Pirates chief executive officer Kevin McClatchy jokes with reporters while escorting Bob Nutting, the team's principal owner, during spring training workouts at the Pirate City complex in Bradenton, Fla.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
We come here today to extol Kevin McClatchy, not to disparage him. There has been enough of that: here, there and everywhere.
We come here to remind you that the man who for too long has been everyone's favorite punching bag never had anything but the best interest of Pittsburgh baseball in mind.
We come here to remind you that no one wanted to win more than he.
And, sadly, we come here to remind you he had neither the finances, the personality nor the expertise to execute the daring plan he undertook, as a young man of 32 some 12 years ago, to buy the floundering Pittsburgh Pirates.
Once he was Prince Charming on a shiny white horse. He was the man who saved baseball in Pittsburgh. Let's not forget that in the wake of the news that he is stepping down as the team's CEO at the end of the season.
There have been 11 losing seasons, going on 12, on his watch. That's what people most know about McClatchy. But without him there might not have been any losing seasons. Or any seasons at all.
While the fabulously wealthy of Pittsburgh understandably looked away when the Pirates were for sale in 1995, McClatchy, a Californian, stepped forward. He did not have the personal wealth for such an undertaking -- that would turn out to be his undoing -- but he had the energy, he had the ambition.
When you think of all those losing seasons, all those stinking trades and all those rotten signings, remember this: He saved the Pirates.
More than that, he saved them for another generation. He was the driving force behind the building of PNC Park. If there is baseball in Pittsburgh for another 25 years, and there should be, the man most responsible for that is Kevin S. McClatchy.
He came from a wealthy family, and although he had money, his fortune was paltry compared to the vast majority of baseball owners. There's no way he should have been able to grab control of a Major League Baseball franchise. But he did. He was the last bidder standing for the Pirates.
He probably didn't have much of a grasp of what was required when he took over ownership of the team in 1996. How many people in their early 30s do? His background in baseball was mostly as a fan, not as an owner or anyone who understood the intricacies of the business.
He wanted to win as badly as anyone. He just didn't know how to go about it.
Let's state the obvious: His 12-year run, during which he went from majority to minority owner, is a failed one. There's no getting around that. He had neither the finances nor the baseball expertise to play with the big spenders in the big markets.
His greatest fault would, in some circles, be a glorious attribute. He wasn't ruthless enough. He didn't have it in him to make some of the tough decisions required in running as competitive a business as an MLB franchise. He allowed Cam Bonifay to stay too long. Now he has allowed Dave Littlefield to stay too long.
It's impossible to be successful in a market the size of Pittsburgh with the mistakes made during the general manager tenures of Bonifay, who McClatchy fired in June 2001, and Littlefield, who was hired less than two months later.
When chief operating officer Dick Freeman left in 2002, he wasn't replaced and McClatchy was thrust into the role of handling the day-to-day operations of the team. Freeman was steeped in baseball experience, as was marketing vice-president Steve Greenberg, who left a year earlier. In effect, there was no one on the business side of the operation who had baseball experience.
That's no way to run a business. Whether McClatchy wanted his new role or whether it was forced upon him by the Nutting family, which had slowly gained control of the franchise, we might never know. But with the Nuttings in control, a distinction that was formalized earlier this year when Bob Nutting became principal owner, more decisions were driven by bottom-line logic rather than baseball common sense.
That became obvious last month in the baseball draft when, for financial reasons, the Pirates passed on the player who was their obvious best choice. McClatchy mouthed the company line that day, but there's no way he believed it.
McClatchy's departure is not surprising. It has been speculated on for some time and that speculation became more intense when Bob Nutting publicly assumed control.
It was never any fun to rip McClatchy, although he was an easy target. He was never anything less than the ultimate gentleman. He bore no grudges. He always had a glad hand. It was the nature of his personality.
He'll soon be gone, but not so quickly forgotten. He'll best be remembered as the owner during all those losing seasons. But he deserves much more. He deserves to be remembered for keeping the Pirates and building PNC Park.
Above all, he should be remembered as a good man. Keep a good thought for him. I know I will.
(Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.)
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