Feeding the Monster

by Seth Mnookin

  For the next four years, Werner was arguably the most reviled owner in Major League Baseball; The Dallas Morning News even referred to him as the single most-hated man in Southern California. After buying the team from McDonald’s heir Joan Kroc in 1990, Werner discovered the extent to which small-market teams were hamstrung by their revenue base. Instead of losing millions of dollars each year to field a middling team that still wouldn’t be able to compete with the big-market clubs like the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees, Werner and his partners began to shed payroll, either trading or losing to free agency stars such as Gary Sheffield, Fred McGriff, Bruce Hurst, and Benito Santiago.* At one point, fan disgust had reached such high levels that San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium was dotted with anti-Werner banners, which the team briefly tried to ban. (The threat of an ACLU lawsuit ended that plan.)

  The physically unassuming Werner, with his somewhat nasal inflections and self-effacing manner, doesn’t fit the mold of a preening television executive, or, for that matter, a swashbuckling sports team owner. He’s unfailingly polite and hates confrontation. (While in San Diego, Werner used to beep his horn at a heckler holding a “Honk If You Hate Tom Werner” sign at the entrance to the Padres’ stadium in order to avoid detection.) His natural instinct to be accommodating and to hear everyone out only added to his misery. Even though Werner, as the largest investor, was the team’s controlling partner, he tried to operate as democratically as possible when making decisions with his 14 minority partners, many of whom were San Diego businessmen. “I tried to conduct it as an open board of directors,” Werner says. “It didn’t work. Some of them didn’t really understand the game and they put me in a situation where there was no way to win.” At one point, things got so bad that one partner suggested that the team fly to another city the morning of a night game instead of the evening before in order to save a day’s hotel charges. While Werner’s partners privately groused about the team’s losses and refused to sink more money into the franchise, some simultaneously (and anonymously) bad-mouthed Werner to the local media. “I thought the San Diego investors would be real assets to me,” Werner says. “I felt that, you know, they were my partners and they would stand up for me. But instead they ducked and ran when things got bumpy.”

  To this day, Werner gets emotional when talking about his time in San Diego. “It was exhausting. It was not fun. Look, I’m extremely competitive. There isn’t an owner who doesn’t go into this without the goal of winning a World Series for their city…. I came to the conclusion that without revenue sharing, the widening disparity between small- and large-market teams was such that it was going to be impossible to be that competitive without losing huge amounts of money.” At the time, baseball was in a state of turmoil. In 1992, after three years of intermittent feuding with the league’s owners, commissioner Fay Vincent resigned following a vote of no confidence; Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig took the job on an interim basis. A year later, in August 1993, baseball’s owners gathered for a conference in Kohler, Wisconsin, to have, for the first time ever, serious discussions about revenue sharing among the clubs.

  It was, participants agree, one of the most contentious ownership meetings ever to occur in baseball. To this day, Selig says those sessions in Kohler were the most difficult of his baseball career. “I’ve never seen anger like that,” Selig said later. “It wasn’t just bad. It was vile.” The teams were so divided that the owners refused to meet as one group; instead, the small-market teams like the Padres and Selig’s Brewers got together, the medium-market teams like the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers met separately, and the large-market teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees talked among themselves. Werner and his cohorts were arguing that, in order for the game to remain healthy, there had to be more aggressive revenue sharing; the money that teams based in major media markets could make from television and radio contracts alone meant that those clubs would always be able to afford exponentially higher payrolls than the teams playing in smaller, less affluent markets. It was in the best interests of all of baseball, the small-revenue teams argued, to have as many teams as possible be competitive instead of having the game divided into one group of teams that regularly made the playoffs and one group that rarely, if ever, had a chance. The large-market owners countered by essentially accusing the less financially lucrative clubs of looking for handouts.

  After one grueling all-night session, the Kohler meetings broke up without any agreements, and the next year, major league players went on strike because they couldn’t come to terms with the owners over salary caps, salary arbitration, free agency rules, or minimum salaries. In 1994, unable to see any end to the Padres’ problems, Werner decided to sell the team. “It was just too difficult,” he says. “Bill Cosby once said to me, ‘[When you own a baseball team,] people think of your money as their money.’ And pretty soon, if you act like that, you won’t have any money left. I’ve been very philanthropic in my life, and I got to a point where one day I said, ‘Well, jeez, I could be, you know, losing five million dollars a year doing this or I could be giving five million dollars away to worthy causes.’ And there’s no question that I’d rather do the latter.” Four years after he bought the team for around $75 million, he sold it for around $85 million to software mogul John Moores and former Baltimore Orioles chief executive Larry Lucchino. Werner stayed on as an investor, but, he says, “I really never thought that I’d be back in the game again.”

  The Red Sox, however, were just tempting enough to cause Werner to reconsider. In addition to the baseball club, the Red Sox sale included Fenway Park, which the team owned, and the team’s 80 percent stake in NESN, the regional sports network that broadcasts Red Sox and Boston Bruins hockey games. Over the previous decade, regional sports networks—or RSNs—had become increasingly profitable, and NESN was the crown jewel of the bunch.* In fact, to many of the parties interested in bidding for the Red Sox, NESN was the main draw. While the Red Sox themselves might turn a profit or a loss of a couple of million dollars in any given year, NESN, whose profits were not supposed to be subject to baseball’s revenue-sharing agreements, was seen as a likely cash cow. The Red Sox had a monopoly on baseball fans in most of New England, and NESN was usually the only way those fans could watch their team play. The potential for advertising revenue was enormous.

  When Otten said he was going to make a bid for the team, “it seemed like a stretch,” says Werner. “But it seemed like at least it was something that I wanted to examine. Obviously, the difference between the Red Sox and the San Diego Padres is considerable. And the Red Sox, as I started to dwell on it, had some real interest for me. I had a lot of respect for John Harrington, but I was also aware that, even on the baseball side, the management of this asset was not particularly aggressive.” While Werner had to scrap and fight for every ticket sale in San Diego, the Red Sox had such a dedicated fan base that they were infamous for taking their patrons more or less for granted. “It seemed like there were a lot of possibilities for adding value to the Red Sox, including my feeling that Fenway Park could become an even bigger asset than it was. And since I actually had real expertise in the communications business I could help increase value on both sides of the equation.”

  Soon, Otten and Werner had formed a partnership. They must have seemed like an unlikely pair: Otten, the brash, back-slapping, attention-loving salesman, and Werner, the family-centered, affable television producer who often ends calls to his longtime business partner by saying, “I love you.” By this time, it was clear the sale would not be completed before the 2001 season, which at first looked promising for the Red Sox. Pedro Martinez was coming off consecutive Cy Young Awards—in the past two seasons he’d gone a combined 41-10 and had a cumulative earned run average of less than 2.00. (In both of those years, the league’s next-best ERA was between 3.40 and 3.70.) Nomar Garciaparra had won two straight batting titles, and in the offseason, the Sox added free agent Manny Ramirez, the prodigious
Cleveland Indians slugger, to the lineup.

  For most of the first half of 2001, as the Red Sox flirted with first place, Werner’s and Otten’s interest in the team seemed to be a non-factor. Joe O’Donnell and Steve Karp had, indeed, joined forces (David Mugar never did enter the bidding), and the two, with the help of some cheerleading from some Globe’s columnists and the Herald’s sports and business pages, were seen as clear front-runners. Frank McCourt, a Boston developer who owned a piece of waterfront property on which he wanted to build a new ballpark for the team, was another much-discussed candidate, as were Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, Cablevision’s Dolan, Miles Prentice (the New York lawyer who had previously failed in his bid to buy the Kansas City Royals), and the Aramark Corp., the Philadelphia-based company that already held Fenway’s concessions contract.

  Werner and Otten, meanwhile, didn’t even know where their money would come from. “You would have had to have handicapped us as a long shot,” Werner says. “The O’Donnell group was fairly confident they’d be successful.” While Otten worked on hiring an engineering firm to prepare a feasibility study regarding the renovation of the existing Fenway Park, Werner worked on remaining realistic about the improbability of their bid.

  At least, that is, until that summer. In July, Werner was vacationing in Long Island when he turned on ESPN radio and heard the voice of Larry Lucchino. “There were six harmonious years,” Lucchino was saying. “Last year was pretty rocky, but that doesn’t alter the reality.” When he heard those words, Werner realized that Lucchino was stepping down as the president and CEO of the San Diego Padres.

  “I’d known Larry since 1990, when I got involved in baseball [and Lucchino was the president and chief executive officer of the Baltimore Orioles],” Werner says. “I thought he was one of the most exceptional people in the game.” During the Kohler meetings, Lucchino had been coordinating the big-market teams’ strategy (at the time, the Orioles were one of baseball’s more financially successful franchises). “I grew to respect him as an adversary, and then, after he took over the Padres, I came to know and admire him as an ally. He is not only one of the brightest men I’ve ever met, but man, when the game’s on the line, he’s the guy you want in the trenches.” Werner tracked down Lucchino’s phone number and put in a call. “I’m on a quest to acquire the Boston Red Sox,” he said. “You interested?”

  “I don’t think he was that surprised to hear from me,” Werner says. “And of course, when you mention the Red Sox to anyone, well, this is not just a baseball club, this is a jewel.” Lucchino wasn’t available right away—he was staying on as a consultant with the Padres until after the 2001 season ended in the fall. But, Lucchino said that day, he was most definitely interested. “The Red Sox are magic words to the ears of any baseball executive,” Lucchino says. “It’s Mecca. It’s the top of the mountain. If someone brings up the possibility of owning the Boston Red Sox…” Lucchino trails off. “What do you say? I said, ‘Of course. Let’s do it.’ ”

  *With these trades, Werner’s Padres acquired some of the key players that led the team to its 1996 division title and 1998 World Series appearance. Gary Sheffield, for instance, was traded for an unknown pitcher named Trevor Hoffman, who went on to become one of the most dominant closers in history.

  *Most RSNs are independently owned and pay teams a negotiated fee for the right to broadcast its games. The success of team-owned RSNs like NESN has led other teams to adopt that model. In 2002, the Yankees established the Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network; previously, Yankees games had been carried by the MSG Network. In 2006, the New York Mets began broadcasting games on their new regional network. It was partially in anticipation of this that the Mets went on an expensive free-agent acquisition spree the last several seasons, as they tried to build a fan base for their cable network.

  Chapter 8

  The Baseball Visionary

  TOGETHER, LES OTTEN AND TOM WERNER were right to think of themselves as long shots. But Larry Lucchino was commonly regarded as a genius when it came to running baseball teams. He had it all: a well-established record of both on-field success and increased team revenue (in two cities, no less), well-placed connections around the league, and the legacy of Baltimore’s Camden Yards, the hugely successful retro baseball park that Lucchino had helped conceive and shepherd into existence. Known as a demanding boss and a combative foe, he inspired loyalty from his allies and enmity from those he tangled with.

  Lucchino was raised modestly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and, from early in his life, he loved to do two things: compete and win. Tall, handsome, athletic, outgoing, and driven, he was the kind of golden boy who seemed capable of doing everything well. He was president of the 1963 senior class at Allderdice High School and the starting second baseman on the varsity team that won the city championship. At Princeton, Lucchino was a backup point guard on a varsity basketball team that played in the NCAA Final Four and posted a record of 23-6. After a stint teaching English in Beirut, Lucchino set off for Yale Law School, and, by the late 1970s, he had joined the Washington, D.C., law firm Williams & Connolly, where he found a mentor in Edward Bennett Williams, a legendary Washington figure and one of the firm’s founders.

  Lucchino has always exhibited an uncanny ability to connect with the famous or soon-to-be famous. At Princeton, he roomed with future New York Knicks star and U.S. senator Bill Bradley. After law school, he worked with the future Hillary Clinton on the Watergate impeachment committee. At one point, he even dated Maria Shriver. (Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t come along until later.) But it was Williams, the brash D.C. powerhouse whose clients ranged from Jimmy Hoffa to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who would have the biggest impact on Lucchino’s life and career.

  Williams was an intensely driven man whose own children showed no interest in the law. Perhaps because of this, he had a habit of adopting young lawyers in his firm, men like Vince Fuller, Peter Taft, and Greg Craig, as surrogate sons. But it was Larry Lucchino with whom he formed the closest bond of all. Even Williams’s children remarked that Lucchino became like a member of their family. Williams’s young acolytes, and particularly Lucchino, would travel with Williams, play sports with him, drink with him, even go to morning Mass with him. In 1985, when Lucchino was being treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Williams, who had been treated for lung cancer the year before, tried to buck up his protégé’s sagging spirits. As Evan Thomas recounts in The Man to See, his biography of Williams, one afternoon Williams found Lucchino worn down and depressed from his chemotherapy treatments. “Let’s go have some real chemotherapy,” Williams said, dragging Lucchino out to drink gin for the remainder of the afternoon.

  When Lucchino joined Williams & Connolly, Williams was the owner and the president of the Washington Redskins. In short order, he named Lucchino one of the team’s vice presidents and its general counsel. In 1979, when Williams bought the Baltimore Orioles, he named Lucchino a vice president and the general counsel of that team as well. And just like that, a career that Lucchino thought would be spent working on a mixture of criminal cases and First Amendment law was forever altered.

  It was during these years, while working daily with Williams, that Lucchino honed his hyperaggressive style. Williams championed a militaristic approach to life he termed “contest living,” which meant relishing the daily battles that came one’s way. The already competitive Lucchino responded viscerally to Williams’s philosophy, and embraced it wholeheartedly, even as some associates began to complain of Lucchino’s viciousness and attack-dog mentality. Over the next decade, as Lucchino and Williams grew even closer, Lucchino took an increasingly active role in the Orioles, and in the middle of the 1988 season, when Williams was struggling with a recurrence of cancer, he named Lucchino the Orioles president. When Williams died that August, Lucchino also became the team’s chief executive officer.

  At the time, the Orioles were suffering through one of their worst seasons ever. Five years off the team’s 1983 World
Series victory, the Orioles began the 1988 campaign by losing their first 21 games, as the team sagged under the weight of its over-the-hill, overpriced veterans. In the offseason, in addition to completely remaking the team, Lucchino helped orchestrate its sale to New York investor Eli Jacobs. After initially assuming that the end of Williams’s ownership would conclude his involvement as well, Lucchino ended up buying 9 percent of the team and staying on as the team’s president and CEO.

  By the time the 1989 season began, Lucchino and the Orioles baseball operations crew had decided to surround franchise icon Cal Ripken Jr. with a crop of mainly unknown and unheralded rookies. That year, much to the surprise of the baseball intelligentsia, the team missed the playoffs by only two games, and the Orioles stayed in the playoff hunt until late in the 1992 and 1993 seasons.

  Lucchino’s most defining accomplishment in Baltimore was envisioning and then helping to ensure the building and success of Camden Yards, which opened in 1992. In the 14 years since it opened, Camden has been attributed with near mystical powers. It has been credited for everything from the revitalization of Baltimore’s once-dangerous downtown to the resurrection of baseball itself. Camden, Lucchino has said, started out with a “simple idea”: The Orioles should build a traditional, old-fashioned ballpark with modern amenities. “That was a thought of mine that came out of my childhood, in Pittsburgh,” Lucchino said. “I saw a charming ballpark in Forbes Field replaced by Three Rivers Stadium. Much of the charm of baseball was lost by virtue of the utterly charmless stadium that was Three Rivers.”