New Padre Owner Decries ‘Tightwad’ Label : Foundering Mariners Vexed the Businessman in Argyros

His friends insist that to George Argyros, baseball is more a passion than a business, an investment where he measures his return not so much in dollars and cents as in the psychic rewards--and, yes, ego boost--associated with being one of the 26 principal owners of the chess pieces in America’s national pastime.

“He really feels that the relationship we have with baseball in America is unique, that it occupies a special place in our culture unlike anything else, unless it’s apple pie and the Statue of Liberty,” said Chapman College President G.T. (Buck) Smith.

Many people in Seattle, however, gained a markedly different perspective during the six years in which Argyros owned the Seattle Mariners, the American League team that he announced last month he plans to sell so he can acquire the San Diego Padres in a reported $40-million to $50-million deal.

In Seattle, Argyros was widely decried as a tightwad owner whose preoccupation with keeping the Mariners’ payroll low--at $5.3 million, it was the lowest in the major leagues, compared to the Padres’ $11.7-million figure, according to a 1986 survey--contributed to consistently keeping the Mariners at the bottom of the standings. His detractors also accused Argyros of trying to rigidly apply conventional business principles to what is essentially a form of entertainment, and saw his declaration that “patience is for losers” as a failure to recognize that successful baseball teams cannot be built as quickly or easily as apartments.

Furthermore, in what some describe as perhaps the ultimate irony in a sport where owners detest players’ bids to obtain higher salaries through renegotiations of multiyear contracts, some Seattle public officials note that Argyros himself demanded that his own lease governing the Mariners’ occupancy of the Seattle Kingdome be revised to increase his revenue, threatening to relocate the team to another city if he did not get his way.

“It may well be that he has all those altruistic motives about baseball,” said former King County (Seattle) Executive Randy Revelle. “But I also know that, through some tough, hard-nosed renegotiations with several governments, he gained about a $27-million improvement in his lease. That doesn’t sound like a pure baseball lover to me.”

Argyros and his supporters, however, see nothing inconsistent about his approach, and they argue that by working, in Argyros’ words, to “restore fiscal sanity” to baseball, he has made a lasting contribution to the game.

“In the early ‘80s in baseball, things just got out of hand with the escalation of players’ salaries and expenses going through the roof,” Argyros said. “I think that did threaten the sport’s long-term survival, or certainly that of some franchises in the smaller markets.

“I don’t blame the players, and I don’t blame their agents for that. I think the ones at fault were the owners because they just weren’t fiscally responsible or prudent in some of the decisions they made. They let these things happen. So I don’t blame anyone but the owners themselves, and I’m one of them. But now I sense that baseball has finally studied the facts, and you’re going to see a lot more realism on the financial side.”

Argyros, who jokingly describes himself as a former “two-hop catcher” in high school--meaning that his throws rarely reached second base on the fly--speaks nostalgically about his 1981 decision to purchase the Mariners, then an unstable 4-year-old expansion franchise.

“Baseball acts as a wonderful role model--it’s the best of all professional sports in that way,” he said. “It’s such an integral part of our culture and heritage. It’s part of our vocabulary--listen to conversations, and baseball terminology is everywhere. To be part of it is rewarding to me, not necessarily financially rewarding, but rewarding in the sense of continuing my commitment to in some way pay back society . . . for my good fortune.”

Business considerations also figured prominently in the $13-million purchase, however. In an interview at the time, Argyros acknowledged that he bought the Mariners only after his Orange County real-estate development firm, Arnel Development Co. and Affiliates, conducted a two-year study on the feasibility of owning a sports franchise, and admitted that ownership of the team offered tax write-offs that “fit in nicely with our other businesses.”

Six-Year Disaster

In the six full seasons in which Argyros owned the Mariners, they were a disaster in the standings and at the box office, resulting in a reported $23-million loss for Argyros.

The team never had a winning season or finished higher than fourth in the American League Western Division. Last year, the Mariners finished last with a 67-95 record under former Padres Manager Dick Williams, the fifth Seattle manager during Argyros’ tenure as owner.

The average annual attendance was about 924,000--about 50,000 lower than it had been before Argyros bought the team.

For an enormously successful businessman with the reputation of having a Midas touch, the Mariners’ dismal economic and athletic performance was a bitter disappointment for Argyros.

“I think it drove him absolutely crazy,” said Charles (Red) Scott, president of Intermark and a major figure in the San Diego sports community who is a close friend of Argyros. “Everything else he’s touched has been a winner. But the Seattle thing has been the pain of his life and frustrated him beyond all measure.”

Although his business dealings in Orange County prevented him from attending many of the Mariners’ home games in Seattle, Argyros became, his wife said, “a real baseball addict,” listening to most of the team’s games on a special radio tie-line hooked up to a speaker telephone in his Newport Beach house or watching them on TV after he had a satellite dish installed.

“He went through mood swings depending on how the team was doing,” Judie Argyros explained. “If they were winning, he was happy. But during losing streaks, sometimes George wasn’t a lot of fun. He seemed to let the team’s winning or losing affect his outlook on other things.”

Front-Office Decision

Criticized for his failure to pursue big-salary free agents who perhaps could have helped to improve the Mariners’ on-field performance, Argyros said that tack stemmed not from his opposition to free agentry or even multimillion-dollar contracts for players.

Rather, it was the result, he said, of a front-office decision that, “instead of looking for quick, temporary fixes,” the team should be “built from within” by developing a strong minor league system--an area in which the Mariners have made substantial progress during the Argyros era.

Toward that end, the Mariners last year “ate” about $2.5 million in the salaries of some older players who were released, Argyros said--a fact that he complains is usually overlooked by those who fault him for the team’s low payroll.

Though Argyros says he is “philosophically opposed” to players’ attempts to renegotiate multiyear contacts, some of his critics contend that he violated his own principle in his dealings with public officials in Seattle.

Through two separate amendments to the Mariners’ 20-year lease, Argyros received contractual changes--including higher percentages of concession revenues and waivers of rent and certain other fees associated with the team’s use of the Kingdome--worth about $27 million, according to former King County Executive Revelle.

Argyros insisted in an interview that Seattle officials initiated both rounds of renegotiations, the first time shortly after he bought the team to settle a lawsuit filed by the previous owners and the second in 1984-1985 to, among other things, resolve a scheduling conflict that resulted in both the Mariners and the Seattle Seahawks football team being scheduled to use the Kingdome on the same date in September, 1984.

Details Hazy

Details of the origins of the first renegotiation are hazy. Ron Dunlap, Revelle’s predecessor, said he could “not recall who made the first move,” but he characterized the talks as “sort of a mutual thing in which two people tried to work out a problem.”

But Revelle vigorously disputed Argyros’ account of the second major renegotiation.

“George not only initiated the second round, he forced it through a scheduling conflict which he precipitated,” Revelle said. “In my mind, the whole thing was a smoke screen . . . for trying to dramatically improve the lease.”

Though the Mariners’ lease stated that the team’s executives should use their “best efforts” in scheduling games from August through October--when the professional football and baseball seasons overlap--the 1984 dispute ultimately was settled by the Seahawks rescheduling their game. The Mariners’ inflexible stance, Revelle argues, was “just a negotiating ploy” on Argyros’ part.

Some Seattle businessmen, however, defended Argyros’ attempts to improve his lease.

“When George bought the team, he inherited a lease that was simply not competitive,” said Seattle bank executive John Hough, a major figure in the city’s sports community. “Under the best-case scenario, not only could you not expect to make a profit, but you could not even hope to break even. It just didn’t pencil out, and I don’t fault him at all for trying to change that.”

As part of those protracted renegotiations, the subject of considerable controversy in Seattle, Argyros insisted on an “escape clause” that created the potential for him to relocate the Mariners to another city prior to the expiration of the lease in 1996 if the team’s heavy financial losses continued in Seattle, Revelle explained.

Though he feels that he received some unfair criticism in Seattle, Argyros said that he understands--and, to a degree, even appreciates--the fans’ reaction.

“If you win, the players and managers get the credit, but if you lose, the owner gets a lot of the blame--that’s just the way it is,” he said. “But that’s the beautiful thing, the wonderful nuance, about baseball. It’s a game where everyone thinks they can manage, whether it’s a cab driver or your mother or a kid. Second-guessing is part of the game.”

‘Damaging Phenomenon

His friends believe that Argyros’ business background may be at the heart of some of the criticism directed at him in the past.

“He believes in rewarding people after the fact, not before--that’s very fundamental with him,” Chapman College President Smith said. “I think something in him rebels against the notion of paying someone for something before they do the job.”

Concurring with that analysis, Argyros argues that guaranteed long-term, multiyear contracts--which often ensure that players will be paid millions of dollars annually, regardless of their performance--are “a very damaging phenomenon.”

“That grates me more than anything else,” Argyros said. “I believe that people should be rewarded on performance. If a player performs well and deserves $1.5 million or $2 million the next year, fine. But don’t lock that in for five years. Wait to see what happens.

“Historically, it’s been proven that long multiyear contracts don’t work because they take the human element and risk out of performance. I think the player frankly has to be at risk. That’s healthy for the player and healthy for the game.”

Argyros credits Intermark chief Scott with planting the thought of possibly buying the Padres in his mind late last year, adding that San Diego’s proximity to his Orange County business headquarters and home made that prospect particularly attractive to him.

“Red left a message at my office saying, ‘Why don’t you trade one of your apartment houses to Joan Kroc for the Padres?’ ” Argyros recalled. “I didn’t even know the team was for sale then. And I didn’t really think about it seriously for a long time. But when I finally got into it, it became more and more obvious that this was a much more logical situation for me and my family, in addition to my community and business interests.”

Optimism Bolstered

The Padres’ sale is expected to be completed by late spring, Argyros said. Because he cannot own two professional baseball teams simultaneously, Argyros intends to place the Mariners in trust if he has not sold the Seattle franchise by the time that the San Diego deal closes.

Hoping for different results on the field and at the box office in San Diego than he found in Seattle, Argyros said his optimism is bolstered by the fact that the Padres are “a mature franchise with a winning tradition and a solid fan base already established.”

“In Seattle, we didn’t have any of those things,” he said.

And Argyros, a hard-driving man for whom patience still comes grudgingly, added that within “a reasonable period,” he hopes to find one other thing in San Diego that would have appeared unfathomable in Seattle.

“Winning the World Series--no doubt about it, that’s what I want to do more than anything else,” Argyros said. “Contrary to what some in Seattle think, I’m very willing to spend money to get results. And that’s the result I’m after. Winning the World Series--that’s not too much to ask, is it?”