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Mariner owners find 'out' pitch on cost overruns
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By ART THIEL
If only the Mariner franchise were as good at finding pitchers as it is ferreting out loopholes.
Then again, what is the point in being so adept?
Pitchers cost money. Loopholes make money.
Or, as part-owner Howard Lincoln put it yesterday:
"The controversy is worth it to get there."
Finally, the first clear statement in this ownership group's seven-year tenure about its priorities and intentions.
The "Field of Dreams" claptrap about blue skies and green grass has always been a ruse to dupe the rubes into believing that there is something more at stake here than money. There isn't.
Doesn't matter that yesterday's ploy by M's ownership will leave them branded as liars, betrayers and symbols of corporate America's reckless indifference.
Doesn't matter that they will drag the franchise, its followers, the local legal system, the Public Facilities District and King County (read: thee and me) through a legal battle of at least many months and perhaps multiple years.
Doesn't matter that they've figuratively defaced baseball's most glorious new park, the Guilty Pleasure.
Doesn't matter that nothing in the legal harangue will make the team any less enfeebled.
What matters is that they have found a narrow, nifty little legal argument that gets them, using Lincoln's word, "there" -- $60 million richer, thanks to a windfall of excess public money accruing from taxes.
My degree in the infield fly rule is insufficient to help me determine the merits of the owners' legal argument. What I do know is over the last year they hired two local law firms, as well as one from New York, plus an investment bank, to analyze the agreement between the club and PFD.
The hired guns came to the unanimous conclusion that the owners have a solid legal case against the PFD's claim that it is not obliged to fetch the excess tax money for the owners.
I'm willing to bet that none of the high-priced counselors issued a peep about the consequences of lost community goodwill.
That's because it doesn't matter to the owners. Goodwill can't be quantified in cash. Even if it could be quantified, it would be negligible to them, for a simple reason: Baseball's a monopoly.
This isn't Nordstrom abandoning its return policy. This isn't Radio Shack doubling its prices. This isn't the Dahlia Lounge serving Spam.
For those highly competitive businesses, goodwill means everything. But Puget Sound fans of major league baseball have no other choice. The owners, including this group's many predecessors, have always known it, using the cudgel for 23 years.
That's why ownership never blinked in the last year when the PFD presented the cost overruns, which were mostly due to the preposterous number of change orders dictated by the oppressive Mariner construction timetable.
The owners knew, but never said, that they were mapping a strategy to recover later much of what was spent at any moment to open the park on time. They also never corrected their supporters, who won legislative votes for the stadium in October 1995 by assuring that the public contribution was capped.
Yesterday Mariner CEO John Ellis had the audacity to claim that the only "cap" in the legislation was the Mariners' $45 million in naming rights. Even more audacious is the Mariner claim that they weren't fibbing when they said they were picking up the tab for the overruns.
While it's true they have paid the bills, they stayed quiet until yesterday about coming after the PFD for additional taxes already being collected, money that is supposed to go to early retirement of the county's bond debt.
A mediator, or an arbitrator, or a judge, ultimately will rule on the law. But in the court of public opinion, the owners have already violated the spirit of the legislation and the public will.
To that, the owners respond:
So what?
They know nobody can stop them.
They know they're going to get blasted from this column to Kingdome come, and it won't make any difference.
They are absolutely right.
Because even if they lose the legal decisions, or even if the King County Council sticks to its position of no more public money, the owners will hold hostage Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez.
If the tax money is denied, the owners will argue they can't afford to re-sign the Mariner stars.
The council will eventually cave, because it can't resist public pressure. And the owners know the public will eventually come around to their side.
The owners know because:
They know that sports fans are gullible, foolish, demanding and love to blame governments.
The owners will get their way.
Art Thiel is a P-I columnist.
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