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 First Inning
A rocky start made worse by a strike
Tom Murphy was warming up for his new job as Pittsburgh’s
mayor when he assumed the role as the top public pitchman for the Pirates. He was behind
before he even got started.
The son of a steelworker who had labored for 51 years at a mill that no longer exists,
Murphy was completing his 15th year as a state representative after having been elected
the city’s 55th mayor. On Dec. 14, 1993, while the state House debated a measure that would increase the sales tax in Allegheny County and create something called the Regional Asset District, Murphy was on the House floor when Pirates President Mark Sauer said privately that the team was for sale. The debt-ridden Pirates, owned by a consortium of corporate and private entities, needed a loan and lease concessions to make it through the season. If this were Hollywood hokum, Murphy would have been standing in an Iowa cornfield while a "Field of Dreams" voice whispered, "If you build it, he will come." But this is real-world Pennsylvania. There was no script. The story merely unspooled, gnarls and all. Murphy hadn’t even read the documents governing control of the team, which were as thick as a telephone book. and gave the city certain rights because of loans to the franchise. The terms gave the city 180 days to find a new buyer or the owners could sell to anyone, even an out-of-towner who wanted to move the club to, say, northern Virginia or Las Vegas. Even before he took the oath of office on Jan. 3, 1994, inheriting a city still reeling from the exodus of jobs and population following the collapse of the steel industry, Murphy was at work to save the Pirates. He was not going to be the mayor who lost baseball.
"These teams are symbols of Pittsburgh. They’re a symbol of moving forward or backward. Something is at stake far bigger than what they’re worth financially. The larger value is being a major league city," Murphy said. "People can get mad at it and not like it, but the reality is that sports are international. It becomes a defining element of your city. Pittsburgh is thought of as a major league town, even though we’re the same size as Oklahoma City and Dayton and Birmingham, Ala., because of our sports teams," he added. He turned to a trusted confidante, William R. Newlin, president and chief executive officer of the Buchanan Ingersoll law firm. The founder of the Pittsburgh High Technology Council in 1983, Newlin shared Murphy’s vision that sports teams reinforce business growth. "We couldn’t afford to throw water on the few fires that were burning. New or existing corporations would say, ‘What’s wrong? You can’t even keep what you have,’’’ Newlin said. Given access to the secret financial records of the Pirates, Newlin confirmed that the franchise had baseball’s worst stadium lease. The city ultimately agreed to front millions in loans and lease concessions as stopgap funding, but not before former city councilman Christopher Smith complained, "It’s welfare for the rich." One of the sport’s premier events — the 1994 All-Star Game — was played at Three zRivers Stadium in July. The national spotlight was on Pittsburgh as a bronze statue of Roberto Clemente, The Great One, was unveiled outside of Gate C. The game drew an all-time-high Pittsburgh baseball attendance of nearly 60,000. But the warm and fuzzy feelings evaporated quickly. The for-sale sign went out publicly on Aug. 4. Owners wanted to recover their $22 million investment, plus interest, and have the new buyer assume the team’s debt. They had exhausted a $20 million city loan and a $40 million line of credit from Major League Baseball while playing in Three Rivers Stadium, an architectural atrocity that tried to fit a diamond and a gridiron onto a fake carpet inside of a cold concrete circle. The previous owners — the Galbreath family — had also lost $18 million in their 15 years at inhospitable Three Rivers, turning a profit only once in 1971, the first full season in the stadium. Not even attractions like Babushka Night or the Green Weenie could spin the turnstiles fast enough. The ownership consortium suggested that a baseball-only park was the long-term solution. Earlier in 1994, Cleveland had opened Jacobs Field, which had all the fan amenities Three Rivers lacked. And fans were flocking to see Camden Yards, the paradigm of the new parks. It was financed by a state lottery because Baltimore had lost the Colts to Indianapolis and had vowed to keep the Orioles at all costs. "The Pirates’ board believes that it is appropriate now that the potential buyers discuss the lease proposals and prospects for a new stadium directly with the city and the county commissioners," the team said in a statement. Then the bottom fell out. Baseball stopped on Aug. 11. Owners wanted revenue-sharing and a salary cap. The players mutinied, and when owners missed making a contractually required payment into their pension fund, the players walked out. The two sides couldn’t figure out how to split a pie worth billions of dollars , so they threw it in their fans’ faces. It became redundant to say greedy ballplayers and greedy owners; avarice was part of their job description. The rest of the season and the World Series — the brainchild of Barney Dreyfuss, the Fall Classic that had survived two world wars and a Great Depression — were canceled. No team was hit harder by that strike than the Pirates. It was as if the curtain separating the beauty of the game and its ugly money side had been pulled away, and fans were turned off. The worst part was nothing was settled. After briefly toying with using replacement players — scabs, of all things – for the 1995 season, Major League Baseball was forced by the federal courts to allow the regular players to come back. The Pirates opened the 1995 season on April 26. How deep was the resentment? Following a misplay on a ball that didn’t travel 50 feet but cost the Pirates the opening game, the fans spilled their anger by throwing souvenir pennants that had been handed out as a promotion onto the field. The game was held up for 17 sordid, boo-filled minutes until the litter was cleared. The Pirates ended the 1995 season with the lowest attendance and fewest wins in the major leagues at the same time the city was trying to attract suitors and contemplating construction of a new ballpark. Big money caused implosions in other sports as the struggle to get a new stadium for the Pirates played out. Fans shook their heads as hockey players were locked out, the Steelers asked for a lease relief, basketball players were locked out, the Penguins slid into bankruptcy court and the Olympics were tainted by bribery scandals. Meanwhile, a body of national economists pooh-poohed the economic impact of sports teams, even though the teams provide some psychological payback. Robert Baade, a professor of economics at Lake Forest College in Illinois, said politicians make what he calls Pascal’s wager. It is named after the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who said he believed in God because he couldn’t take the chance there wasn’t one. "I think that people who make decisions about these things say to themselves that there is an economic impact because they really can’t take the chance that there isn’t one," Baade said. "I think that’s a reflection of the stateof urban America."
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