Wednesday, August 13, 2003

It's like a bad dream for Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy, and we're not talking about his team going through an 11th consecutive losing season or the fact he had to lay off 11 front-office employees this week.

Losing never gets easy and firing longtime workers is an owner's worst fear. But it's another round of what he considers character assassination by the media that's taking its toll on McClatchy at this particular moment.

The following unsubstantiated reports concerning McClatchy's duties and role with the Pirates have been circulating in various media outlets:

He has grown tired of running the Pirates and is looking to get his investment back, at a nice profit, and sell the team.

Because of the Pirates' poor play and financial losses, he is being forced out by his partners.

The major financial losses he disclosed last month were exaggerated because he wants out of his lease at PNC Park.

McClatchy agonizes over these reports and maintains there is truth to none of them. He wonders what he has to do to show Pittsburgh he's here to stay.

"The only home I own is in Pittsburgh," he said. "I live here. I like it here. This idea I want to move was put out by the same guys who said I was a carpetbagger and said I wanted to move this team to Sacramento. They were wrong then and they are wrong now.

"I haven't heard one person who is putting out these stories acknowledge a source. If you're going to run with a major story, I would hope someone would have a source."

Concerning reports that his ownership group, of which he is the CEO and managing general partner, is trying to remove him, McClatchy said: "I am not being forced out of my position. Our ownership team collectively needed to put more money into the franchise because we had some cash shortfalls. There was no change in the structure of the ownership group.

"People can speculate on what they want but it's nothing more than that -- speculation."

There are three other voting members of the Pirates board besides McClatchy -- William B. Allen, Donald Beaver and G. Ogden Nutting. It is believed that McClatchy has two votes within the group, which means he needs only one other owner to side with him to maintain control.

If the ownership group wanted to remove McClatchy, it would also need permission of Major League Baseball to do so.

Nutting, a West Virginia newspaper executive, is believed to be McClatchy's biggest financial supporter within the board. Rumors circulating have Nutting behind the move to oust McClatchy.

"Ogden has been a terrific board member for many years and will continue to be so," McClatchy said. "He's been very supportive of the management team. His role on the board has not changed. We are all on the same page. Everyone on the board understands what we're doing and is in agreement that we're doing the right thing."

Although McClatchy comes from a newspaper family, he said he did not know Nutting before buying the team. "A third party suggested I contact him and I did."

What particularly galls McClatchy are the reports he is exaggerating the team's losses.

"Our financial losses are real, and that's why we are in the process of making difficult changes. Why would I stand up and talk about losses that obviously mean we didn't do as good a job as we should have? Why would I put myself through that? I'm not quite sure what sense there would be of me lying about the numbers.

"Quite frankly, I don't care if people believe me or not. I know who believes me, and that's the banks. They know what we've lost. I'm very secure, unfortunately, that these numbers are correct."

McClatchy said the layoffs were something that just had to be done and were part of being a struggling business in a bad economy.

"It was a very difficult thing but there was no way around it. When we moved here [PNC Park], we had higher expectation than what has happened. The majority of that is lack of team performance.

"Attendance has dropped from 2.44 million [in 2001] down to about 1.65 million this year. That's a significant decline. You don't have a need for as many [employees] because you're not dealing with the same volume."

He remains upbeat about the future and sees a new economics in baseball -- as was the case this year -- giving the Pirates a pool of talented but low-priced veterans who will help them field a competitive team in 2004.

And neither he nor the Pirates is going anywhere.

"PNC Park was built to keep this team here, and we will keep this team here."

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