Bavasi does it his way

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, May 7, 2005

What did he not like about baseball?

That might seem an unusual question for someone who made a pretty decent living at owning a minor league baseball team.

But, truth be told, Bob Bavasi was never really a fan of the game. He knew he had a second baseman but he couldn’t have told you his name. He couldn’t quote you statistics. Couldn’t tell you what his ace pitcher threw. And, frankly, didn’t really care.

What he did care about were the customers. The fans.

He wanted to make sure they had a good time at the old ballgame. And if you ever went to Everett Memorial Stadium to see a game when Bavasi owned the Class A Northwest League team that started out as the Giants and later became the AquaSox, chances are you had a fun time. And went back. Again and again.

Bavasi didn’t know baseball, but he did know how to entertain. And when you plunked down your money at Everett Memorial, you got not only baseball but between-inning fun and games that kept the kids from fidgeting and begging to go home.

It was good, clean, old-fashioned, smalltown fun.

That was what Bavasi was master of. He could make you forget all your cares and woes. Make you feel as if you were a kid again.

You got future major leaguers and you got the Famous Chicken, as well as Captain Dynamite, the Clown Prince of Baseball Max Patkin and Mr. Trash.

Bob Bavasi was the P.T. Barnum of Snohomish County.

That’s what he liked about his business: entertaining.

The game itself? He could take it or leave it.

Six years ago, he left it. Sold the team and started a baseball consulting firm with his older brother Peter, the former president of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Then, three years ago, Bavasi saw a headline in Sports Business Journal about Marysville seeking a baseball team. “What the hell’s going on in Marysville that I don’t know about?” he said.

Come to find out it was Marysville, Calif., a small town about 40 minutes north of Sacramento.

Bavasi got in touch with Don McCullough, a prominent businessman and staunch baseball fan in Marysville, to find out more. Eventually they got together and Bavasi tossed around some ideas he had about running a baseball team, ideas he admitted were a little weird for a baseball traditionalist, such as his brother.

Peter’s response: “The only way this could be better is if you didn’t have to play at all.”

Having been raised in a baseball family – his father Buzzie was general manager of three different major league teams – Bob had formed some clear-cut ideas about what he wouldn’t want to deal with if he ever owned another team. Or, “what I didn’t like about baseball and how can I get rid of it?”

His list of dislikes:

* Not being able to pick his own players. As the owner of a subsidiary of, first, the San Francisco Giants and then of the Seattle Mariners, Bavasi had no input on who played for his Everett teams. He had to take what they gave him. Most were good kids, but every now and then, he got some stinkers.

* Not being able to make up his own schedule. “I don’t like going on the road,” he said.

A shrewd businessman, he knew how to make money, and he knew it was expensive to house and feed a team and to lease a bus. He was also aware of the temptations that ballplayers face on the road.

He also knew what nights were most profitable: Thursday through Sunday. So if he ever owned another team, that’s when they’d play their games.

* Being a member of a league. He didn’t like the hassles involved. If, say, he wanted games sped up, he wanted to be in a position where he wouldn’t have to go to a league president or a board of directors to get it done.

So he came up with a unique idea.

He and McCullough established a team of college-aged players, calling it the Yuba-Sutter Gold Sox.

Nothing unique about that, you say. No, but here’s what was different. The Gold Sox would play a 50-game schedule, all but about a half-dozen in their home ballpark, All Seasons RV Stadium.

They’d be able to do this because they wouldn’t play in a league, but would invite other college teams to come to All Seasons RV Stadium for the opportunity of having a “professional baseball experience,” as the team’s mission statement espouses.

The Gold Sox would feed their opponents after the game and put them up in a hotel.

The criteria for getting to play in All Seasons RV Stadium? “You have to be a nice guy,” Bavasi said. “If you’re not a nice guy, we don’t invite you back next year.”

And, as it turned out, teams wanted to be invited back. “If you went to one of our games, it looks like minor league baseball,” Bavasi said.

“It’s run just like a Class A team,” said the team’s manager, Brad Peek, a former junior college coach. “The kids think they’re in the big leagues. Most have never been exposed to what they’re exposed to here.”

The Gold Sox average 1,000 fans a game, far more than any of the teams they play. Their games are carried live on radio and on the Internet, and one game a week is on TV. The local newspaper – the Appeal-Democrat – does a solid job with coverage. And fans line up for autographs after games.

Gold Sox players stay with host families, just as the players in Everett do. Unlike the AquaSox, however, the Gold Sox players aren’t paid because they’re still in college.

The Sox have been golden so far. They were 33-17 the first year, 39-15 last year. They’ve also had 10 players drafted by major league teams and have four or five potential draftees this year. Their players go into the pro ranks with the advantage of having last used wooden, rather than aluminum, bats.

From a fan’s perspective, the Gold Sox aren’t only winners, but they’re efficient winners. Games last year averaged a snappy two hours and 23 minutes, down 40 minutes from the year before. What caused the reduction? Bavasi had a little talk with the umpires, suggesting they speed up games. They said they couldn’t do that, making it sound as if it would be “sacrilegious,” in Bavasi’s words. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’m going to be keeping track of game times and the umpires on the bottom won’t be coming back.”

As manager Peek put it, “There wasn’t a lot of lollygagging around last year.”

And the good part is, Bavasi didn’t have to answer to anyone. “If we want to do something, we just do it,” he said. “It’s hilarious. It’s too funny.”

When he becomes the major league baseball commissioner, Bavasi vows that games will be over in seven innings or two hours, “whichever is less.” And “ties are perfectly acceptable.”

“By the seventh inning, people are starting to leave anyway,” he said. “There’s an old Hollywood adage: ‘Always leave them wanting more.’”

From a business standpoint, the Gold Sox have also been winners. “I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t profitable,” Bavasi said.

When McCullough first suggested a partnership, Bavasi was reluctant, primarily because his home was several hundred miles away.

“Tell you what,” Bavasi said to McCullough, “you go out and see if you can get commitments for 30 billboards. If you can, we’ll talk about this.”

“I felt as if I’d just sent him out to find a broomstick for the Wicked Witch of the West,” Bavasi laughed. “I didn’t think there was any way he’d ever do it.”

He apparently underestimated McCullough and the town’s desire to have a baseball team. Because about two weeks later, McCullough called back and said, “I got them sold.”

He also sold Bavasi on the idea of becoming his partner. Two successful businessmen – Bavasi in selling baseball, McCullough in selling cars. Two get-things-done kind of guys in their communities. Two men facing a big challenge in bringing baseball to Marysville.

It had been tried before without success. “I think it’s a real solid baseball town,” said Don Bricker, publisher of the Appeal-Democrat. “Through the years a lot of people were interested in making baseball go here. When Don and Bob stepped up, people were very skeptical about whether it was going to go.”

The year before Bavasi got there, an Independent League in which Marysville had a team had folded. “People in town were angry,” Bavasi said. “I told Don, ‘This is bad.’”

“No,” McCullough said, “I think we can pull this off.”

That’s when Bavasi challenged him to get 30 sponsors. As the Gold Sox begin their third season the last of this month, they have 100 advertisers on board.

However, the driving force behind all this is gone. Don McCullough collapsed and died 11 days ago while raising funds to save Beale Air Force Base. He was 69.

“Don was the community beacon here,” John Cassidy, president of the Sierra Central Credit Union, told reporter Daniel Witter of the Appeal-Democrat. “He was here fighting for Beale Air Force Base. He was what America was all about.”

“He was an amazing man,” Bavasi said. “I’m going to miss my partner.”