Ilitch Offered Model for Owners to Follow
As you know, late Detroit Tigers owner Mike Ilitch died last week.
Even if you follow the sport only casually, you’re probably aware that Ilitch wanted to win as badly as his club’s fans did — to a point, even, that sometimes led to irrational decision making. When Victor Martinez hurt his knee in the winter of 2012, for example, Ilitch spent $214 million on Prince Fielder. Since 2006, the Tigers’ payroll has been higher than the major-league average every season, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts via Baseball Prospectus — and higher by at least $30 million on eight occasions since that same year, including each of the last six years. As a reference point, the Detroit metro area was the 13th largest to host a major-league team last season.
Said Ilitch of winning to MLB.com after signing Jordan Zimmermann to a $110-million deal:
“That’s all I think about,” Ilitch said. “It’s something that I really want. I want it bad. We’re doing everything we can to make sure we get as many of the best ballplayers out there.”
Not all owners can say that. What percentage can say that, I’m not certain.
FanGraphs’ own Nathaniel Grow wondered in December of 2015 if Ilitch had accidentally suggested the possibility of collusion when asked if he’d go over the luxury threshold:
“I’m supposed to be a good boy and not go over it,” Ilitch said, “but if I think there are certain players that could help us a lot, I’ll go over it. Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.”
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Even those of us who aren’t Michigan natives – but care about the game – have some familiarity with his interest and passion for the Detroit community. While, as the Detroit Free Press has recently reported, his relationship with the city was complicated at times, he rehabilitated parts of downtown Detroit when few others were willing to make an investment in the depressed central business district. He was a philanthropist. He paid Rosa Parks’ rent.
Many of us are familiar with his story: the self-made pizza king was the son of immigrants, a Marine during the Korean War, and a former minor leaguer with the Tigers and Yankees. His rise from humble beginnings to billions in wealth is the type of American success story we prefer from our business tycoons. David Laurila wrote about Ilitch in his Sunday notes.
There’s little I can add to what has been said and written of Ilitch over the last week, and those that can say and write it best were and are part of the Detroit community. But when I remember Ilitch, there was one gesture that stands out to me in observing from a distance.
Think back to the 2009, in the midst of a financial crisis. Fear was palpable and widespread. And few areas where hurt more than Detroit. Once a mighty industrial center fueling the creation and growth of the middle class, the city was dealing with 20%-plus unemployment rates. Housing prices had collapsed to unthinkable levels. And the city’s iconic industry, that of the automobile, was in peril.
What I remember while living in South Carolina was a symbolic act Ilitch made at that time, which was recounted in a 2009 Sports Illustrated feature by Lee Jenkins.
The most stunning example of community outreach did not involve a nonprofit organization but a bankrupt one. At the end of last season General Motors decided it could no longer afford to sponsor the fountain over the centerfield fence at Comerica Park, which shoots great plumes into the air whenever a Tiger hits a home run. The fountain is the most valuable piece of advertising space in the stadium, and two corporations quickly expressed interest in taking GM’s place. One offered to pay $1.5 million for three years. Mike Ilitch, the Tigers’ owner, considered the offer seriously. Then he rejected it in favor of a deal that would pay him nothing at all. Ilitch kept the GM name where it was, free of charge, and added the Ford and Chrysler logos on each flank, over the message: THE DETROIT TIGERS SUPPORT OUR AUTOMAKERS. To emphasize the point, the Tigers invited one employee from each of the embattled car giants to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day. Before GM inspector Loretta Abiodun went into her windup, she turned and looked at the fountain. “It was breathtaking,” she says.
I’m not sure what keeping the ad above the center-field batter’s eye did for morale for the city, but everyone who attended a Tigers game saw it that year, everyone watching a Tigers home game via television saw it. A lot of folks saw it. The entire community saw it. By not chasing every dollar, Ilitch provided a powerful civic statement of hope and faith. The act said that not everyone was giving up on Detroit or its automakers.
I thought Ilitch at the time ought to be considered for SI’s Sportsman of the Year in 2009. (Derek Jeter won the honor instead.)
Major League Baseball is, of course, a business. Owners expect to make profits. And while it’s a business, it’s certainly not a normal business, as a sanctioned monopoly. Moreover, there’s a civic element few businesses share and enjoy. Major-league owners aren’t selling widgets, they’re selling a product to emotionally involved fans who see the club as an extension of the community, an element of the same tribe.
It probably wasn’t a rational decision to give Fielder $214 million, and other owners might not have agreed to zero dollars in ad revenue from the most valuable ad space in the ballpark. But one decision was made in an effort to win at all costs, and the other was made at no cost due to a sense of civic and moral obligation.
From the outside looking in, Ilitch seemed to exemplify what an owner of a major North American professional sports team should be, how he or she should operate, which is to not always act in a self-interested or rational manner. At a time when owners’ share of revenue has increased significantly and pinched MLB’s middle class of player, Ilitch is remembered fondly by many in Detroit for his willingness to act irrationally when it was required.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Sometimes, the decent gesture is just smart. The goodwill toward the Tigers for the fountain move probably exceeded the $1.5 mil in value they would have received in filthy lucre.
great read.
He was a good team owner because he spent a lot of money, but the people waxing poetically about him “revitalizing” the city are suburbanites who only come into one small section of the city for games and whose tax dollars aren’t currently paying for 2 of his stadiums. That Rosa Parks story keeps getting re-circulated and it’s the result of lazy journalism. Several people paid for her rent during that time, he just happened to contribute money to her trust
Considering that parts of the city have reverted to farmland and houses can be bought essentially for $1, the fact that he revitalized anything is worthy of praise. Detroit is a city that has been extremely poorly run for a long time. It’s not like there has been much else to celebrate.
If there is an example anywhere in this nation of how not to run a city, Detroit is that example. The corrupt mismanagement of that city was criminal.
Exactly. We can debate motives, but, when Ilitch started buying property & moved Little Caesars HQ downtown in the late 1980’s, NO ONE else was doing it.& he was ridiculed as being a moron for doing it. Detroit had the most corrupt, greedy, “pay for play”, racist government around. (The entire gov’t was AA, which is not an issue itself, but, they ran it like they were getting even for all the white racism that definitely occurred from the 1930’s to the riots & white flight of the 1960’s. We can debate the sociological reasons for this, but, it’s what happened. If you were Caucasian or from the burbs, good luck getting a fair shake. Big reason for the eventual bankruptcy/lack of investment in the city). Detroit had been the most racially polarized city in the US for years, the bankruptcy is what finally changed the mindset.
Now, you’re seeing investment, Dan Gilbert is buying a bunch of property, but, Ilitch did it when no one else would. & he’s going to have a huge entertainment complex tied to Comerica, Fox Theatre, Little Caesars Arena, etc.
He’s not a saint. He bought the property cheap & I’m sure the profit motive was as strong as any altruistic meaning, but, at the end of the day, it will lead to a more vibrant, healthy Detroit. Both parties win & nothing is wrong with that.
That’s an excellent, blunt, honest assessment. The media stays away from the issue because they don’t want to be seen as being racist, even though what happened in Detroit was totally racist.
I wonder if Ilitch regarded the Tigers more like a for-profit business or a hobby / business where maximizing profit or even making one isn’t prioritized at the same level.
From what I know, it is a complicated question. I believe that the Ilitch family has generally run the Tigers (and Red Wings) as a business, but that sentiment (and championships) were very important to Mr. I.
For almost all the owners, a baseball team is a business they run on the side, in conjunction with the main business (or businesses) that brought them the wealth that enabled them to buy a baseball team in the first place. (In some cases, by the time they’re buying a team their main business is “managing their wealth” but that’s really no different). A baseball team is a vanity project in a lot of ways, and vanity projects aren’t necessarily run entirely rationally. Any billionaire can buy a yacht, and many do, and none of them expect that to turn a profit; but while many billionaires can buy a yacht, only 30 of them can own an MLB team. It’s an exclusive club, and it also is (or can be, if the owner so chooses) a highly visible role in one particular city, for whatever that’s worth. Not to mention the owner’s suite is not a bad place to do a little schmoozing for the deals that keep your main business humming. But ultimately, they own the team because they like the idea of owning the team; while some may want it to make money every year as a business, others are a little more indulgent and willing to view it more like a yacht.
But all of them expect to turn a profit when they sell it to the next billionaire in line, and lately at least none have been disappointed. In that way a team is no different from a Van Gogh painting: something very rare and expensive they can enjoy while they own it, while still making bank when they get tired of it.
I would like to note that this is not the way it always was. At one time, baseball teams were profit centers for the owners. There was always the risk of bankruptcy which was not only embarrassing but potentially personally financially ruinous for the owner. Even so, major league baseball owners were often already wealthy by the time they bought in even when teams weren’t very expensive. The hobby/prestige factor goes way back.
What did billionaire Mike Ilitch leave Detroit?
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/02/15/ilit-f15.html
There’s no doubt that Mike Illitch was a person, just like anyone else, with strengths and weaknesses. However, the best way to raise those points is probably not a website with a banner celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Why not?
Because Communism was the most evil political system in the modern history of the world, murdering over 150 million citizens in cold blood. That’s why. And because there are some people on Fangraphs who fought Communism and saw firsthand how vilely evil it was, and at least one whose unit fought its way into a city that Communists had captured, and found men, women, children, and babies dead in rows where they had been executed in cold blood for being middle class. That’s why.
Reference on the total of civilians murdered by Communism: https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM and a calculator. Personally, I suspect that Communism murdered a lot more people than that.
You seem to not understand what actually happened in the Soviet Union in the 1920s with the Left Opposition led by Trotsky which opposed Stalin. Stalin’s crimes were perpetuated against that Left Opposition and the Bolsheviks who led the Revolution in 1917. Stalin drowned the Revolution in blood, no doubt. By the way, how many victims has capitalism perpetuated? Every single war in the 20th and 21st Century is attributable to capitalism and the drive for profit that caused such wars, and threatens ever more war today. WW1 and WW2 are a good place to begin the body count of capitalism’s victims.
Thanks for the article, Travis. As a Michigan native and Tigers fan, I remember going to Tigers games in the depths of the recession and being amazed by the display of solidarity/support on the fountain. He will be sorely missed.
Three best things to happen under Ilitch’s tenure:
1. Juan Gonzalez turning down that $140M offer.
2. Replacing Randy Smith with an adult GM.
3. Getting the Rangers to not only take Prince Fielder, but give up Ian Kinsler.
I feel like being on the positive end of one of, if not the most lopsided trade of this century, is worthy of note.
Two words: Shelby Miller.
Ilitch was a great human being. It’s sad that none of his overpaid yet underperforming teams ever manned up and won a World Series for him. He deserved it.
Ilitch was a real backbone of Detroit in its time of need. I only lived in the area briefly but it wasn’t hard to see the bunker mentality, never-say-die attitude among the residents. Ilitch no doubt fostered some of that mentality by his commitment to the downtown area and charitable efforts.
It’s often hard to justify praise for billionaire sports team owners, but in a time of Jeffrey Lorias and James Dolans, it’s easy to see that Ilitch was one of the good ones. He’ll be deeply missed in Metro Detroit.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/the-glorious-exit-of-jeffrey-loria-the-worst-owner-in-sports-054809854.html
If you haven’t read Jeff Passan’s column on Loria leaving baseball, you should.