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Squeeze play: Major League Baseball demands a ballpark In the 26 grueling months it took the close the Pirates sale, Major League Baseball ultimately required a new ballpark as a condition of the sale. This is known as a squeeze play.From a long roster of suitors, the city thought it had found a buyer in John Rigas, a
son of Greek immigrants who had amassed a personal fortune in Adelphia Communications
Corp. Despite the blessing of the city and the Pirates’ owners, Major League Baseball scuttled the deal because Rigas’ financing plan had too little cash and too much debt. Eventually, the winning bid came from Kevin McClatchy, an energetic baseball fan from Sacramento, Calif., who was younger than some players on major-league rosters. Heir to a newspaper fortune, McClatchy, 36, is the grandson of diplomat George Kennan, who formulated the containment theory against communism during the early days of the Cold War. McClatchy had tried to purchase the Oakland Athletics and had owned the Class A Modesto A’s, an Oakland farm team. He was such a baseball fan that when his favorite team, the San Francisco Giants, appeared headed to Tampa and its indoor stadium, McClatchy and his buddies donned T-shirts that said: "Death Before Dome." To make sure that McClatchy was their man — talk show callers figured he was just a carpetbagger willing to buy the Pirates just so he could move them — Murphy and his baseball counsel, Bill Newlin, sat down with McClatchy across the table. The crucial moment came on Sept. 7, 1995, in the Birmingham Room of Buchanan Ingersoll’s 20th floor offices in Oxford Center. "We had a three-day window to make up our minds on whether we’d back this guy," Newlin said. "We had to get to know him as a person first. We wanted to know what was in his heart. We made a people judgment. We couldn’t have picked a better person."
McClatchy convinced them he would be a steward of the rich history of the Pirates franchise, that he would do everything in his power to save baseball for Pittsburgh. One week later, even though some members of the Pirates consortium were less than impressed with the suitor, Murphy and McClatchy agreed to lease terms. The new owner wanted a Camden Yards or a Jacobs Field. Those ballparks, a blend of the new and nostalgic, triggered revitalizations of their downtowns and brought fans streaming through the turnstiles. With more ticket sales came more money to keep and sign players. "I knew I couldn’t make this thing work long-term in Three Rivers Stadium," McClatchy said. While McClatchy had a personal fortune estimated at $35 million, he lacked the deep pockets of Ted Turner, who could bail out the United Nations with a $1 billion gift and still throw tens of millions of dollars into his Atlanta Braves. He lacked the $55 million-a-year local broadcast rights contract of George Steinbrenner, who could assemble the best team money could buy in New York. And he lacked the corporate heft of Disney, which has plowed megabucks into the Anaheim Angels, or the resources of Rupert Murdoch and his Fox television networks, which took over the Los Angeles Dodgers. McClatchy would need public help. But Major League Baseball had done the ballpark negotiations for him. The rulers of the game haven’t figured out how to share revenues or stabilize salaries. But they know how to twist arms to get ballparks built, even if it means hitting up taxpayers. On Oct. 25, 1995, just when the deal with McClatchy seemed to be solidifying, National League President Len Coleman announced that the city’s lack of commitment for a new ballpark could kill the sale. "In order to encourage Major League Baseball to approve the sale to the McClatchy group, strong statements about a new park were absolutely essential," Newlin said. "Over the long haul, the idea surfaced that a new ballpark might be important," he added. "Then it moved from the level of maybe being important to being a requirement of the deal. We had to require it in order to save the Pirates." So while McClatchy lined up investors, Newlin negotiated separately for the ballpark. On Nov. 8, baseball gave preliminary approval to McClatchy’s bid, but it was still unhappy with the ballpark timetable. So Murphy promised to build it and would figure out how to pay for it later. Funding was to be place within two years of approval of the sale and the ballpark was to be completed by opening day in 2001. If that timetable was disrupted, McClatchy could trigger an escape clause. Baseball gave its final blessing on Feb. 14, 1996. The Pirates were sold for $90 million to Pittsburgh Pirates Acquisition Inc., with McClatchy as chief executive officer and managing general partner. He had raised about $61 million for the effort — about $46.5 million in fresh money, including $2 million from the parent company of the Post-Gazette, and kept more than $14 million in the mix from previous investors in the public-private partnership. The other $29 million was the debt inherited from the old owners. But not everyone was pleased about the message pitch major league baseball had fired at the city’s head. "They have no right to demand from any city a new stadium if the people who buy the team have their financial house in order," said state Sen. Jack Wagner, D-Beechview, a former city council president who had opposed Murphy in the mayoral race.
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