Speculator Sports

 

Cleveland loves it sports teams, and there have been times Cleveland sports teams have loved them back.

Just not always.

The above cartoon by the late Plain Dealer sports artist Dick Dugan is from some time in the 1970s, when I grew up. Both the football Browns and the baseball Indians (today the Guardians) were in a long draught, as well were the newly arrived basketball Cavaliers (with the exception of a "miracle" year when the wins exceeded the losses.) Better (albeit not always permanent) days eventually arrived for all three teams, as well as the profits that come from better days. However, this post concerns itself not with profits per se, but with how a professional sports team manages to stay afloat, sometimes audaciously so, no matter if the days are better, worse, or somewhere in between.  

 

This is the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, built in 1931 and in service until 1995. When I was growing up it was the home of both the baseball AND the football teams, something I didn't much question. You mean to tell me there are cities that have separate stadiums for baseball and football? That's plain weird. 

I found out later that not only is it not weird but fairly commonplace. Cleveland's one-size-fits-all approach to professional sports (as well as the occasional rock concert and even more occasional Billy Graham religious revival) was what was unusual, as well as something that could serve as a scapegoat. You see, because football is played only once a week, there's more of a novelty value and thus it becomes easier to fill 80,000 seats. Since less people attend baseball games (because there's more of them), it could seem like you're watching the Great American Pastime in the Grand Canyon. Also, that the Indians were losing many of their games, thus affecting attendance, made the Grand Canyon that much grander (maybe if mules had taken fans to their seats, that would have drummed up interest.) The baseball club was owned by some kind of local consortium, one of its owners also a member of the Cleveland Board of Education, the implication being that keeping the Indians on life support was a another kind of civic duty. The duty got dowdy, and the team was put up for sale. Everyone from City Hall to the local sports radio call-in hosts panicked. Suppose the new owners move the club to a different city?

Before the team changed hands, a plan was approved by voters for a new baseball stadium (and right next door, a venue for basketball, which would free up the Cavs from playing in an arena in the middle of a corn field situated halfway between Cleveland and Akron) that would be paid for by a tax on booze and cigarettes, neither one in short supply in a working-class metropolis. You'll note I have two different pictures of the outside of this then-new (1994) stadium. The first has the last name of the two brothers, shopping mall developers, who bought the baseball club while it was still at the old stadium. Now look at that second picture. While I would like to think changing the club's name from the "Indians" to the "Guardians" is a very "progressive" thing to do, I'm afraid it's just a coincidence. An insurance company bought the naming rights (though not the team itself, which is owned by the Dolan family.) The 31-year-old stadium is now undergoing $200 million in renovations. After all, it's city- and county-owned. The Guardians just play there.

 

Now, I momentarily want to go back to when the club was still called the Indians. Whether because they were inspired by their new digs, or, more likely, owner Dick Jacobs hired people who knew how to put a baseball team together, in its second year at Jacobs Field, the club went all of the way to the World Series. In the months leading up to that, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened. The eyes of the nation, perhaps the world itself, were on Cleveland, now justifiably dubbed The Comeback City!

"The Comeback City, eh? Well, I'll burst their bubble. Heh, heh, heh!"

OK, I don't know if Browns owner Art Modell actually said that, but announcing the teams move did clip the wings of a city that saw itself as a rock'n'roll phoenix rising from the ashes of a burning river. Modell was an out-of-towner but had lived in Cleveland since 1962. Surely in those 33 years you might have thought he had some affection for the place and wouldn't think of moving. In fact, he even made a promise not to move, until he declared the promise "null and void." Modell had his reasons, most of them mercenary, a few of them spiteful. As I said earlier the Browns and the Indians shared the old Municipal Stadium, which as the name implies, was owned by the city, a city that couldn't afford to maintain it. Modell agreed to basically lease the stadium, for $1 a year, and become responsible for its upkeep. He also constructed loge boxes that could be rented to anybody who wants whatever a loge box has to offer (I wouldn't know, I've never been in one.) The money earned from the loge boxes went to Modell, even if the person or persons boxed up were there to watch an Indians game. The Indians objected to this and it's one of the issues that led to them demanding the city or county or state build them a separate stadium. Modell was offered a chance to be part of the new stadium, but he declined, only to watch the ballpark net a whole lot of moolah when the team went to the playoffs and World Series. And of course this made Jacobs Field's own loges desirable to rent. City officials, not wanting Modell to feel too left out of Cleveland's renaissance, offered to finance improvements to the old stadium, but Modell issued a "public moratorium" on such talks. He couldn't very well talk to officials from the city of Cleveland while at the same time talking to officials from the city of Baltimore (which a decade earlier had lost the Colts to Indianapolis), now could he?

 

The whole thing landed in court, the NFL itself also becoming involved. A deal was struck. The physical team could physically move, becoming the Ravens (Edgar Allen Poe was born in Baltimore) while the Browns name and records could stay in Cleveland, as long as Cleveland agreed to build a new football stadium, which it did at jaw-dropping speed. The old stadium, the site of two World Series and five NFL Championship games, was razed, much of its debris turned into an artificial reef on Lake Erie. It cost $270 million, some of it paid for by the NFL, some if paid by new owner Al Lerner (a minority owner of the Modell-era Browns) and a huge chunk of it paid for by further taxes on smokers and drinkers. Another good reason to live the clean life. Now, when the baseball team got its new stadium, it almost immediately went to the World Series, and there's been two more since then. The team didn't win any of them, but still, it got there. The Browns? There's been no Super Bowls, I can tell you that. They've been in the playoffs exactly three times. Last year they were 3-14.

The dismal showing hasn't discouraged Jimmy and Dee Haslam, an out-of-town billionaire couple who bought the Browns from the late Al Lerner's billionaire son in 2012. The Haslams appear to have extraordinary optimism in the franchise's future. The above enclosed stadium has yet to be built, but it looks like it's going to be. The Municipal Stadium was in service for 64 years. The Browns stadium, Cleveland's newest stadium, is 26 years old, and apparently that's 26 years too old for the Haslams (both of whom are in their 70s and really shouldn't be practicing ageism.) Like Modell before them, they're moving the team out of town. Unlike Modell, they're not going all the way to Baltimore, just Brook Park, a Cleveland suburb. The Haslams have just purchased a 175-acre site (which will include restaurants, hotels, and apartments along with the stadium itself), not far from Cleveland Hopkins Airport, for $76 million. Does it mean this it's all going to be privately-owned-and-operated? I'm afraid local officials, or at least their constituents, aren't getting off that easily. This past Monday the Ohio Legislature took time out from demonizing LGBTQ folks to pass a bill that the governor signed giving the Haslam Sports Group $600 million towards the 2.4 billion project (the Haslams were expecting more.) And just what is the source of this $600 million? Unclaimed funds, i.e., usually small sums that Ohioans have yet to collect from old bank accounts, uncashed checks, and security deposits. Why haven't they collected this money? They're probably unaware they're owed it and, unlike owners of sports teams and the politicians that enable them, don't have bookkeepers, accountants, and business managers around to make them aware of it.

Well, that's it. I have nothing else to say on the subject. Unless a legendary hero of Middle Ages lore suddenly were to materialize in front of me. If he did, I'd say this to him:

Just be grateful Sherwood Forest doesn't have a professional sports team. Faster than you could rob from the rich and give to the poor, they'd be doing it the other way around!