Management of the team has since become much more systematic under Patty; Bing, the club's executive vice-president; and Jim Weigel, the club's vice-president/general manager, who once directed minor-league operations for the San Diego Padres. "Goodtime Baseball" is still the marketing theme, but now there is a sound financial strategy that underlies it: to take in as much money as possible even before the first ball is thrown out in the spring. That way, even if the players and the elements decide not to cooperate, the team will at least break even. "You cannot survive in baseball," explains Patty, "if you don't have money in the bank before opening day -- enough, in fact, to survive the entire season."
In the off-season, Patty puts her staff of 13 through a close order drill of preselling to capture an operating budget of roughly $500,000 from advertisers, promoters, private box rentals, and season-ticket holders. Space ads in the team's glossy, 108-page game program ($1.25 at the gate) range from $3,000 for a full-page, four-color, back-page placement to $165 for an inside "booster ad" the size of a business card. To appear in big letters on the home-run wall under the scoreboard, advertisers ranging from local politicians and national breweries to Roto-Rooter and the U.S. Army Reserve pay anywhere from $2,100 to $4,500. Advance ticket sales are also heavily promoted at $225 each, providing box seats for 72 games, plus free concert tickets and special parking privileges (just plain folk will later pay $3 general admission, $4 reserved, and $1 for parking).
Hampton is equally aggressive in her advance planning as she is in advance sales. Each fall, she gathers the staff around the large blackboard to review each game's statistics for the season just ended. Attendance and concession sales for each game are compared against that day's weather and special promotions. On the basis of the numbers, the schedule for these all-important special events is modified for the coming year, with events added or deleted, moved or modified. At this year's meeting, for example, The Beach Boys concert, the season's most popular attraction, was nudged ahead from the opening night of a home stand to a date later in the week to give the club more time to advertise. Adjustments were also made to "giveaway nights," when corporate sponsors defray the costs of plying fans by offering free baseball gloves, seat cushions, or other souvenirs. And the staff agrees upon a schedule of "buy-out nights," for which the club sells blocks of discounted tickets to various merchants in outlying towns who then pass them out to their customers.
Not every decision, however, is made strictly by the numbers. Take the matter of Captain Dynamite, an easy rival to Mondo the Great. Not long ago, Bing received a letter from the Captain, who offered to perform spectacles for $450. Bing was tempted. The Captain would wheel a coffin out onto the playing field, ceremoniously ring it with dynamite, get in the coffin, and then blow the whole rig to smithereens, somehow escaping unharmed (except for the time he bloodied his left arm and the ball girl fainted). Even so, Bing felt uneasy about another performance. "The Captain must be in his seventies," says Bing. "He's hard of hearing, and maybe he'll forget where to put the dynamite and really blow himself up. That would be awful. He may be too old now. But he says he has a granddaughter who wants to get into the business. I wonder what they'll call her?"
Such considerations are an important factor in the 89ers' recent success. For all the concentration on business fundamentals, for all the romance and gloss of professional baseball, this is a franchise that still has the feel of a neighborhood mom-and-pop business. Observers say this feeling finds its source in the personal styles and inclinations of Patty and Bing, both of whom are also enthusiastic Oklahoma City boosters. "There is one word that describes everything that has happened here, and that's 'local," says Chris Needham, the 89ers' television broadcaster. The squad of boys who fold the tarpaulin on he infield, for example, come from a local halfway house for firsttime offenders; they do it for free hot dogs, a ball game, and a night out in the open air. And many of the concessions are staffed by members of various local chapters of the American Business Women's Association, who take away 10% of the concessions' net profit for their scholarship funds. As a result of touches like these, the 89ers still seem to inspire a kind of small-town loyalty from fans and business customers rarely seen in the major leagues, even though the Oklahoma City area is home to nearly 1 million souls. Even the players, lean, hungry, and very transient, feel the pull of family ties. As a token of their esteem, they recently chipped in to commission an oil painting for Patty and Bing featuring an artistic arrangement of glove, cleats, and 89ers hat.
Hometown loyalty, sound cash management, a marketing strategy based on good times -- not good weather or good pitching -- these are the key ingredients in the homegrown formula for the 89ers' financial success. It is a formula that now allows Patty to work an annual wonder, a bit like defying gravity: hers is the remarkable business that floats reasonably free of its expected product line and production problems. And, according to Johnny Johnson, president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, hers is now a formula that has been borrowed by other teams. Johnson cites Patty and a few other forward-thinking owners for transforming minor-league baseball from a ragtag farm system into a profitable leisure-time industry, with long waiting lists of buyers for franchises now selling at 10 times what they were fetching a decade ago.
Oh, sure, there may yet be a toughened veteran or two left of these summer battles between grown men striking balls with sticks -- owners who even now can be found darning the holes of faded uniforms, chewing on a cigar, praying for good weather, and wondering if pocket change will get the school bus to the next game.
There may be. But she does not live in Oklahoma City.
