Senators on the Move

While the Washington Senators were defeating the Cleveland Indians 9-1 in Robert F. Kennedy Stadium last week, the home-town team was losing a far more significant battle in Boston by the score of 10-2. That was the vote by which the American League team owners agreed to let Senator Owner Bob Short move his club to the Dallas-Fort Worth area next season. The Senators' need to move was underscored by the fact that the Cleveland game drew only 1,072 fans, the smallest turnout in the league this season.

Short, who bought the Senators in 1968 for $9,400,000, says that he lost $3,000,000 trying to build a winning team. Many baseball men think that he chose a funny way of spending his money. Short's first gate-building move and a good one--was to sign Ted Williams as the Senators' manager. But last fall, overriding Williams' objections, Short traded half of the team's infield and $80,000 to get Denny McLain, Detroit's bad-boy pitcher. McLain reciprocated by becoming this season's first 20-game loser. As the Senators disintegrated from a mediocre but interesting ball club to a bad but uninteresting one (they are currently 33 games out of first place in the league's Eastern Division), home attendance dropped from 824,789 last year to 631,933 so far this season. Short did nothing to help stir fan interest when he greatly increased ticket prices to a top of $6, the highest in the league.

Favorable Cuts. With debts building, Short started looking for an out. He found it when a Dallas-Fort Worth syndicate offered him a $7,500,000 bank loan at low interest, a stadium that will be expanded from 21,000 seats to 50,000, a $1,000,000 TV contract, and favorable cuts from food and parking concessions. When one Washington group, headed by Supermarket Magnate Joe Danzansky, countered with an offer of $7,900,000 last week, their bid was rejected by the team owners because it was too "thinly financed." The same charge could conceivably have been made against Short, a trucking and real estate millionaire who lives in Minneapolis, when he bought the club.

With the league's blessing on his move, Short pronounced himself in "a more favorable position than any major league operator that I know of." The position of baseball itself, however, was less than favorable. Democratic Congressman B.F. Sisk of California called it "an illustration of just what money grabbers these people can be." North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin, who happens to be chairing a Senate hearing on the possible merger of the two professional basketball leagues, called for antitrust legislation that would prevent franchise owners from shifting their teams like "private playthings" from city to city with a "public-be-damned attitude."

Short-term Payoff. The league's action left Washington without a major league baseball club for the first time in 71 years--although there is a possibility that the National League's financially hard-pressed San Diego Padres might be persuaded to take up residence at Kennedy Stadium. Even if that happens, baseball's moneymen must still calculate the cost. And the short-term payoff that they see in their latest moves may not come close to making up for the loss of their most important asset: the loyalty of their fans.

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