While the Baseball strike lingered, a start-up league thrived. This story tells how and looks at future plans.
The Texas-Louisiana Professional Baseball League hopes to use an old-time formula -- with a few new wrinkles -- to provide 'affordable hometown entertainment.' If it succeeds, it may teach the major leagues a brand-new way to do business
It's a Friday afternoon in Dallas -- coming up on Memorial Day weekend -- and problems are cluttering Doug Theodore's desk.
Theodore is chief operating officer of the Texas-Louisiana Professional Baseball League, a new minor league opening in three cities tonight, and, well, let's see, Charley Kerfeld, manager of the Beaumont Bullfrogs, still doesn't have a proper uniform. Kerfeld was a large man when he was pitching in the big leagues, and he's larger now. His shirt and pants had to be special-ordered. They're not ready yet. Mike Patrick, the Bullfrogs' general manager, is looking for some guidance.
"Have him wear plain white pants and a purple windbreaker," Theodore says to the speakerphone. "And be sure to tell the umpire."
Theodore, 47, wads up the phone message and flicks it, backhanded, at the wastebasket. Ordinarily, he's a pretty good shot. This morning, on the way to the fulfillment house to check on souvenir hats, he blew past the exact-change booth on the Dallas Tollway at 20 miles an hour and put the coin in the basket with no problem. But the hours are catching up with him: you can see it in his eyes. Yesterday's workday lasted until 3:30 this morning. The paper ball rattles in the corner, skips on the rim, and joins the pile on the floor.
"We have six inches of water in the outfield." This is league president Byron Pierce, checking in from Alexandria, La. "We got a 'copter ordered to come in here, but the problem is, half the outfield is dirt, not grass. They could put a hundred bags of Diamond Dry on that damn thing, and it wouldn't make any difference."
"Tell the pitchers to keep the ball down," Theodore suggests. (It's a joke.)
This just in from Cliff Dochterman, general manager of the Amarillo Dillas: no liquor license yet for Madison Memorial Stadium. No liquor license, no beer; no beer, no game. Does Doug have a name at the TABC (that would be the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, in Austin), somebody Cliff can call?
No, but he has a phone number for John Bryant, the Democratic representative from Texas's Fifth District and the commissioner of the Texas-Louisiana League. Bryant, in Beaumont, Tex., for one of the openers, is reachable right now at the midtown Holiday Inn. "He will fix your problem," says Theodore.
Great, but what's a U.S. congressman to the Potter County health inspector? The inspector is due in two hours, says Dochterman, but the electrician needs four hours to finish running a new line to the hot-dog griddle. If the griddle isn't hot, the stadium won't pass. Is there any way to put this guy off for a couple of hours?
"Hold a minute, will you," says Theodore. He calls Judge Art Ware in Potter County.
"Shit," says the judge after he's been briefed. "You're not gonna be ready for the game, are you?"
"Just a little flex in the system is what we're looking for," says Theodore. Then in a stage whisper: "Judge Ware's throwing out the first pitch. He doesn't want to miss that."
The judge gets the message. "Super-duper," says Theodore, and relays the good news to Dochterman. Then, "Anything else?"
"I'm writing checks like it's going out of style."
Don't worry, is Theodore's thrust. "In 48 hours you'll have more money than you'll know what to do with."
The strike that shut down major-league baseball in August -- alienating fans and exposing grave weaknesses in the way the industry behemoths operate -- was, if anything, a boost for the country's 227 minor-league teams. It brought them expanded coverage in big-city dailies and bonus exposure on radio and television, and helped them sell more tickets.
But neither that strike nor the four that preceded it were the cause of the growing popularity of the minor leagues. In fact, both the major-league squabbling and the minor-league boom are products of the same root cause: the fundamental change over the past two decades in the business of major-league baseball. Television rights, free agency, and talk of salary caps and revenue sharing have all created a very different marketplace for the major leagues. It's a change that has turned off many of the big-league game's primary customers -- the fans who come out to the ballpark, still the greatest single source of revenues for most teams -- and has sent them in search of alternatives.
Minor-league attendance has been building without interruption, in and out of strikes, for the past decade -- from 17 million in 1984 to 32 million this past summer. Along the way, franchise values have risen stunningly. As recently as 15 years ago, some minor-league teams could be had for little more than a willingness to take on existing debt. Today prices range from $500,000 for a short-season rookie club to more than $10 million for a top class-AAA franchise.
Major-league baseball has been eyeing those developments with growing interest. The latest player-development contract, the document that governs relations between big-league clubs and their minor-league affiliates, was signed in 1991. In it, the majors took the first steps toward turning a research-and-development expense into a new source of revenues. They won a 5% cut of the minors' ticket sales, folded minor-league merchandisers into major-league baseball's group licensing operation, and set strict new standards for facilities that have meant higher operating costs for minor-league owners. "The minors caved in completely because no one was willing to say, 'We'll take a walk," says Miles Wolff, part owner of North Carolina's Burlington Indians and an opposition ringleader.
