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One of the owners
taking it all more
seriously is Castellini—after
all, when you drop an estimated
$270 million to buy one of the more
cash-strapped franchises in baseball, you tend
to keep your eyes open for revenue. Since earning his
MBA from Wharton in 1967 and eventually running
his family's food-distribution and processing businesses,
Castellini had been a minority owner in several big league
franchises (including the Texas Rangers along with a certain
fellow named George W. Bush) but never had sat atop the
power pyramid. Now he does, and while that doesn't quite fit
his down-home, gregarious personality—"When you're the
owner," he lamented, "people look at you like you have two
heads"—Castellini is determined to bring back Cincinnati's
glory days of the 1970s Big Red Machine.
"We're in this because of a specific generational interest,"
Castellini said. "Was it to make a lot of money? No. And I
told my partners there will be no distributions. Everybody
who's in this is in it because they are passionate baseball fans—they're
passionate about the Cincinnati Reds and they care
about their city. In a small-market city like ours, we only have
two Major League teams, football and baseball. The psyche of
the city is very dependent upon the success of the two teams."
(Speaking of city psyches, it must be noted that it was a
Penn grad, Walter O'Malley, C'26, who moved the Dodgers
to Los Angeles after the 1957 season and in so doing broke
the hearts of generations of Brooklynites—but in so doing
brought major league baseball west of the Mississippi for the
first time. And O'Malley's Wharton-grad son, Peter, W'60,
ran the flagship franchise from 1970-98, becoming one of
the most beloved owners in big league history, paving the
way for baseball in the Olympics and overall internationalization
the sport that we now take for granted.)
For all baseball's romantic virtues, though, Castellini insists
on bringing to the Reds a disciplined business sense, lessons
he said he learned way back at Wharton. (Early results
were encouraging: the Reds, longtime small-market doormats,
started this season 23-12 as one of the best teams in
the National League.) He wants to build his roster through
the farm system, understanding that it's far more efficient to
develop your own capital (minor leaguers) than to compete
for it on the open market (major league free agency). He's
big on hiring the right people and empowering them to do
their jobs unfettered. And he doesn't mind a little Wharton
networking either—after noticing the gorgeous spring-
training facility that Montgomery got built in Clearwater,
FL, for the Phillies, Castellini chatted with him about doing
the same for a new Reds complex someday.
"Wharton gave me a lot of confidence to go out and
tackle almost any business challenge I encountered,"
Castellini said. "Baseball is a terrific challenge and a unique
industry, but it has a lot of things in common with the
ABCs of business."
If you can't own
a ballclub—and even
Wharton grads can have a hard
time scraping up the requisite $250
million—the next best thing is to run one
as the general manager, making trades, signing
free agents and generally finding your face on talk-radio
bullseyes year-round. Young Ivy Leaguers with little or no
baseball experience have become en vogue these days, with
several becoming general managers: Jon Daniels (Rangers,
Cornell), Paul DePodesta (Dodgers, Harvard), Theo Epstein
(Boston Red Sox, Yale) and Mark Shapiro (Cleveland Indians,
Princeton). No Penn grads yet, but if Jeff Luhnow keeps rising
in the Cardinals' front office, it won't be long.
Luhnow entered baseball in 2003 after starting two
companies from scratch, and brought that entrepreneurial
mentality to an industry that, ideologically, is about as progressive
as a glacier. Baseball folks typically like doing things
as they've always been done, and Luhnow, now 39, was
hired by the Cardinals in part to shake up an organization
that wanted new ideas. He now runs their scouting operation,
heading up the evaluation of high school and college
amateurs, manages an international talent pipeline from the
Caribbean and elsewhere, and oversees a department that
evaluates all players, including major leaguers, through sophisticated
quantitative analysis—all the while seeing those
ventures through the filter of a Wharton education.
"When you talk about where to put money as far as players
in the amateur draft or internationally or on the major
league free-agent market, we think of it as a portfolio of
investments," Luhnow said. "They all have different returns
and risks associated with them, and you try to find the right
mix. It's the same as if you're in a business where you're deciding
whether to put money into R&D, or a marketing
campaign, or a new manufacturing facility."
While most young executives are dismissed as numbers
geeks by baseball traditionalists—of which this industry has
never suffered a shortage—Luhnow focuses on the integration
of all ideas, new and old, into one operational, decision-
making philosophy. His influence certainly hasn't hurt, as the
Cardinals won 205 games from 2004-2005, the most in the
major leagues, and have an improving farm system.
"I had to start our international program from scratch,"
Luhnow said. "And I like to think we're doing many
things differently than we used to. I still feel like a bit of
an entrepreneur."
If Luhnow wants to draft any players from Rhode Island,
he might want to stop by the Extra Innings training center
in Warwick, opened last year by 1992 Wharton grad Todd
Mascena, himself a stand-out on Penn's baseball team as a
student. And if the Cardinals decide they want a new utility
infielder, they can find a ready-made one in yet another
Wharton product, current Texas Ranger Mark DeRosa.
A former Penn quarterback and baseball star, DeRosa
spent parts of seven seasons with the perennially playoff-
bound Atlanta Braves before joining the Rangers as a free
agent two offseasons ago. And while he has had some fine
major league moments—including a "walkoff" shot to
win a game over Baltimore early this season—he still feels
like he has to justify his career choice. "I had eight roommates
in college," he laughs, "and I probably make the least
out of all of them—and I play in the big leagues!" Then
again, DeRosa has had one experience those buddies would
give up their 401(k)s for.
Now bah-ting . . . Mahk . . . Deh-Roh-sah.
"When I walked into the batter's box at Yankee Stadium
in '99, to Bob Sheppard announcing my name in that voice,
it was just awesome," said DeRosa, now 31. "I went to games
as a kid and I remember him saying 'Dahn . . . Mat-ting-ly'—
and to hear him say my name, it was like, 'God, I've arrived.'"
Most of his teammates, DeRosa said, have no idea of
Wharton's prestige, and assume that every Ivy Leaguer walks
around with glasses and pocket protectors. ("If they went to
Smokey Joe's on a Saturday night," DeRosa chuckled, "I think
it would change their image of what going to Penn is about.")
But they'll sure be glad DeRosa has his Wharton degree if, after
his career ends, he goes into his brother's financial advisory
business and helps manage their considerable earnings. In the
meantime, DeRosa is trying to learn about running a club
from Daniels—and fitting some Penn-Cornell trash-talking
in there, too—in case he chooses to follow Luhnow's lead
and pursue a career in a baseball front office.
Daniels's appreciation
for DeRosa's intelligence
is mirrored in Boston, where
Red Sox brass, a gaggle of young
and intellectual thirtysomethings led by
Yale's Epstein, signed Searles this offseason in
the hope he can contribute to their bullpen staff
within a few years. Searles, now pitching at the Red Sox's
Double-A Portland (Maine) affiliate, took a rare route
to where he is today—rather than turn to professional
baseball full-time either after high school or college, he
signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates out of his Long Island
high school and played in the minors primarily as a summer
job, attending Wharton otherwise as a reasonably
regular student. He graduated last December and can
now, at age 25, focus entirely on baseball.
Then again, maybe he focuses too much. Like many
Ivy League athletes, Searles is accused of being a little too
cerebral on the field—"thinking too much" in baseball
parlance. (Perhaps you recall the Crash Davis line in Bull
Durham, "Don't think—it only hurts the ballclub.")
As Searles puts it half-jokingly, "They can see the wheels
turning on the mound. I'm thinking things through.
If I was dumb as a rock, I might be in the big leagues
by now." But Searles has improved to the point where
he has an outside shot of getting a callup to Boston in
September, to help the Sox in their pennant push as a
righthanded middle reliever.
As Searles wants to escape the minors, a Whartonite
one generation ahead of him, Marvin Goldklang, savors
every moment of it. "Minor league" has a certain pejorative
connotation, but no owner in the minor leagues
has had more of a blast operating clubs, and sharing
that joy with his community, than Goldklang. When
you consider that his main partners include Mike Veeck
(whose father, Bill, was known as Baseball's Barnum for
his promotional stunts) and comedian Bill Murray, it's a
wonder anyone their ballparks pay any attention to the
games. From sack races for childen to actual nuns giving
massages in the stands to pigs carrying baseballs for
the umpires to, yes, Vasectomy Night (in Charleston,
SC, one lucky man on Father's Day was going to get a
free vasectomy before the local church got, uh, snippy),
the Goldklang Group's half-dozen teams have played a
large role in the modern minor league boom by teaching
everyone to not take baseball too seriously.
"When people come into our ballparks, we view them as
customers, not as fans," said Goldklang, who also owns 3
percent of the New York Yankees. "The product is the experience.
It's not a baseball product or even an entertainment
product. We're in the business of creating positive experiences
for people in a manner wrapped around a baseball game."
Did that strategy work? Put it this way: The Goldklang
Group's four core franchises (in St. Paul, MN; Charleston;
Hudson Valley, NY; and Fort Myers, FL) cost $2.5 million
from 1989-1993. They are valued at about $30 million
today. And as he manages these holdings, Goldklang views
the "minor-league" label as less insulting than liberating,
as an opportunity to try things the starched-shirt major
leagues can not.
"We know who we are," Goldklang said, "and we're comfortable
with who we are."
Another minor league owner, Bob Friedman, W'61, concurs.
One of the former principal owners of the Norwich Navigators, a
AA farm team for the Yankees until 2004, Friedman now is
a limited partner with the team, which is now affiliated with
San Francisco Giants as the AA Connecticut Defenders. Friedman
fulfilled his lifelong desire to own a team. He says half the
current Yankee team played for him over the years, including
Bernie Williams, Andy Petit, and Derek Jeter. "I knew I wouldn't
be the next Phil Rizzuto, but this was the next best thing," he
said. "It keeps me young."
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