Sez Me …
There are four reasons why the Padres remain in San Diego.
1. Ray Kroc;
2. Larry Lucchino, who died Tuesday;
3. John Moores;
4. The Fans (who doubled as voters).
Early in 1972, just three years past their birth, financially strapped original owner C. Arnold Smith was selling the team, being acquired by a Washington, D.C. group that seemed shaky at best.
The deal seemed done. All the team’s equipment was packed up in crates headed for our nation’s capital, and 1973 baseball cards had the Padres in Washington. Out of Chicago came McDonald’s magnate Kroc, who paid $12 million for a bad team without an audience — and then determined the Padres were remaining in San Diego Stadium.
And when Ray got on the stadium’s public address system and blurted, “I’ve never seen such stupid ball playing in my life,” he endeared himself to a city that had pretty much treated the Pads as if they were diseased.
This was during a period when Aztecs football and the NFL Team That Used To Be Here dominated San Diego sportdom — before SDSU’s program went dormant and the baseball team continued to increase attendance despite its failures (after Kroc, this became a fine baseball town).
Everything went pretty much as usual (badly) until owner Tom Werner had a fire sale, and Moores, a software multi-millionaire, blessedly bought the team in 1994. And, most important, he had the great wisdom to bring in Lucchino to run the club as CEO.
It was obvious Moores wasn’t going to play in the stadium forever. And so he hired Lucchino, a lawyer with a Princeton and Yale pedigree who became a powerful D.C. lawyer and, as president of the Orioles, was personally responsible for getting Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards built.
Larry went to work on getting a new ballpark built. Tireless doesn’t describe it. He was relentless. Brilliant. Always optimistic despite his frustrations. And he hired smart people. He was a marketer of the first magnitude.
Larry worked his way up to 1998’s Proposition C, which would provide the money for a new downtown ballpark. It ed with 59.5 of the vote, a mandate. But that still wasn’t good enough, not here. Larry soon discovered San Diego isn’t Baltimore. There were nuisance lawsuits causing construction delays that left tons of building materials on Petco’s current site for two years.
Moores was frustrated. Lucchino was, too, but never stopped bull-dogging until he got the bone. There was strong talk that the owner wasn’t going to play much longer in the Mission Valley stadium City Hall let go to hell — which became the primary reason why we lost the NFL and the Aztecs had to tear it down and build Snapdragon Stadium.
Moores hung on.
“Lucchino got the ballpark built,” said John, who told me he had all but pulled out the red flag. “No chance it gets done without his persistence.”
Absolutely, 215-million percent true. Larry, all so wisely, put John’s money in his 1998 team, knowing he could ride the club’s new popularity to the World Series.
That Moores (for whatever reason) fired Lucchino prior to the ballpark’s opening in 2004 means nothing here. The job was done.
Petco kept the team in San Diego. I knew Moores, who subsidized millions of his own dollars to keep the team alive. In no way was he going to continue with judicial shenanigans. The people had spoken but the manure disturbers didn’t listen.
And the new ballpark totally revived the seedy area of downtown south of Broadway in the East Village. Moores, who laughed when he told me “I went into real estate kicking and streaming” (when he couldn’t get much in the way of partners), gobbled up property, and no doubt added “billionaire” to his resume before selling the team for $800 million in 2012.
I couldn’t guess the amount of money the city has made off Petco and what it has wrought.
Although his team reached the 1998 World Series, it didn’t win a title and made it to a few postseasons, Moores was an outstanding owner. Bruce Bochy and Kevin Towers came out of this period.
Lucchino’s presence was commanding — not physically, but intellectually. He was not a boss who suffered ineptitude.
The first time I sat down with Larry — and we would speak dozens of times — I knew I was in the presence of the smartest person I’d met in sports. He grew up in the hardscrabble Italian area of then-filthy Pittsburgh, so he could speak to geniuses, kings, presidents and Everyman without a stutter.
From here he went to Boston, whose only World Series win had been the Tea Party, and the Red Sox proceeded to win three of them with him on the bridge.
“One of the most accomplished executives that our industry has ever had,” said MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, who really shouldn’t have been given the job.
It should have gone to Larry. And one day it may go to his protege, Theo Epstein, who began with the Padres under Lucchino as a gofer and later ran the Red Sox and Cubs.
I don’t believe baseball would have the problems it’s having had Lucchino been put in charge. Such a great organizer, intellect, shoulder-rubber and visionary — the first to internationalize the sport, creating a connection with Mexico. He conquered this city, where very little gets done that doesn’t involve a bicycle lane and thousands of living spaces without garages.
Maybe if he were with Dean Spanos and his Judases, he would have gotten an NFL stadium built, although, despite being a good friend of then-GM Bobby Beathard, that wasn’t going to happen. Dean and Larry didn’t get along, and if you knew the two you’d know why.
Moores had the good sense to turn over the franchise reins to Larry. A hookup with Fredo/Dean was out of the question. For one thing, Lucchino would have been too expensive and innovative, and as sharp as he was, probably couldn’t get the populace to lose its hatred for the Spanos family — although careless and gutless City Hall was responsible for the move.
I am deeply saddened for the family of a man who for years fought cancer with both fists. Time after time, this damn disease was beaten back to hell by a man who had no give-up in him, a man who should be a Hall of Famer, a man who did so much for three of the game’s franchises.
I’ll end the same way I ended the column I wrote on his last day as Padres Savior: In the end, Larry Lucchino was too big for this town.
RIP to a genuine American master.
