Weathering The Storm
Despite Critics, McClatchy Presses On
By Tim Benz

As Pittsburgh Pirates’ C.E.O. Kevin McClatchy picks up the phone to do a media interview it’s raining. Again.

His Pirates are about to be rained out.

Again. At spring training. In Florida. Yup.

As he prepares for his tenth season as the Pirates’ managing general partner, the little black clouds that have seemed to follow McClatchy around for a decade now have even found him in the Sunshine State. Since PNC Park opened in 2001, there have only been two complaints about it: the amount of rain-outs, and the amount of losses endured by the home team.

And oh yeah, the price of bottled water. Just a few weeks into the history of what honestly, truly, is the best baseball park in America, McClatchy held a press conference to fend off an overwhelming barrage of complaints from baseball fans about how much food they could and could not bring into the park.

There stood the Pirates’ owner, flanked by two teeny-bopper concessions workers, literally pulling out turkey subs and bottles of Evian from a lunch box to illustrate that the Pirates weren’t trying to force the ticket buying public into buying bottled water, or anything else for that matter, at the stadium’s refreshment stands.

Critics correctly pointed out that George Steinbrenner probably didn’t feel the need to do that in the Bronx.

ON THE DEFENSIVE
McClatchy is anything but Steinbrenner, and his Pirates are anything but the Yankees. Steinbrenner attacks. He makes moves. McClatchy is constantly playing defense. He’s defending against the fans, the media, other teams, economics, and his own mistakes.

“I’ve made some mistakes. I always go back to 1997. That was in some ways a very damaging year to the franchise,” says McClatchy of the season in which the Pirates actually posted the best record in his ownership’s history. “We were named organization of the year. My G.M. (Cam Bonifay) was named executive of the year. And I think we had a false sense of security about the direction we were going, and I think that held us back. It caused change to happen later than it needed to and I take responsibility for that.”

The Pirates won just 69 games in 1998.

McClatchy has taken responsibility for the other mistakes he’s made too. They include green-lighting bad player signings, not being vocal enough on behalf of small market teams, and a ticket price increase at PNC Park following a 100-loss season.

To the fans and media though, accountability for the mistakes hasn’t been the issue. Failing to break a string of a dozen straight losing seasons has been.

“Pirates fans have a right to be angry,” writes Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com. “They haven't enjoyed a winning season since 1992.”

McClatchy understands.

“Until we win there should be critics and there will be critics. I understand that until you deliver, you take the heat.”
McClatchy is making efforts to improve his image in at least one area. In early February, he blasted other owners for spending what he felt was far too much on free agents. That spending had curtailed in recent years thanks to baseball’s recently employed luxury tax and revenue sharing. But McClatchy feels the trend is reversing and labeled himself as “a hawk” that would watch over spending habits in baseball from this point on.

Pirate fans have repeatedly blasted McClatchy for failing to do just that over the past 10 years. In fact, McClatchy is often viewed as nothing but a little kid happy to be sitting with the Steinbrenner’s, Ted Turner’s, and John Henry’s at the grown-up table.

“I have been speaking my mind a fair amount lately,” McClatchy said. “I guess if you’ve been around long enough you have permission to voice your opinion.”

Should he have raised his hand and asked for permission earlier?

“I’ve learned a lot about the league sitting on the executive committee and the international committee and the long range labor committee,” says McClatchy of his expanding role in baseball circles, “There is no blueprint when you buy a team, especially at 32 years-old, about how exactly it’s going to go.”

Maybe that was it. Maybe McClatchy was just too young when he bought the Pirates. Maybe if he had been older and more seasoned the mistakes he points out wouldn’t have happened. But then again…

“If 32 was too young to buy, then I don’t believe the Pittsburgh Pirates would be in Pittsburgh right now. People can debate that one way or another, but I think at that time (1996) I was the only prospective buyer who was going to keep that team in Pittsburgh.”

Doug Shields is the finance chairman for Pittsburgh City Council. At the time of the Pirates’ sale from the Pittsburgh Associates group, he was chief of staff for Councilman Bob O’Connor. The city was excited over the prospect of then Adelphia Cable tycoon John Rigas buying the team.

“The reason that deal didn’t go through was because there really wasn’t any cash to it,” recalls Shields, claiming most of the offer was in stock. “Adelphia, at that time, was a highly leveraged company. Those are always red flags to me.”
Red flags later lead to an orange jump suit for Rigas.

Yet McClatchy has never been portrayed as “the man who saved baseball in Pittsburgh” in a way similar to how Mario Lemieux has been tabbed “the man who save hockey in Pittsburgh.” After all, has the team really been saved when it still appears to be on life support?

CARPETBAGGER?
Since he bought the team 10 years ago, Pittsburghers have been predicting the day that he’d move it to another city.

“A lot of people were convinced that I’d be in Pittsburgh for two to three years, and that then I would move the team, and that I was a carpetbagger and that was my goal. Well it was never my goal. But I’ve never seen the articles that said I wasn’t carpetbagger after all.”

Despite all the rumors about McClatchy moving the team, he maintains he was never close to doing so. The only thing he allows is that, had the new stadium never been built, he would’ve considered selling the team to someone else in Pittsburgh and then letting them do with it what they desired.

A lot of McClatchy critics would love to take that chance just to see someone else try to run the team.

“I know there are people out there who say, ‘If we get rid of McClatchy, things will get better in Pittsburgh.’ But I don’t really see this magic owner sitting out there who wants to subsidize a small market team. Getting rid of me isn’t going to change our market size. Getting rid of me isn’t going to change our television contracts…I probably have a better shot at trying to change that, given my position in Major League Baseball, than any new owner would have coming into this market.”

In McClatchy’s words, “you have to be close to perfect” to win as a small market team. By his own admission, McClatchy has been anything but that. And going into his tenth year as team owner, McClatchy still has a long way to go to learn how to be that way.

But there are some – outside of Pittsburgh – who feel he is doing as well as can be expected – given the circumstances.

“McClatchy tried to do the right thing before opening the right ballpark, and like the Tigers, Brewers and Reds, his Cleveland model fell short,” said ESPN analyst Peter Gammons. “Instead of sitting there throwing mad money in the rivers, he is trying to get it right.”

If there is one thing McClatchy has learned, it’s how to absorb the slings and arrows of a fan base that has grown tired of the learning curve. He can handle the rants about losses. He can take the personal shots and inferences about his intentions as a businessman. He can even withstand hate mail about the price of bottled water. Just so long as disgruntled Pirates’ fans don’t blame him for all the rain, he’ll keep trying. But even the most ardent McClatchy critic wouldn’t try to pin that on him too. Would they?