A friend, a lawyer, says neither fans nor members of the news media have a right to know the identity of the owners of professional sports team. I say nonsense. A team may be a privately held company, but it relies on revenue generated by the exorbitant prices fans pay to watch their teams play. In addition, the news media give teams millions of dollars worth of free publicity, and they and the fans should know the beneficiaries of their contributions.
And don’t forget the millions of taxpayer dollars that fund the construction of most professional playgrounds.
The Philadelphia Phillies prompt me to raise the issue of ownership. I started out to write about the woeful Phillies and their remarkably rapid decline from the team that not long ago appeared in two consecutive World Series, winning one of them.
Ruben Amaro Jr., the Phillies’ general manager for seven years, paid the steepest price for the team’s descent, losing his job. In another front-office move made for different reasons, Andy MacPhail, was named team president, replacing Pat Gillick, who has retired for about the sixth time in his Hall-of-Fame career.
The new general manager, Matt Klentak epitomizes the modern general manager. An Ivy League product in his 30s – 36 to be exact – Klentak was a shortstop and captain of the Dartmouth baseball team and is steeped in analytics, the formula-generated mathematical approach to 2000’s baseball
Information about MacPhail and Klentak is readily available. Not so about the people they work for. The only mention of owners in the team’s media guide is in a small box at the bottom of a page about the club president:
“The Phillies is a limited partnership formed in 1981. None of the longtime partners owns as much as 50% of the partnership.”
The statement may be accurate, though the guide doesn’t offer evidence by listing partners and their percentages of ownership, but it’s grammatically incorrect. The phrase “the Phillies” is plural so it should say “The Phillies are a limited partnership.”
OK, but who are the limited partners? One partner, I learned, is William Buck, the lone remaining brother of a set of three Philadelphia brothers who were in the 1981 ownership group.
The Phillies, however, don’t acknowledge Buck, or any other owner, for that matter.
“We don’t disclose ownership,” said Bonnie Clark, vice president for communications. “We don’t say anything publicly about the structure of ownership.” Asked about percentages of ownership, Clark said, “We don’t discuss figures.”
A day after this conversation, Clark called me about my telephone call to Buck. I had learned his number, called and left a message asking him to call me.
“He said you reached out to him,” Clark said, “but he doesn’t want to contribute anything more than you already have.”
I didn’t have much.
Most team owners are proud to be known. Most buy teams for the exposure they create. Was it ever remotely possible that George Steinbrenner would have wanted to remain anonymous? By buying the Yankees in 1973, Steinbrenner went from being an unknown Cleveland shipbuilder to being the best known name in sports.
The Phillies’ owners, however, are as anonymous as most of their players, though they are not completely unknown in Philadelphia. For example, James Buck and Peter Buck, sons of the late Buck brothers, are known to be owners, having inherited their fathers’ shares.
The most prominent known partner is John Middleton, who emerged from obscurity 10 months ago when the Phillies announced the hiring of Andy MacPhail, the veteran baseball executive, as the team’s president. Middleton became a billionaire from the pharmaceutical industry.
“I think when you make a decision of this magnitude, the ownership group has to come forward and make sure people understand they are the ones that made the decision,” Middleton told a news conference. “This is not a decision we delegated, much less abdicated. We own this decision. That’s an important part of the accountability we think we have to the fan base to understand that we own this and we intend to win.”
The Philadelphia news media have said that Middleton owns 48 percent of the team, and some reports have said he is trying to acquire more so he can be the majority owner. Clark confirmed that Middleton is an owner but said the reports of his desire to become the majority owner “are just rumors.”
Despite Clark’s confirmation of Middleton as an owner, his name does not appear as such in the media guide, which lists presidents and general managers in the team’s history but not owners.
Calling on my home baseball library, I checked the Phillies’ 1982 guide and found the Buck brothers of Tri-Player Associates – Alexander (known as Whip), James Mahlon Jr. and William – as one of six group or individual limited partners who bought the team from the long-time-owning Carpenter family.
One of the six was Bill Giles, a long-time Phillies’ executive, who put the group together and became the managing general partner. Giles, now the team’s chairman emeritus, is best remembered in baseball, unfavorably or favorably, depending on one’s point of view, for keeping notes and not destroying them that became the most damaging evidence in the union’s 1985 collusion case against the owners.
So much for the owners. Come back next time to see what has happened with the players.
DINO WROTE HIS OWN STORY BEFORE STORY
By now, Trevor Story has probably heard about Dino Restelli. If he hasn’t, he probably doesn’t want to.
You probably have heard about Story, the Colorado Rockies’ rookie shortstop, who hit six home runs in his first four games and seven in his first six. He also drove in 12 runs and batted .333 in his first six games.
In his next 12 games (through Sunday) the 23-year-old Texan
hit no home runs and batted .209 with 22 strikeouts.
That brings me to Restelli, whom most people have no reason to remember because he wasn’t around long, playing in parts of only two seasons in the majors. The seasons were 1949 and ’51.
Restelli, however, remains vividly in my mind because he came along as I was coming of baseball-fan age and played (right and center fields) in a lineup with Ralph Kiner, Wally Westlake, Danny Murtaugh, Stan Rojek, Johnny Hopp and Pete Castiglione.
A 24-year-old outfielder that first year, Restelli joined the Pittsburgh Pirates in June via a trade with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League and immediately set the baseball world ablaze. He slugged 7 home runs in his first 12 games, driving in 14 runs and hitting .333.
Restelli did not come by his home runs cheaply. He smacked his first two against Warren Spahn and another pair against Robin Roberts. Those two pitchers overcame Restelli’s assaults and later went into the Hall of Fame, and Pittsburgh fans were preparing a similar future for Restelli.
Other National League pitchers, however, quickly quenched Restelli’s fire. In 60 games the rest of the season, Restelli hit 5 homers, drove in 26 runs and batted .228.
Restelli spent the next season in the minors and played in 21 games for the Pirates in 1951, hitting one home run and batting .184. With three weeks left in the season, the Pirates sold Restelli to the Washington Senators, who didn’t use him but traded him the following December to Cleveland. The Indians didn’t use him either and traded him to Sacramento of the PCL July 15, 1952, his brief major league career finished.
SHUT UP, SCHILLING; DOES ANYONE CARE WHAT YOU THINK?
It’s called social media, but the way Curt Schilling uses it, call it anti-social media. In response to the nasty messages the former pitcher has sent on social media ESPN, his post-baseball employer, first demoted Schilling, then fired him.
Schilling epitomizes the problem with social media. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter have sadly opened the way for people to say anything they want, be as rude and inflammatory as they want. The verbal thugs of society feel free to be as nasty as they choose. Politeness? It no longer exists.
In the early days of this eight-year-old website, I was the target of the stuff I’m talking about. Some readers – and I’m using that term loosely – pulled out their vilest language to tell me what they thought of me. Fortunately, those curs stopped coming to the site and went elsewhere to satisfy their needs.
But the Schillings of the cyber world go on, spouting the dumbest things that enter their misguided heads. I have not voted for Schilling for the Hall of Fame and don’t intend to because I don’t believe he was a Hall of Fame pitcher.
But those writers who think he belongs may want to think again and consider what the verbal wild man may be capable of saying in an induction speech in Cooperstown. No one would be safe.