Bonanza In The Bushes

By Barbara Rudolph

Like Crash Davis, the aging catcher in the hit summer movie Bull Durham, most minor-league baseball players ache to make it to the big leagues but spend their careers taking bumpy bus rides between small-town ball parks. They are like writers who aspire to pen the Great American Novel but settle for scripting comic books: their lives are a compromise, an apology for what might have been.

The owners of the teams, though, are another story. All across the U.S., well-to-do baseball buffs are eager to buy up clubs with names like the Memphis Chicks, Montana's Butte Copper Kings and the Toledo Mud Hens. These new barons of the bush leagues may not have gained the visibility of a George Steinbrenner or a Ted Turner, but they are having plenty of fun and making good money to boot. With minor-league attendance at 20 million last year, up 25% since 1981, owning a team has become not only a fulfillment of a boyhood fantasy but a grand-slam investment as well. Franchises that sold for $20,000 just four years ago now fetch $400,000 or more. The most successful farm clubs carry price tags of close to $5 million.

Many minor-league owners are major-league businessmen. The Buffalo Bisons are owned by Robert Rich Jr., president of the Rich Products frozen-food conglomerate, whose family is worth an estimated $450 million. Winston Cox, chief executive of the Showtime cable television network, is a principal owner of the San Jose Giants. The bush leagues have also attracted big-name investors. Among them: Singer Pia Zadora, an owner of the Portland Beavers of Oregon; Actor Mark Harmon, who has an interest in California's San Bernardino Spirit; and George Brett, the Kansas City Royals player, who is part owner of the Spokane Indians.

Opportunities to invest in the minors used to be limited, since about 90% of the farm clubs were once owned and operated by the major-league teams. But by the mid-1970s, as minor-league attendance hit a low point and expenses began to rise, major-league owners began unloading the subsidiaries to local businessmen. Today less than 15% of the teams are owned by major-league clubs.

The big-league teams, however, kept their affiliations with the farm clubs and still heavily subsidize them to develop players. The major-league teams pay the salaries of minor-league players, managers and coaches. Players' salaries range from an average of about $5,000 a month on Triple A clubs, the highest level in the minors, to $700 to $1,100 a month for both Class A ball and the lowest level of professional baseball, the rookie league. The parent clubs buy equipment and pick up the tab for 75% of the meal and hotel bills when the farm teams are on the road. The expenses add up: most franchises spend between $3 million and $4 million on their minor-league affiliates. The majors pocket none of the profits, but they do get the opportunity to develop, say, a Mark McGwire or a Jose Canesco, both graduates of the Oakland A's farm system and winners of Rookie-of-the-Year honors in the American League. But only 10% to 20% of all bush-league players ever make it to the "show," as they call the major leagues.

Despite the subsidies, many businessmen who bought minor-league teams back in the mid-1970s had a hard time turning profits. Recalls Stan Naccarato, president of the Tacoma Tigers: "Some of those owners couldn't sell $10 bills for a dime." They were happy just to kick the dirt in the dugout and scout the next Nolan Ryan.

Then the owners began to learn how to promote their clubs. Says Art Clarkson, a major shareholder and general manager of the Birmingham Barons: "The days of opening the gates and letting people in are over. We've had to get into the merchandising business." As in the majors, the minor-league clubs started ball, hat, bat and sweatband nights. Then the farm teams added a few gimmicks all their own. Several clubs offer home-plate weddings to their fans. Anyone attending a Birmingham Barons game can order a birthday cake brought to his seat and watch his name being flashed on the electronic scoreboard. The El Paso Diablos give away used cars -- after shooting off smoke bombs inside them. At a recent Buffalo Bisons game, the crowd watched a figure skater do her act on a plastic sheet atop a dugout.

Some of the stunts are crazier than anything the Phillie Phanatic would ever do. The Everett Giants of Washington have featured such carnival acts as fire eaters and Captain Dynamite, who seems to blow himself up. "The bizarre works fairly well for us," says Giants Owner Bob Bavasi. So do more orthodox gimmicks. The Louisville Redbirds brought in the Beach Boys for a postgame concert at a cost of $100,000. The game drew 22,000 fans to the stadium, three times the norm, while concessions took in $100,000, about four times the usual sales. At the final home game in September, the team will give away a $34,000 Corvette sports car in a random drawing.

The promotional ploys help make up for the earnest but second-rate play on the diamond. Fans know that any player who becomes a star will soon be promoted to a higher league. "We can't really highlight a player," says Bill Terlecky, general manager of the Maine Phillies, "because we might lose him." One consolation: many minor-league buffs can boast of having seen Dwight Gooden and other superstars play when they were fresh out of high school.

Fans seem to like the friendly ambience of bush-league ball. In many of the cozy parks, which often seat no more than 5,000, customers can sit in the top row of the grandstand and still catch snippets of conversations among ballplayers in the batting cage below. Trotting down to the bullpen wall for an autograph is easy. And to the delight of baseball purists, Astroturf has not made it to many minor-league parks.

Most important, the tickets are still cheap. Typically, a family of four can get into the game for about $10. The owners are able to hold down prices because of the subsidies from the major leagues and the other revenues, ranging from hot-dog and baseball-cap sales to advertising proceeds. The outfield fences in many of the parks are studded with billboards that local and national advertisers rent for the season for as much as $3,000.

An estimated three-quarters of all minor-league clubs are running in the black, in contrast to one-quarter 15 years ago. One Triple A team, the Columbus Clippers, earned $665,000 last year. Of the twelve Class A teams in the Midwest League last year, eleven earned profits that averaged $30,000 a team. That may not sound like much, but some of the owners bought or started their teams for less than $5,000.

More striking than the potential annual profit is the spectacular appreciation in the resale value of most clubs. Case in point: North Carolina's Durham Bulls, the Class A farm club of the Atlanta Braves featured in Bull Durham. Durham Businessman Miles Wolff bought the hapless Bulls for $2,500 in 1979. Today the team would sell for about $1 million. The Class AA Harrisburg Senators of Pennsylvania were unloaded for $45,000 in 1980 and are currently valued at some $1.5 million. Ten years ago, even Triple A clubs could be picked up for $50,000. Now they are worth between $2 million and $5 million.

Perhaps the Buffalo Bisons best illustrate the metamorphosis of the minors. In 1982 the Double A team drew an audience of just 77,000 for the season. That year Rich bought the franchise for $100,000. In 1984 he sold the team for $350,000 to investors who moved it to Pittsfield, Mass. A few months later, Rich picked up the Triple A Wichita Aeros for $1 million and moved the team to Buffalo. In 1987 the new Bisons attracted close to 500,000 to their games, the best attendance in the minors. This year the Bisons are playing in the new 19,500-seat Pilot Field, which two weeks ago was the site of the minor leagues' first All-Star Game, featuring players from all three Triple A leagues.

Some veteran bush-leaguers are concerned that people are paying far too much for minor-league franchises. "It's a rich man's game now," says Harry Steve, general manager of the San Jose Giants. Adds El Paso Diablos Owner Jim Paul: "I keep saying prices are going to hit a limit, although they don't." Like gold at $800 an oz. and stocks when the Dow hit 2700, the value of minor- league clubs could be due for a tumble.

But most of the new owners are not in the game just for the money. Eric Margenau bought into Indiana's South Bend White Sox last year, soon after his son Max was born. Says he: "I had visions of sitting in the front row, watching a game, me and my boy." The priceless pleasures of the ball park also attracted Craig Stein, a real estate developer who is an owner of the Reading Phillies of Pennsylvania and the Memphis Chicks. Says he: "Nobody likes development. You're the bad guy. In baseball, at the end of the night, you go home and feel good about what you do."

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/South Bend and Don Winbush/Durham