"My only concern," Peters adds, "is that Tom doesn't go off on some inappropriate tangent. If there were any blurring of the line" -- between Wright's aesthetics and Domino's commercialism -- "of course I'd be concerned. But I know of no action that indicates that. He has a great dream, and we hope he sticks to it. Done right, it could be a great thing for the world."
Riding in his Cadillac over the rough terrain of that dream, Monaghan sees embellishments, not tangents. He speaks animatedly of putting up a Wright chapel, a Wright boathouse, even a Wright gas station. Stopping by one of the farm stables, Monaghan spots a group of schoolchildren gathered by a goat pen and pauses to enjoy their fun, bulshing when the teacher comes over to pay him a compliment. Back outside, he points at a perfectly nice-looking white fence and mutters that he is "studying fences to find out which one's the best."
"They put this one up without consulting me," he says with a grimace. "Now they know not to do that sort of thing without asking me first. One thing I do not delegate is design. At least important design -- and fences are important. They frame the whole place."
What frame to hang around this image of a man whose every dream is being realized? Should it expand, like a rich kid's toy collection, or is the focus itself deepening, shedding light on new detail?
"There's a lot about Tom I don't think any of us will ever know," says Helen McNulty, assistant to the president and a key member of Domino's inner management circle for nearly eight years. "He's a man of many moods, and those moods can change quickly. When I joined the company the big issue was the Amstar suit, and it was almost a wartime situation around here -- everyone pulling together against a common enemy. Tom took the threat personally, but I never saw him down about it. Angry, yes, but he doesn't put his hand through walls the way he used to, either. Tom's matured a lot, become more sophisticated."
Eugene Power, a retired Xerox Corp. director and a member of Domino's board of directors, agrees that Monaghan and Domino's have both grown up.
"He uses his advisers to broaden his perspective in a way that's almost parental," says Power. "Tom had a fairly limited education, you know, and no father in his life -- or much of a mother, for that matter. Now that he's successful, he's learning how to deal with people better. Not just delegate responsibility, which he's always done, but develop himself more as a person."
Being thrust into the public eye through his purchase of the Tigers has been one catalyst for that change. Monaghan is a competitive, emotional, intensely private man, yet he has joined one of pro sports' most visible fraternities. Despite taking pains to minimize his management role (former owner Fetzer has stayed on as chairman of the board of directors, while Campbell continues to maintain his authority over all operational decisions), he tends to wear his owner's heart where he always wore his fan's: securely on his sleeve. In '84, that was easy. Detroit won 35 of its first 40 ball games and never looked back. Last season, however, fate proved less charitable. Shortly after the All-Star break, the Tigers hit a tailspin and dropped swiftly from pennant contention. As owner, he also approved the difficult decision to shut down a section of the bleachers where fans had been chanting cruel obscenities in audible unison. By doing so, Monaghan sacrificed both gate receipts and a potential Tiger Stadium attendance record.
"I used to worry that first year he'd think they were all like that," jokes Campbell. "No rainouts, no injuries, not one day out of first place. . . . 'Tom,' I kept telling him, 'there's a whole other world to owning a team.' Well, he found out."
In fact, Monaghan spent much of the summer climbing the walls of his newly refurbished owner's box. Even the best teams lose 60 or 70 games a season, but since "loss" has never been a functional part of his working vocabulary, Monaghan lacked the tools to rationalize defeat.
"I tried to talk myself into accepting it," he allows, "because otherwise I was ruined for the whole next day. But after a while I found the whole social scene [at Tiger Stadium] distracting, and I stopped watching away games on TV. It was too painful."
Another owner (several come to mind) might have stepped in and taken his frustrations out on the nearest available batboy. Monaghan did not. Like his fascination with Frank Lloyd Wright, his ownership of the Tigers is a hobby, not a business.
"I know more about Domino's than I ever will about running a baseball team," he avers. "In fact, there aren't too many people -- if any -- who operate a company this size and understand it as well as I do. It's an emotional involvement, not just an intellectual one. That's why I could never be involved the same way with another company. My life is plenty exciting right now, but you know, nothing will ever compare to the years when I was in the back of my own store, making pizza, beating the rush, building something I believed in."
And what is one to make, then, of this dream life in the material world?
"Well," he sighs, "improving my spiritual life is still my first priority. We Catholics believe that the only way to get to Heaven is to die in a state of sanctified grace, without any unforgiven mortal sins against us. And I believe that, too. Because if Hell exists, I don't want to go there."
