JMK
Jul 19th, 2002, 07:51:45 PM
Local writer Jack Todd has been writing a daily rant on how Loria, Samson and Selig have wrecked baseball here, and as a whole. It started this past tuesday and continued today. I do hope that this lawsuit is taken seriously and the screw jobs that are responsible for this are punished. Not only to save my team, but the shed light on how corrupt baseball really is.
Making baseball pay
Top business names want to make game accountable for trying to destroy the Expos
JACK TODD
Montreal Gazette
The 14 limited partners who filed suit yesterday against Jeffrey Loria, David Samson and Bud Selig Jr. have taken an axe to the root of the rotten tree that is Major League Baseball. Whether they can help to dig out the corruption, ineptitude and self-serving greed that has put the game where it is today remains to be seen - but the filing of that lawsuit in a Miami courtroom yesterday was a historic milestone in the sport.
Montrealers can be proud that some of the most distinguished business names in this city, including those of Stephen Bronfman and Jacques Ménard, are associated with the attempt to make baseball accountable for what it did to the game in this city.
To a sport already reeling from labour strife, steroid allegations, financial difficulties and the failed attempt to contract the Expos and the Minnesota Twins, the lawsuit is absolute dynamite. The commissioner of baseball himself (and his top lieutenant, Bob DuPuy) have been sued under the provisions of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which was passed to target organized crime.
Baseball meets the Sopranos, in other words - and baseball comes off rather worse than the fictional New Jersey crime family. Selig, the game's single greatest liability, now finds himself accused of conspiring to destroy a major-league team in a $100-million lawsuit that carries with it the additional financial wallop of a demand for three times that much in damages.
Also hidden in the lawsuit is a demand for an injunction that would prevent baseball from contracting or moving the Expos until the lawsuit is settled. With a full-scale fire sale under way at their new franchise in Florida, Loria and Samson have already made themselves wildly unpopular with Marlins fans. Their fellow owners, meanwhile, have to be wondering how Selig ever let the game get mixed up with such unsavoury characters in the first place.
Excuse me for saying this, but: I told you so.
The inexcusable rants of Loria's few remaining defenders in this city aside, for at least a year now there has been no question as to what Loria and Samson did in Montreal. As the lawyers for the limited partners charged yesterday, Loria and Samson undermined the Expos by:
- Sabotaging the well-developed plans to build a new ball park in downtown Montreal;
- Undermining efforts to attract additional private equity and government support for the franchise;
- Abandoning local television and English-language radio coverage for a season;
- Alienating longtime sponsors.
The question is why they set out to destroy a team they supposedly wanted to own. Were they simply incompetent? Were they looking to line their own pockets at the expense of the baseball fans of the city?
Or were they acting on explicit orders from Major League Baseball (read Selig himself) - with the promise of a handsome buyout if they succeeded in undermining the last foundations of the game in Montreal?
The answer is probably a combination of all three. Loria and Samson did line their own pockets, from the moment they began paying themselves million-dollar salaries to the day they waltzed out of town with a $120-million (U.S.) payment from Major League Baseball, along with a $38-million (U.S.) loan to buy the Marlins in a secretive three-way switch that also saw former Marlins owner John Henry take over the Boston Red Sox, even though there were higher bids for the Red Sox on the table.
Loria's $120 million was, from all appearances, his payoff from baseball for trashing the Montreal franchise. He made that much money off a minimal investment, probably less than $40 million Canadian, if indeed he made any investment at all in the Expos. No one except Loria, Samson and their financial officer, Joel Mael, really knows how much money Loria put up.
Given the sizeable transfer payments from Major League Baseball and all the other revenue flowing the way of the Expos (despite all the denials) it is possible that Loria never invested a dime of his own money, despite the two showy cash calls designed to muscle out the limited partners.
If nothing else, perhaps this lawsuit will finally shed some light on what was really going on during the period when Loria owned the team. In a secretive game, no owner operates in a more secretive fashion than Loria. The tip-off that something was rotten came almost immediately after Loria took over, when he named his stepson as team president, with an annual million-dollar salary. Samson had not an instant of experience in any majorleague front office, and the situation in Montreal cried out for someone like Richard Legendre or Larry Smith, able French-speaking executives with strong contacts in government and business.
Instead, Loria appointed as president an abrasive nonentity with little knowledge of the business of baseball and none whatsoever of local politics and business. The limited partners had put forward the names of several highly qualified candidates, but Loria over-ruled them. The reason, we know now, is not that his stepson needed a high-paying job, although that was certainly part of it - it was so that no one outside the closed circle of Loria, Samson and Mael would know what they were up to.
Part of the plot was to convince the limited partners - in an infamous meeting in May 2000 - that the club was in far worse shape than it was and that the salary spiral in baseball would be so dramatic that the average team payroll would rise to $100 million within the span of the next collective agreement.
Loria and Samson did everything possible to paint the bleakest possible financial picture for the limited partners before that fateful May meeting. In September of that same year, a source with knowledge of the inner workings of the Expos business office at the time said that pressure was put on the club's accountants before the meeting to show that the team's line of credit was maxed out, when in fact the Expos still had several million dollars in credit to draw on.
That was the game: make it look as though the franchise had no hope. Give up the option on the downtown land for a new ball park. Fail to market the club. Get rid of the sponsors. Squeeze out the partners with phony cash calls and get out of town.
There is little doubt about what Loria and Samson did here. The Expos may well have died without them - but with those two poisoning the franchise from within, events were sped up by at least a couple of years. The real question is to what extent they were co-operating with Selig in a conspiracy to cut the Montreal franchise adrift.
It is at least possible that some plan to save the Expos may come out of this. A lawsuit like this could drag on for years, but if in the end the court rules in favour of the 14 plaintiffs, it is not inconceivable that Loria, Selig and baseball itself could end up financing a new ball park for Montreal.
Now, that would be justice.
Making baseball pay
Top business names want to make game accountable for trying to destroy the Expos
JACK TODD
Montreal Gazette
The 14 limited partners who filed suit yesterday against Jeffrey Loria, David Samson and Bud Selig Jr. have taken an axe to the root of the rotten tree that is Major League Baseball. Whether they can help to dig out the corruption, ineptitude and self-serving greed that has put the game where it is today remains to be seen - but the filing of that lawsuit in a Miami courtroom yesterday was a historic milestone in the sport.
Montrealers can be proud that some of the most distinguished business names in this city, including those of Stephen Bronfman and Jacques Ménard, are associated with the attempt to make baseball accountable for what it did to the game in this city.
To a sport already reeling from labour strife, steroid allegations, financial difficulties and the failed attempt to contract the Expos and the Minnesota Twins, the lawsuit is absolute dynamite. The commissioner of baseball himself (and his top lieutenant, Bob DuPuy) have been sued under the provisions of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which was passed to target organized crime.
Baseball meets the Sopranos, in other words - and baseball comes off rather worse than the fictional New Jersey crime family. Selig, the game's single greatest liability, now finds himself accused of conspiring to destroy a major-league team in a $100-million lawsuit that carries with it the additional financial wallop of a demand for three times that much in damages.
Also hidden in the lawsuit is a demand for an injunction that would prevent baseball from contracting or moving the Expos until the lawsuit is settled. With a full-scale fire sale under way at their new franchise in Florida, Loria and Samson have already made themselves wildly unpopular with Marlins fans. Their fellow owners, meanwhile, have to be wondering how Selig ever let the game get mixed up with such unsavoury characters in the first place.
Excuse me for saying this, but: I told you so.
The inexcusable rants of Loria's few remaining defenders in this city aside, for at least a year now there has been no question as to what Loria and Samson did in Montreal. As the lawyers for the limited partners charged yesterday, Loria and Samson undermined the Expos by:
- Sabotaging the well-developed plans to build a new ball park in downtown Montreal;
- Undermining efforts to attract additional private equity and government support for the franchise;
- Abandoning local television and English-language radio coverage for a season;
- Alienating longtime sponsors.
The question is why they set out to destroy a team they supposedly wanted to own. Were they simply incompetent? Were they looking to line their own pockets at the expense of the baseball fans of the city?
Or were they acting on explicit orders from Major League Baseball (read Selig himself) - with the promise of a handsome buyout if they succeeded in undermining the last foundations of the game in Montreal?
The answer is probably a combination of all three. Loria and Samson did line their own pockets, from the moment they began paying themselves million-dollar salaries to the day they waltzed out of town with a $120-million (U.S.) payment from Major League Baseball, along with a $38-million (U.S.) loan to buy the Marlins in a secretive three-way switch that also saw former Marlins owner John Henry take over the Boston Red Sox, even though there were higher bids for the Red Sox on the table.
Loria's $120 million was, from all appearances, his payoff from baseball for trashing the Montreal franchise. He made that much money off a minimal investment, probably less than $40 million Canadian, if indeed he made any investment at all in the Expos. No one except Loria, Samson and their financial officer, Joel Mael, really knows how much money Loria put up.
Given the sizeable transfer payments from Major League Baseball and all the other revenue flowing the way of the Expos (despite all the denials) it is possible that Loria never invested a dime of his own money, despite the two showy cash calls designed to muscle out the limited partners.
If nothing else, perhaps this lawsuit will finally shed some light on what was really going on during the period when Loria owned the team. In a secretive game, no owner operates in a more secretive fashion than Loria. The tip-off that something was rotten came almost immediately after Loria took over, when he named his stepson as team president, with an annual million-dollar salary. Samson had not an instant of experience in any majorleague front office, and the situation in Montreal cried out for someone like Richard Legendre or Larry Smith, able French-speaking executives with strong contacts in government and business.
Instead, Loria appointed as president an abrasive nonentity with little knowledge of the business of baseball and none whatsoever of local politics and business. The limited partners had put forward the names of several highly qualified candidates, but Loria over-ruled them. The reason, we know now, is not that his stepson needed a high-paying job, although that was certainly part of it - it was so that no one outside the closed circle of Loria, Samson and Mael would know what they were up to.
Part of the plot was to convince the limited partners - in an infamous meeting in May 2000 - that the club was in far worse shape than it was and that the salary spiral in baseball would be so dramatic that the average team payroll would rise to $100 million within the span of the next collective agreement.
Loria and Samson did everything possible to paint the bleakest possible financial picture for the limited partners before that fateful May meeting. In September of that same year, a source with knowledge of the inner workings of the Expos business office at the time said that pressure was put on the club's accountants before the meeting to show that the team's line of credit was maxed out, when in fact the Expos still had several million dollars in credit to draw on.
That was the game: make it look as though the franchise had no hope. Give up the option on the downtown land for a new ball park. Fail to market the club. Get rid of the sponsors. Squeeze out the partners with phony cash calls and get out of town.
There is little doubt about what Loria and Samson did here. The Expos may well have died without them - but with those two poisoning the franchise from within, events were sped up by at least a couple of years. The real question is to what extent they were co-operating with Selig in a conspiracy to cut the Montreal franchise adrift.
It is at least possible that some plan to save the Expos may come out of this. A lawsuit like this could drag on for years, but if in the end the court rules in favour of the 14 plaintiffs, it is not inconceivable that Loria, Selig and baseball itself could end up financing a new ball park for Montreal.
Now, that would be justice.