Slim and None

by Howard Baldwin

  Phil loved a challenge, and when I finished telling him about our plan, he said, “I’ll tell you what, son, you get the franchise, come back to me, and I’ll get you a place to play, but for doing that my firm will represent you.”

  We got to the Fontainebleau, charging it to Coby’s American Express card, which was pretty close to maxed out. Murphy and Davidson were playing the same game they did in New York: keeping the franchise applicants apart from each other, waiting in their rooms for their appearance before the league brass. They were trying to create a charged and competitive atmosphere around the meetings, leading everyone to think that there were six other applicants at the hotel who were bidding for the two vacant franchises. The hotel just happened to be next door to Miami’s Playboy Club, though, and at least we were able to watch the nude sunbathing on the roof while waiting in our room.

  As Coby and I began to meet some of the other franchisees, the Playboy Club seemed like a perfect neighbor for a WHA meeting. We come from conservative “blue blood” backgrounds, so we were really taken aback when, as we were having a drink with Paul Deneau, who owned the Dayton franchise, he leaned over to the next table and stage-whispered something very, very inappropriate in the ear of an attractive young lady. Our first thought was, “Okay, how do we get into this league . . . but never let our families meet any of these characters?”

  Almost all of the people we were exposed to in the WHA were interesting characters, but to a man were actually great guys, no matter what their background. They were all there in the spirit of adventure, creating something new and exciting for their respective cities. Some were visionaries, some were just mavericks, but the common denominators were to have some fun, to make some money and to establish the WHA as a successful business.

  When we were summoned into our meeting, we embellished a few things. “We’re just about there. We’re this close to finishing it off. You just have to take a chance with us.”

  I admit we also made the connection with Fine and the Boston Garden seem a little more concrete than it actually was. They told us to go back to our rooms again, and wait. In an hour, they called us down and said, “Okay, boys, you got the franchise. You’ve got two months to get a place to play . . . but you’re in.”

  Then they paused and delivered the big “but”: “By the way, the franchise fee is now 250 grand, not 25 grand.”

  They said the price had soared because the new league was attracting a lot of attention from potential buyers. That one really threw us for a loop, and we asked for a five-minute break to talk it through. They agreed and added, “You don’t have to come up with the $250,000 now — take a few months to get it. Just have it at our next meeting in February in Quebec.”

  At this point, there was little that could faze Coby and me. We just looked at each other out in the hallway and said, “Well, we’re too far down the road to pull back now. Let’s agree to it.” We didn’t even have the $25,000 on our own, let alone 10 times that much, and we didn’t have a rink, and we didn’t have an owner. “So let’s just say okay and get this show on the road.”

  I should point out that, by now, there was a considerable amount of media attention for our efforts and, of course, a huge amount of skepticism. We were already out on the ledge, so might as well keep on walking.

  We went back in, told them that we’d pay the $25,000 now and the other $225,000 at the first WHA player draft in mid-February and said, “Guys, we’re in.”

  “Great,” they said. “Congratulations. You are now members of the World Hockey Association.”

  At the meeting Ottawa was also granted a franchise, bringing the new league up to 12 teams.

  We went down there with nothing and were coming back with a hockey franchise. We had return tickets in coach, but when we arrived at the Miami airport Coby said, “No more coach for us, we’re OWNERS now,” and took what was left on his American Express card and upgraded us to first class. We may not have had first-class funds, but at that moment we felt rich.

  I remember that Coby had one of those silly laugh machines with him for some reason. We had way too much to drink on the flight and he kept playing the laughs. Rather than get annoyed, the other passengers got into the spirit of it all and we had a great time celebrating all the way home.

  The next morning I was still riding a little high and feeling pretty good about myself and I went to the Sippican Shop, the little diner where I always had my coffee, and extended cordial greetings to such luminaries as Chet the plumber, Ernie the builder and Jay the TV guy.

  Sitting next to me was a guy who had his Boston Herald open to the front page of the sports section. The famous hockey columnist D. Leo Monahan was covering the WHA and said that these two New England kids had two chances of making it with this league. And those chances became the headline over his column.

  “Slim and None.”

  The fellow who was reading the paper looked over at me and said, “Are you sure you know what the hell you’re getting into?”

  Actually, I didn’t. It was at that moment that reality set in and I realized the fun was over and it was Game On.

  Game On

  When I think back on it, it was overwhelming. Coby, Woody and I had to raise money, find a place to play, get a hockey team put together, and then get a marketing and business group together. And you couldn’t get numbers two, three or four without getting number one. You had to have the capital. That would make the difference between “none” and at least “slim.”

  Woody was working in New York for the investment firm Shearson Hayden Stone, run by Sandy Weill, someone who would become a well-known financier and the eventual CEO of Citibank. Hence, Woody was the perfect guy to raise the money.

  As well, we brought in Bill Barnes, who became the point man in marketing. Bill ended up being one of my closest and dearest friends. He was vitally important throughout Whalers history as a stabilizing influence on the franchise, and as a marketing expert. Being about 10 years older, Bill also gave us some much-needed maturity. As part of the seed group, Bill was also an equity holder. Peter Leonard had put up the 10 grand for league dues, so he got 1 per cent. George Perkins got 1 per cent for doing all the legal work. Guppy Ford got that 1 per cent for giving us those antiques for the office. Woody would get a couple of points if he found the money, and Sandy Weill would get a point too. That was the group that owned 100 per cent of the New England hockey team, which didn’t have a place to play, or even a name.

  One day Sandy Weill said to Woody, “Why don’t you call up this guy Bob Schmertz? He’s been looking to put a Canadian Football League franchise in Yankee Stadium, and he might be interested in hockey.” Schmertz, a real estate developer from New Jersey, was also part-owner of the NBA Portland Trail Blazers. So Woody cold-called him and told him about New England, and Bob said he’d be interested and would fly into New Bedford, the closest airport to Marion, Massachusetts, where we were.

  It was a cold Saturday morning in December, 1971 when Coby and I drove out to the airport in Coby’s jeep to wait for Schmertz’s private plane. It didn’t show up and we were getting nervous, thinking, “Oh my God, we’ve been stood up.” Then there was a call for me at the airport desk — there were no cell phones in those days — saying they had the two airports mixed up and had landed at Bedford.

  Bob arrived with his lawyer, Jack Giordano, who was a tough guy. We could tell the minute he opened his mouth that he was the bad cop. We got in the jeep, we pulled away from the airport and the first thing that happened was my door flew wide open. Giordano didn’t bat an eye, and said to Coby, “Just keep going. We don’t know him, and we haven’t made a deal yet.”

  We got to George Perkins’ law office, there was a little bit of small talk, and Bob said, “What are you fellows looking for?”

  We said we needed a million and a half dollars and we wanted to go 50-50 with him, with his money always coming out first,
as it was the risk money. Bob didn’t bat an eyelash.

  He said, “This is what I’ll do. I’ll give you a million-dollar line of credit and $300,000 in working capital. I want 60 per cent, you guys have the other 40, and I really don’t care how you divide that up amongst yourselves.”

  So just like that we had our capital. Coby, Woody and I were stunned that it was that quick and that easy. The whole thing took maybe half an hour and suddenly, after months of bluffing about money, we were the best-financed team in the entire league.

  Things started falling in place quickly from there. The way it broke down was that Bob owned 60 per cent, Coby and I each owned 12 per cent — mostly sweat equity, but we did put a little money into it — and the other 16 per cent was chopped up among all the aforementioned others.

  Before he left, Bob asked how much Coby and I were paying ourselves and when we said $18,000 each, he said it wasn’t enough and to raise it to $20,000. The other thing he said was, “By the way, I am going to come to the next league meeting with you and we are going to make it clear to Murphy and Davidson that we are only putting up 25 grand, not 250 grand.” Sounded fair enough to us. We shook hands, took him back to the airport and then had a nice night out.

  Schmertzie, from day one, was a fabulous partner. He would soon acquire the Boston Celtics with the help of Phil David Fine, and it gave us huge credibility to have our primary owner also owning the Celtics. I had no great interest in basketball, but Red Auerbach, the Celtics president and general manager, was an iconic NBA figure, so it was a big thrill for me to become friends with him and some of the other old Celtics, such as Tommy Heinsohn. During the first year of the WHA, Bob married Phyllis Kane, a terrific lady who to this day is a very dear friend of ours. Sadly, Bob died prematurely in 1975, at the age of 48, just three years after we first met him. When I left Hartford in 1988, they wanted me to be in the first class of the Whalers Hall of Fame, but I said that I wouldn’t go in until two other gentlemen were inducted first: Bob Schmertz and Jack Kelley. WHA trophies were eventually named after six of the founding members, of which I was one, but I insisted that they take my name off of it and put Bob Schmertz’s on. I did this for two reasons: one, he deserved it, and two, I was too damn young to have a trophy named after me.

  I’ve often been asked why I thought Bob bit on our proposal. The best answer I can give you is that I think he believed in the notion of a rival league because he had seen the AFL vs. the NFL, and he saw the ABA vs. the NBA while he was one of the owners in Portland. I also think he saw something in us that made him believe we might just make this work.

  So I think that Bob believed, “Hey if I make money, great. If I don’t make money, it’s just a loss. Let’s roll the dice and see what happens.”

  Fortunately, I’m proud to say, we came through for him big time.

  I don’t want to get on a pulpit here, but I think the sad thing in business today, at least the businesses I’m in, is that there is not enough eyeball-to-eyeball contact. If we had tried to do the Whaler financing with e-mails — “my lawyer will meet yours,” that kind of thing — it never would have happened. Sitting down face-to-face with Bob enabled us to work it out. We looked each other in the eye and established a rapport. There is not enough of that any more — in any business.

  Now we had our working capital, and heading into the first week of January all we had to do was hire a full front office, find an arena to play in, name the team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  We only interviewed two people for the combined position of GM and coach that first year. One was Jack Kelley, who had turned the hockey program at Boston University completely around. The other was Harry Sinden, who had coached the Bruins to the 1970 Stanley Cup and would soon be the coach of Team Canada in the famous Summit Series with the Soviet Union. Harry had had a falling-out with the Bruins that dated back to the ’70 championship season, when they refused to give him a raise, and now he was working at Stirling Homex, a construction firm in Rochester, New York.

  Coburn and I used to play ping-pong for hours, and one night, in the middle of one of the marathon matches, when we were slightly hammered, the phone rang. It was Harry Sinden. He said, “Understand you’ve been trying to reach me.” I told him we’d like to talk to him about the new WHA team, and we agreed to meet him at the Westbury Hotel in Toronto, which was Toronto’s “hockey hotel,” right behind Maple Leaf Gardens. It was also owned by an uncle of mine. Harry was really terrific and after our meeting said, “Look, I’m really interested.” But within 48 hours he called and said, “No, I can’t do it. I think I’ve got a chance back in Boston.” I think he leveraged us to get back to the Bruins, and he stayed there forever.

  Would we have hired Harry if he’d said yes? I honestly don’t know. But I will tell you that after we met with Jack Kelley, I remember saying to Coby that if push came to shove, if we had to make a decision, we’d be leaning toward Jack.

  Jack had just won the 1971 and ’72 NCAA championships with Boston University. Nobody in hockey was hiring out of the college ranks, but we felt that for Boston we had to make a splash and get ourselves on the front pages of the sports section. We just thought that with our backgrounds — and I’ve kind of done this all my life — we should go against the grain. Jack had local branding and our instincts were that the game was changing and that it was going to be opened up to college players. So we said, “Let’s make a courageous choice.”

  Jack had both titles, GM and coach, and did a great job for us. What I loved about Jack was that to two young guys starting something new, he could appear to be very fierce. He was like a drill-instructor personality. We were a little intimidated — make that more than a little — but we also knew he’d take charge and would put a competitive team on the ice. He was very clear-cut about what he wanted in personnel. He wanted Ron Ryan, who had played for him at Colby (where Jack was the first-ever small-college coach to be named NCAA hockey coach of the year), as his assistant GM, and he wanted Bob Crocker, the BU freshman coach, as his assistant as well, and Jack Ferreira as his chief scout. Jack was intensely loyal and I really appreciated that. But there were, over time, certain people who weren’t as loyal to him as he was to them.

  We signed a three-year contract with Jack, averaging about 30 grand a year, with bonuses for winning. And that’s where Bob Schmertz went way above and beyond the call of duty. One of the things Coby and I had misjudged was the impression that people had about the highly speculative nature of the league, and Jack wanted his contract guaranteed. He was leaving the security of college and had a young family — wife, Ginny and children, Paul, Nancy, David and Mark — to provide for and couldn’t be gambling with his career. Bob guaranteed Jack’s contract and almost every single player’s contract for that first year. That went a long way toward securing the success of the Whalers franchise.

  Jack was coming to work for us at the end of the school year, and shortly after hiring him we attended a testimonial dinner at BU for all the great work Jack had done at the university. It was there that I first met Ginny Kelley, who had a great spirit. I’ll never forget her leaning over to me halfway through the dinner and saying, “Howard Baldwin, you better know what you’re doing. My husband is leaving a pretty stable gig here.” I thought, “Oh great, more pressure on me.”

  Thank God I was used to the pressure coming at me from everywhere.

  Finding a Rink, the Hard Way

  We had our hockey office and now it was time to be nervous about the rest of the league until we actually dropped the puck. We had a lot of meetings, and a lot of things were changing rapidly in the new league. But the league knew there wasn’t a shred of doubt about our ability to perform now that we had Bob Schmertz. Every team was supposed to put up a $100,000 performance guarantee, and we were one of only two or three to do it. We had gone from having people wonder whether we could pull this off to being one of the top teams in the league in terms of f
inancial stability.

  We were going to have to play our first season in two different arenas. One was the old Boston Arena. That was a done deal. We also wanted to play some dates in the Boston Garden. Philip David Fine felt he could deliver that despite the fact that three teams — the Bruins, Celtics and Braves — were already in there, playing the same six months of the year that we were. We had to take the worst dates, which we opted to do for the credibility of being in the city’s major arena.

  One of the great benefits of associating with Phil David Fine’s law firm, Fine and Ambrogne, was the introduction to a young associate named Bob Caporale. “Cap” had joined the firm recently and had a great passion for sports. Cap and I formed a business association and friendship through this experience. He was at my side every step of the way and is still a friend and integral part of my life.

  We could have gone to the Arena for all our games, but that would not have sat well with the league. The Arena was a famous local landmark, but it was decrepit. It was located near Northeastern University and was used for college hockey and fights. It had seating for only about 5,500 and the ice surface was oval, shaped like a football. If you shot the puck along the boards hard enough, it probably would have gone round and round all day, just like pinball. When I called my father and said, “Dad we’ve got a place to play,” and told him it was the Arena, he said, “You’re kidding aren’t you? Let me tell you, I played there in 1933 for Harvard and it was a dump then. You can’t play there.”