Running a Minor League Ballclub

If you're reading these pages then you no doubt agree with the late Harry Caray that nothing beats fun at the old ballpark. The sights, sounds and smells all mix in perfectly with the excitement taking place between the chalk lines to make for a memorable entertainment experience.

And the odds are that, if you're reading these pages, you live in or near a town that has a franchise in one of America's myriad minor leagues. For while the majors draw the most media attention, it is minor league baseball that really brings the game to all parts of the country, and helps to create fans for life.

Much of my adult life has been devoted to minor league ball, in one way or another, and so it is my intention to devote this corner of THE DIAMOND ANGLE to life on the farm.

First, though, let me tell you how I reached this point. At the age of nine I fell in love with the game, and as I grew so did my infatuation. It didn't take long, however, before I realized that I would never forge a Hall of Fame career on the diamond. This happens to most of us at some point, and we generally move on. Not me -- I trained my sights on a front office career, and attended Ohio University's Sports Administration program. After graduating at the end of 1971, I spent the next couple of years trying to get that often-elusive first job. It took a while, more than six years in fact, but I finally was offered a job as Assistant to the General Manager of the Florida State League's St. Petersburg Cardinals for the 1978 season. At the time, I was earning about $900 a month in a comfortable but boring job; the Cards' proposal was for just $200 a month and required a car, which I didn't own -- needless to say, I jumped at it.

That was the beginning of a baseball odyssey that took me to virtually every region of the country at one time or another. I've met a great many people along the way, quite a few of whom remain friends to this day. I got married and moved to a city -- Durham, North Carolina - that I've called home for 18 years. It's been quite a ride, and I hope, in succeeding issues, to share some of my experiences and observations with you.

Right now I'd like to get back to the beginning, to that first job in St. Petersburg, Florida. Remember the condition of employment: must own a car. Never having bought one before I was rather intimidated, but I caught a break. A friend and co-worker had purchased a 1973 Dodge Dart for his wife, who drove it twice and decided she didn't like it. He offered to sell it for exactly what he paid, $1300. My father's mechanic, after looking it over and praising the slant-six engine (the finest motor Detroit ever developed), asked me what the selling price was, and when I told him he said simply "Grab it!" He was right, too: over the years, because of all the baseball-related hauling I did (supplies, mostly), the back seat was eventually reduced to foam rubber, the bearings were shot and even body work and a paint job couldn't hide its age, but when I finally had to trade it in after the 1984 season, that slant-six was still purring like a kitten.

Those of you who live in dormitories would have appreciated the place I found to rent. It was a garage apartment, which meant that it literally used to be someone's garage. Really. The owner fixed it up -- sort of -- by adding a bed, dresser, stove, refrigerator, shower, and window air conditioner. This is Florida, after all: I kept that A/C running until just after Thanksgiving. And I shared the apartment with about 9,000 Palmetto bugs, the cockroach's heftier cousin. My nightly ritual, after returning from the ballpark, was to throw on the light and go heavy on the Raid, especially around the bed. The bugs and I eventually came to an agreement: they could party all they wanted as long as they let me sleep in relative peace.

I lived there because it was a paltry 80 bucks a month, which fit in well with that king's ransom I was being paid. In fact, after I had been there two or three months, the landlord knocked off another $5, saying that no one had ever stayed this long and he appreciated it! Shortly thereafter -- and I am not making this up, as Dave Barry is fond of saying -- part of the ceiling collapsed one night while I slept. Thankfully it did not crash down on me. I suppose I should have asked for a further rent reduction.

There were a couple of benefits to that apartment. It was pretty close to the ballpark, for one. It was also right behind the landlord's house. This was a plus in case of collapsing ceilings (see above), and also because he had two teenaged daughters. Now, these girls were almost half my age, and spending time in a Florida prison was not what my Sports Administration degree was for. But they always wore shorts or bathing suits, and after looking at ballplayers or our motley staff all day, it certainly made for a pleasant change of pace.

The problem, from my perspective, was that St. Petersburg was primarily a retirement community. Bobby Bragan, the former major league player and manager, was President of the minor league's ruling body, the National Association (NAPBL), at the time, and he was fond of saying that old people retired to Miami while their parents lived St. Petersburg! Consequently, there were few eligible women over 16 or under 60, and for a single straight male those are some pretty gruesome statistics.

One good thing about that apartment was that it placed me around the corner from the Dittrichs. I had met John Dittrich briefly a few years before, when I attended my first Baseball Winter Meeting and he had spoken informally to a group of us who were trying to find jobs. He had spent a couple of years running a Texas League club, then moved to St. Petersburg as chief aide to Bobby Bragan when the latter became head of the minors. Anybody who had ever written to the NAPBL, inquiring about jobs, was invited to a series of seminars they were sponsoring, and it was there that I received the offer from the Cardinals and renewed my acquaintance with John Dittrich. When I got down to St. Pete I made sure to say hello, and he told me about the garage apartment, which was owned by his next-door neighbor, which meant that his back yard overlooked my front door. I shortly met the rest of the family -- wife Lois, son Robbie and daughter Jennie -- and soon we all became fast friends. In the 24 years since I arrived in St. Pete, he and I have worked together in Amarillo and Greensboro, witnessed a marriage (mine) and the birth of a child (his), visited each other frequently, logged hundreds of miles in various vehicles, and shared good times and bad. You just never know where and when you'll meet lifelong friends; as Kurt Vonnegut has written, "peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from the gods."

I have mentioned Bobby Bragan. I consider it a privilege to have worked for him, albeit briefly, at the NAPBL after the Florida State League season concluded, and I consider it an honor to still call him my friend. He's your prototypical Southern gentleman, as friendly and personable as they come. We developed a little Groucho Marx-ish comedy routine which, we are proud to say, was booed off the stage by the league presidents at their annual dinner at the 1978 Winter Meetings. He loves a good joke, a cigar, the piano and baseball, all of which have been key components in his life. And while he didn't relish being shackled to a desk in St. Petersburg, choosing to give up the NAPBL Presidency after just one three-year term, his folksy management style was, in my opinion, more suitable to baseball than the corporate stuffed shirts you find running teams and leagues these days.

Ralph Miller was the General Manager of the Cardinals, a post he had held for years. Later he was able to purchase the club, then sold it in late 1986 for a handsome profit and retired from baseball. Ralph was quite a character. He didn't believe in promotions, saying that they didn't really bring extra people into the ballpark. Free or discounted tickets were what worked for him, and in a town where so many people lived on fixed incomes he may have been right. One thing I learned over the years was that just because a promotion works in one town doesn't mean it will be a hit in another. So part of my job in St. Pete was to drive around to designated grocery stores and drop off stacks of tickets for upcoming games. Of course, it's hard to say just how successful this approach really was, because Ralph rarely counted the house. While St. Petersburg regularly led the league in attendance, those numbers were really a figment of Ralph's imagination. Every evening the ticket manager would come to him around the sixth inning and tell him how many tickets he had actually sold, then Ralph would look around the park and, like a magician, pull a number out of thin air. Let's see Penn and Teller attempt that!

Ralph liked to surround himself with a strange assortment of characters, including me. He also hired another young GM-wannabee, Ron VanLandingham, who has remained my good friend all these years. That year in St. Pete was the only full-time baseball job Ron ever had, although he made a couple of other attempts over the years. Ralph also had a secretary named Janet who was quite attractive, personable, very pregnant, and married to a raving lunatic. They were forever fighting and eventually divorced. She was the only person I ever knew who would put just one dollar's worth of gasoline into her car, but then in 1978 that could get you a couple of gallons.

We had a ticket manager named Kenny who was rather intelligent, but for reasons known only to himself preferred to play the fool in public. Maybe it was because he was basically too loud and opinionated for most. He had the easiest job in the world, since Ralph gave away most of his tickets, so most afternoons he and I would play handball inside the ticket office, answer the phone when it rang, and sell an occasional ticket. Our head ticket taker was an old gentleman named Al, who told wonderfully funny stories in a straight, dead-pan style, and probably knew more about Ralph Miller than Ralph's wife. Our chief usher was a chubby fellow named Charlie, who was always pleasant and always ready with a quip.

Then there was Dick. He gave himself the title of Director of Promotions. Basically he was an alcoholic who liked to talk and tried to sell, and Ralph kept him around. Dick was unique, to say the least, but I always did find him to be pleasant company. Booze had destroyed far too many brain cells (and I heard that it finally claimed the rest of him, too), but you could often have a reasonable conversation with him, and swap the latest jokes.

The Cardinals had a very active Booster Club, and the membership chair was held by Millie, a dead ringer for Granny of the old "Beverly Hillbillies" TV show. She would roam the ballpark, looking for unfamiliar faces, and when she found one she'd pounce, trying to get them to join the Boosters. She and her son Dave, who was a might slow and very obnoxious and ran the electronic scoreboard (one of the first in the minor leagues), shared their house, I was told, with about 17 cats. Unsuspecting visitors could be knocked flat, upon entering, just by the smell, though it wouldn't surprise me if Dave didn't contribute far more to this than the kitties.

Of course, there were the fans, too, and a couple of them stand out, for very different reasons. One was a young divorcee who had a season's box seat and sat directly behind home plate. She was in her early thirties, fairly attractive, and ostensibly there to keep an eye on her son, who was one of the batboys. But every night she dressed in a halter top and skin-tight pants, and had to visit the concession stand or restroom frequently. If she wasn't a walking billboard I've never seen one, and as we all know effective advertising often brings its desired results.

The other fan was Mrs. McMaster. She was a former schoolteacher from the northeast who had retired to St. Pete and bought a season's ticket every year. Problem was, she didn't drive and her mobility was severely impaired, so Ralph prevailed upon Ron and I to take turns picking her up and bringing her to the ballpark. It was a chore we performed gladly because, while she may have walked very slowly, her brain was still firing on all cylinders. She was a delightful conversationalist, and she certainly knew her baseball! Jim Leyland was the manager at Lakeland that year (Kirk Gibson was one of his players, sent there directly from being the nation's #1 draft pick), and she tabbed him as probably the league's best skipper, saying he reminded her of Billy Martin. We occasionally had dinner together, especially after the season ended and I stayed to work at the National Association, and after I moved on to Amarillo we corresponded for a while, but her handwriting grew shakier and finally the letters stopped altogether. In another place I hope we can meet again for dinner and a ballgame, I imagine she will have some very interesting observations.

Our field manager was Hal Lanier, who would go on to win the 1986 NL West championship with Houston. He was nice and, as you might expect, very competitive. Ron and I would ride the bus on commutes to Tampa or Winter Haven or Lakeland, and on the way different versions of baseball trivia would frequently break out. Lanier and I, as the oldest people on the bus (except for the trainer), were invariably the last ones left. Boy, he really wanted to beat me, you could just see it in his eyes. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't.

Of course, there are always anecdotes, although some of them are more appropriately re-told in a bar, or in whispers, rather than in print. Here's one I can tell you: the Dunedin club, a Blue Jay affiliate, had a first-year General Manager named Rick Counts, a real nice fellow. One night, trailing by a run, the Jays mounted a rally in the ninth, and a two-out hit sent the potential tying run flying towards the plate. Ball and runner reach home together, and the umpire signaled...OUT!! Game over, Dunedin loses, fans boo for several minutes. So the next night it's the same teams and same umps, and feelings are still a bit raw. Rick went up to the press box and, as the lineups were about to be exchanged before the game, slipped on a recording of "Three Blind Mice." As a tension-easer it worked perfectly: his fans got a good chuckle out of it. The umpires had a different opinion, however, and they made Rick the first and only General Manager to be thrown out of a Florida State League game that season. In fact, I don't believe I have ever seen another GM bounced by the men in blue. Well, at least he started off at the game, I can think of two cases where the GM didn't show up at all! One of those occurred when my own boss deemed his bowling tournament more important than our FSL game. And guess who got to make up that night's attendance? Ah, I didn't take all those management classes in vain, I was prepared to make an executive decision!

The Cardinals are gone now, replaced by the major league Devil Rays. It does not surprise me that they are struggling to survive. Back in 1978 there was already talk of trying to get a major league franchise for the Tampa Bay area. My opinion then, based on spending nearly nine months in town, was that the region could not support a major league team, and so far nothing has made me change my mind. For one thing, you've got to deal with that heat and humidity. As I recall, it got hot in late May, and stayed that way through Thanksgiving. After a night at the ballpark, I often came home in desperate need of a shower. Drying off in that humidity, even with my window air-conditioner working as hard as it could, was the most difficult task I'd had to face all day. I think I lost 15 pounds that summer, without even trying, just due to the weather. Of course, they tried to compensate by building a domed stadium, but people still need to get to the ballpark, which means going out into that sauna. No, thanks, dear, let's just stay in tonight, you can listen to the game on the radio.

Then there are the ticket prices. Remember what I said earlier about the area's demographics? While things have changed somewhat, there is still a significant population living on a fixed income. Ralph's free or cheap tickets fit nicely into their budgets, but I doubt they can afford very many major league games. I also noticed an attitude of indifference. I'm sure the major leagues expected the Devil Rays to draw from Tampa, which is just across the bay, plus Sarasota, Bradenton and Fort Myers to the immediate south. But when I lived there, I never saw people come to St. Pete from any of those areas, especially Tampa; in fact, the relationship between those two towns was rather frosty. Tampa looked down its nose somewhat at its western neighbor, much like Dallas does to Fort Worth, Minneapolis does to St. Paul, and Raleigh does to my town of Durham. Siblings generally bicker and twins seem to do more than their share, especially when they are entire communities.

When the Florida State League season ended I was hired by minor league headquarters to help prepare for the annual Winter Meetings, held that year in Orlando. After that, John Dittrich and I moved on to Amarillo. I will always be grateful to Ralph Miller for giving me my first opportunity in baseball, and to the city of St. Petersburg for providing me with many wonderful memories. Writing this has, in fact, made me rather nostalgic; think I'll cruise the used-car lots in search of a slant-six.