From: chuq@Apple.COM (Eeyore's Evil Twin)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: jints to stay
Keywords: Giants
Date: 12 Nov 92 20:47:31 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pooh Corner Country Club -- A Planned Community

bradley@novell.com (Brad Soe) writes:

>>From what I've heard and read, Lurie himself voted against the sale.

Lurie didn't get a vote. He was pretty visibly lobbying FOR it, in fact,
including flying around the country to discuss the deal with owners in
person. His contract with Tampa required him to do so, and from all reports,
he did.

>>Maybe he decided that it was worth $15 million to *not* be the 
>>most hated person in the San Francisco Bay Area for years to come.

Lurie was under contract to lobby for the Tampa bid. Once he accepted it, he
did the ethical thing and did what he could to abide by his agreement with
them. I realize the local folks would have been happier if he'd broken that
agreement, of course, but what have the local folks done for him lately?
Besides, I think he's a rare person in MLB ownership today: an ethical
person.

>The general rumor from KNBR (Giants Radio Station) was that at the time
>that Lurie made the offer with Tampa, there were no other SF offers.

It was about seven weeks from the day Lurie announced that he was shopping the
team to all interests to the day he announced the Tampa offer. He'd said
from the beginning that all offers would be looked at equally and that he
wouldn't put the team up for bid between competing offers, but would accept
the first reasonable offer.

And when the Tampa offer was announced, Major Jordan was shocked and
surprised that Lurie was entertaining non-local offers. Evidently he didn't
read the papers.

>He
>wanted to deal locally and made the Tampa offer to stir up interest. 

He tried to make deals locally. One person stepped forward (sort of), looked
at the books and decided it wasn't a good business deal. The rest of the Bay
Area did nothing for seven weeks until the Tampa deal was announced, and
then got shocked and outraged that after ten years of trying to get a new
stadium, rotten attendance and local ennui as far as finding a local buyer,
Lurie would actually go out and do exactly what he'd been saying he was
going to do ever since the fourth ballot proposal failed.

Even THEN, it took an amazing amount of arm twisting by Leigh Steinberg,
plus significant efforts by MacGowan and Shorenstein, to put together a
local group to buy the team. The lack of enthusiasm in the local owner's
group is astounding, with the exception of MacGowan, who's decided (it
seems) that it's going to be neat owning a baseball team. Even HE took a
while to come to that conclusion. And the only reason we got this far is
because Bill White bent over backwards to nudge, poke and prod the local
folks into an acceptable local offer.

>It was the only move that Lurie could
>do and bring the issue to the attention of the Bay Area.

Actually, it was the only thing he could do to prove he wasn't bluffing,
which was evidently what the Bay Area needed to be shown. But I don't think
that was his ulterior motive. I think he was simply convinced that nobody
local was going to buy the team, and so he went off looking for someone to
take it off his hands. Nobody was exactly beating down his door locally.

And if it hadn't been for the efforts of a couple of people (Steinberg and
MacGowan, mostly Steinberg) locally who knew what it'd mean to the area to
lose the team and were willing to fight all the odds, local ennui,
uncooperative investors and the incompetence of Jordan and the city of San
Francisco, he would have been right.

Lurie might still be right, and baseball wrong on this. Shorenstein has
already said that they're not going to do anything about a stadium until
1994 or 1995. My interpretation of that is (1) they're going to wait for a
better economy, (2) they're going to do a lot of preliminary groundwork,
take their time and get the entire package set up properly, and (3) they're
going to do the stadium right and do it once. No more of these semi-thought
out paniccy votes. It ALSO implies that if that stadium proposal in 94 or 95
doesn't fly, the Giants will be history THEN instead of now. We aren't
remotely out of the woods yet.

>Also, I believe that the Tampa group did know that the owners could vote 
>the move down.

They had to. It's standard procedure with the league. There are also strong
precedents for doing what they did, including the A's and the (not quite,
but almost) Toronto Giants. Lurie knows just what the power of the league's
interest in not moving a franchise can do to relocation plans.

>I don't know about all the lawsuits that are pending, but I don't think 
>they are a good idea.

I don't either, but I can't blame Tampa. They really got screwed, and have
been screwed multiple times, and it's not really their fault. I hope they
view the lawsuits as a way of 'encouraging' baseball to get them a team and
not as pure revenge. On the other hand, if baseball doesn't cooperate, I
hope tampa makes their life miserable. Tampa DOES deserve a team, but not
the Giants. It really ought to be an AL team to keep that area from being
dominated by the NL.

>I am happy!

I'm trying to be happy. I have unhappy friends in Tampa that I sympathize
with. I have a rotten, horrible stadium that I hate visiting (I have pledged
not only to shop at Safeway, but to see at least two or three <day> games at
the Stick this year, just to support them) that needs to be replaced in a
region that seems unwilling or uninterested in doing anything about it, and
a team that is currently in chaos management-wise during the critical times
of the off-season.

Not to mention that Lurie hasn't accepted the local offer, and that MLB
hasn't approved it. Both of which I think are rubberstamps, but we'll see.
NOTHING is a sure bet in baseball right now. 

And I'm going to miss Roger Craig and Al Rosen. (and I'm going to enjoy
watching Dusty Baker manage, if rumors are correct. Hope so).

Ask me again in two years whether MLB made the right decision. Personally, I
still think moving the team to Tampa was the safer, more conservative
decision, considering how poorly the team has drawn and how reluctant the
local ownership group has been. This MIGHT work out, or it might be a
disaster. We don't know.

All we know right now is that the Bay Area scored five runs in the bottom of
the ninth to take it to extra innings. The game summary hasn't been written
yet.

-- 
            Chuq "IMHO" Von Rospach, ESD Support & Training (DAL/AUX)
                      Member, SFWA =+= Editor, OtherRealms
                chuq@apple.com | GEnie: MAC.BIGOT | ALink:CHUQ 

    I wanna drive the zamboni! I wanna drive the zamboni, yes I do.