|
The Big Leagues
By Kevin Kipp
Fresh
faces in Major League franchise
ownership take St.
Louis sports to new heights.
For a town
with so venerable a sports tradition, the major league sports
franchises in St. Louis are a young lot...if you look at current-ownership-in-this-location.
Georgia
Frontiere has owned the Rams since their previous post-season
appearance in 1979, but St. Louis only lured the team here in
1995.
Bill DeWitt,
Fred Hanser and Drew Baur organized the ownership group who
bought the Cardinals in March 1996.
And Missourian
Bill Laurie bought Kiel Center and the Blues from Clark Enterprises
just last September.
The
president of the St. Louis Sports Commission couldn't be more
pleased.
Frank
Viverito remembers a Chicago sportswriter who came to St. Louis
to cover the preparations for the Olympic Festival in 1994.
Viverito was stunned when the hack asked what it was like to
live in a city with no major league sports.
"Think
about what was going on then," Viverito reflects. "Baseball
was on strike. Hockey was about to be on strike. We had no NFL
team, no Kiel Center, no TWA Dome."
"There's
been a transformation in the last five or six years," Viverito
says, shooting right out of the blocks citing the Super Bowl
Rams. The Blues had the best regular season record in the NHL
and have made the playoffs for 20 years straight. And complementing
McGwire's bruising swat with more heavy hitters, and backing
those cruisers with better pitching bodes well for post-season
play.
"Each
team is being driven to be successful and being helped to be
successful by the current level of fan interest," Viverito says.
"It's a great run for us."
In
addition to major league sports, St. Charles County boasts four
(and counting) professional teams (hockey, baseball, basketball,
and the area's second indoor soccer team) and will host
the Black American Softball Association "world tournament" next
September.
Moreover,
in the next few years St. Louis will host the Big 12 and Missouri
Valley basketball tournaments, men's and women's NCAA regionals,
the Final Fours, and a list of tournaments and events that
would fill an issue of St. Louis Commerce.
Above:
SPORTS WORLDS COLLIDE. Bill DeWitt, Jr., principal owner
and managing general partner of the St. Louis Cardinals chats
with Georgia Frontiere, owner of the St. Louis Rams at a baseball
game.
Plus,
both the Saint Louis University Billikens and Missouri Tigers
are making NCAA playoff appearances regularly.
The
impact of athletic competition--professional, amateur, big leagues
or minor--exceeds the economic impact of tourism. In their youth,
the three team owners we talked to for this article played organized
sports.
DeWitt,
principal owner and managing general partner of the St. Louis
Cardinals LP, is also president of Reynolds, DeWitt &
Co., a Cincinnati-based investment banking firm. He holds
a variety of chairmanships in various companies, including
Charter Cable Systems Inc.
Cardinals
chairman Hanser has been an attorney for 30 years, and a partner
at Armstrong, Teasdale since 1978. (He and DeWitt were classmates
at St. Louis Country
Day '59 and Yale '63.) He specialized in estates, tax, venture
capital and banking. Now he oversees the Cardinals' daily
operations on behalf of the ownership group of which he is
a member.
According
to Hanser, he and DeWitt played Khoury League baseball together,
around the age of 8-to-12 years old. "Bill and I used to
play at Fairgrounds Park, and then we would walk over to
Sportsman's Park afterward for an afternoon game," he says.
Laurie,
chairman and owner of both the Blues and Kiel, grew up in
Versailles, Mo., 70 miles southwest of Columbia, Mo. In towns
of such size, just about everyone who is male plays sports.
Not everyone gets to play in the NCAA basketball finals.
Laurie did in 1973 as point guard for Memphis State, playing
against eventual champ UCLA. The following season, his senior
year, his teammates voted him MVP.
From
graduation until 1983, Laurie coached and taught, first
at CBC High School in Memphis (yes, they have one, too.)
and then Rockbridge High School in Columbia.
Between
the pedagogic gig and this writing, Laurie ran a horse farm
and real estate
operation out of Columbia. He says he's shedding involvement
in those erstwhile interests to concentrate on Paige Sports
Entertainment, "a management group," media kit materials
state, "for the family's sports franchise holdings."
Bill
Laurie
(Holdings?
Plural? Laurie publicly ended his run for the Vancouver
Grizzlies of the NBA after it became clear it would be
implausible to move the team to St. Louis in this millennium.
But one senses that Rams minority-stake owner Stan Kroenke's
purchase of the Denver Nuggets and Avalanche isn't the
last of major league acquisition activity that will emanate
from this family.)
It
was not a case of sudden interest. Laurie says he's stewed
on owning a major league franchise a while. "For the past
eight-to-10 years, we felt like it was something we wanted
to get into."
More
Laurie: "It's always a better situation if you can get
involved in your own community and St. Louis is one of
the premier sports cities in the U.S. I knew the Blues
and Kiel Center situations were there, but the timing
wasn't right until last year. Then it was being in the
right place at the right time."
Not
so much a whim, Laurie rather might be launching a sports-family
tradition (he and Kroenke each married one of Bud Walton's
daughters), in the likes of which Hanser and DeWitt are
already established participants. Consider the family
history of William O. DeWitt, Jr., the Cardinals' largest
shareholder.
SEE
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MOVE TO ST. LOUIS!
With
an estimated 1 billion TV viewers worldwide watching,
St. Louis Rams owner (turned economic development
"spokeswoman") Georgia Frontiere gave the RCGA
and its economic development partners the best
marketing tagline of the new millennium in an
ending of a Super Bowl that anyone could have
imagined. Her declaration, "See what happens when
you move to St. Louis!," not only applies to the
world's best football team, but also was a wonderful
message to companies around the nation and the
world whose eyes were on St. Louis.
At
a time when the St. Louis region is working hard
in a variety of ways to send a message of opportunity
and momentum to investors, existing and potentially
relocating companies, and to existing and potentially
moving talent--Georgia Frontiere's message to the
world could not have come at a better time. While
we have made the case of the multi-faceted value
of a successful sports franchise to a region's economic
development, nothing could have made the case stronger
than Georgia's well-timed comment following the
Rams' stunning 23 - 16 triumph over the Tennessee
Titans in the 34th
Annual Super Bowl.
|
His
father at age 14 started with the Cardinals in 1916
as an office boy. He rose to vice president/treasurer
by 1938, during the era of the Gashouse Gang, five pennants
and three World Series. From 1939 to 1955 he was involved
with the Browns as CEO, GM and (with his brother Charles)
owner. The Browns' only pennant came in '44.
William
O., Jr., was batboy for the Browns from '49 to '51.
It's his uniform that wee batsman Eddie Gaedel wore
in '51 for his famous pinch-hit walk. The togs are on
loan to the Hall of Fame.
William
O., Sr., sold the Browns to Bill Veeck in 1951, who
moved them to Baltimore and changed them into Orioles
in 1954. The elder DeWitt remained active in Major
League Baseball continuously until 1967, and again
from '76 to '80, owning in part or whole the Detroit
Tigers, the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago White
Sox during those stints.
Here's
icing: Hanser's great granddaddy, Adolph M. Diez,
was a part-owner of the Cardinals from 1917 to 1947.
Even
though his many other jobs are related to investment
banking, DeWitt, the
largest shareholder in the Cardinals, said, "I don't
think anyone went into the ownership group thinking
it was the most wonderful investment in the world."
Among
the other 15 shareholders are Baur, chairman &
CEO of Southwest Bank and its holding company Mississippi
Valley Bancshares Inc. (and a Codasco '62 grad);
Mercer Reynolds; Donna DeWitt Lambert; and Post-Dispatch
chairman Michael Pulitzer.
Taking
the helm at so fabled a baseball franchise as St.
Louis (The Franchise?) has its challenges.
From DeWitt's perspective, "The most difficult aspect
is balancing a requirement to operate the team on
a sound financial basis, while doing everything
that can possibly be done to try to win on the field."
"You
can't just go sign up a bunch of all-stars. You'd
probably win, but you'd go broke in the meantime,"
he says.
The
Cardinals increased their payroll to $61 million
this season from $54 million last year, only after
much thought.
"We
went through a lot of budgeting to make sure that
would work, and the fans played a big role in that
because we had the biggest advanced sales we ever
had," DeWitt says. "That gave us a comfort level
in adding to the payroll because we were confident
that we would have good attendance this season."
Hanser
sees the challenge of ownership this way: "Understanding
that baseball is a very mercurial sport. Often your
success is affected by sources beyond your control.
It's not unlike running a ski resort; you have to
have snow.
"In
baseball you need good health and a payroll," he
says. "That's why we feel it's important to have
a new stadium, to compete with other teams who are
bringing new stadiums on line."
Asked
the greatest joy of owning a major league team,
DeWitt answers, "The love of the sport and the opportunity
to be a part of it. And to help make a positive
impact on the success of the franchise."
Echoing
DeWitt, Hanser says, "It's a great deal of pride
knowing I'm involved in one of the greatest franchises
of the game. We take very seriously our stewardship
of the St. Louis Cardinals. When we
purchased the team, we stated our objective was
to honor the Cards' great history and success of
the past by extending it into the future."
If
it was the-love-of-the-sport that spurred
Hanser, DeWitt and others to buy the Cardinals,
Laurie appears to have taken sole possession of
a hockey team and home ice motivated more by love-of-all-sport.
"From
the beginning, I felt professional sports is intriguing,"
Laurie says. "That's part of growing up participating
in sports, and eventually coaching."
Thrill
of victory, agony of defeat, and all. Laurie could
have been forgiven angst in the days immediately
after the sub-.500 San Jose Sharks eliminated
the Blues from Stanley Cup play, but he gave a
candid, even-keeled, even optimistic interview
about the future of his franchise.
"It's
important that there's a lot of trust, and even
now, I still have the utmost confidence in [team
management]," he says. "As long as you have trust,
I think you can move forward and get better at
what you're doing.
"Both
our corporations have some outstanding individuals
who separate us from a lot of organizations in
a lot of ways," he continues. "I feel like we're
all part of a big family who are always working
for the same results."
Asked
the most difficult part of his job Laurie says,
"I haven't found anything that's difficult to
do, although about three days ago we had an experience
that was especially tough. But it's like Bernie
Miklasz
says: There's a lot of scar tissue on the road
to the Stanley Cup."
Naturally,
Laurie had a shot at the "greatest joy" question,
too: "The most fun in any sports business is
winning, and putting together a team that can
compete on a day-to-day basis with the rest
of the teams in their sport. It's achieving
a certain amount of success that makes your
fans proud and the people in your organization
proud."
Throughout
the interview, Laurie alluded directly to neither
top nor bottom line. But when pressed, he allowed,
"There is a direct correlation between economics
and the quality of the team that you put on
the ice. Or field."
On the topic of improved economics, Laurie also
counseled patience in regard to renaming Kiel
Center.
He also joined Hanser in shaking his fist at
the fates, "The most frustrating part of hockey
is dealing with injuries that don't allow you
to compete with 100 percent of your talent,"
he says. "That's why depth is important. [Blues'
general manager] Larry Pleau did a phenomenal
job. I can't be any more proud of him than I
am."
After losing quarterback Trent Green, only to
replace him with eventual NFL MVP Kurt Warner,
Rams head coach Mike Martz (and former coach
Dick Vermeil) would echo the virtues of depth.
Also
the Rams found out shortly after their big win
over the Tennessee Titans that it's not just
injuries that deplete a roster. Other teams
raided the Rams, signing top-flight starters
and free agents.
For
the time being, football news in St. Louis will
probably deal mostly with promoting back-ups
to starter, or giving tryouts to walk-ons.
Or
there's always the resolution of the Green-or-Warner
quandary. Trading one of them would trump baseball
news, unless the Cardinals were competing in
October.
And
with their this-is-why-hope-springs-eternal start,
post-season play shouldn't be too surprising,
either.
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm in St. Charles.
|
