shinn slipped out to generate a new story.

"We provided the media with a little bit of a background on Shinn which the San Francisco media and mayor labeled as a sleaze campaign," Dolgon says. "The only thing we did was present facts that the San Francisco media avoided because they didn't want to do anything to hurt their chances of keeping the team. They owed it to their taxpayers or the people who indemnified this ownership group to let them know who the hell they were indemnifying. We thought that it would be in our best interest to get that information out. It was all public records. We were surprised that the media in San Francisco gave this group a free ride. If I was a San Francisco taxpayer buying the Examiner or the Chronicle every day, I wanted them to report accurately on where my money may be going to. They weren't, so we had to do it for them."

The story was being aggressively covered in the Tampa Bay and San Francisco markets, although each camp ridiculed the other's coverage as slanted and selective. And they were right.

The rest of the country turned a deaf ear to the two-city debate. That was okay in Little Rock and Portland, but Dolgon and his spinners wanted their side heard in cities with Major League Baseball teams.

"We tried to get the 28 baseball markets motivated to write about this," he says. "We controlled the news to them so we could get them to write favorably. It went a long way to getting some positive stuff out."

Rick Dodge didn't see anything wrong with Dolgon's cross-country campaign against Shinn.

"The political process of putting spin on things is taking the facts and then trying to adjust them to your perspective," Dodge says. "I didn't see them do anything other than trot forward other people's findings. I'm sure that Mr. Shinn didn't like that but I don't think they did anything beyond that."

Dodge didn't think there was anything out of line with his willingness to be Shinn's partner in July and wanting to shoot him out of the sky like a clay pigeon in September.

"Here's what I thought was strange," Dodge says. "It was strange for someone who has been involved and interested in bringing baseball here for a long period of time to suddenly serve himself up as a San Franciscan. He changed sides. And as soon as he changed sides he became part of the opposition. I thought the issue was not that we changed -- he changed.

"The things that we focused on were that he was not a resident and that from his own statements to me, I didn't think he had the financial capacity to do the deal," Dodge says. "Everything else bubbled out of the process but it's a mistake to give Alan Taylor Communications credit for that. There were some very skilled journalists on the West Coast that did their own research and came to their own conclusions. It would not be accurate to portray that Alan Taylor Communications delivered the head of George Shinn."

In Tampa Bay's haste to get even with Shinn, Dodge, Critchfield, Naimoli and Dolgon didn't spend enough time considering that Shinn might be replaced be a far more credible managing general partner in San Francisco.

Better the devil you know.

Continue Reading?

Acknowledgements