It May Not Be Easy To Move M’S Suitors Lining Up, But Options For Relocation Not Plentiful

After Major League Baseball rejected his application for an expansion franchise last month, Florida real-estate developer Norton Herrick contacted the Seattle Mariners about relocating the team across the country.

“I am interested in moving the Mariners, if they’re for sale, to Orlando,” Herrick said.

The franchise hunters are lining up again, hoping to pick off the only baseball team in the Northwest. They’re awaiting the outcome of the Mariners’ pursuit of the $250 million, retractable-roof stadium the club says is necessary for its survival in Seattle.

But the Mariners, and the people asked to pay for the stadium, should know something more as the club enters perhaps its most important year: Moving the team, if it comes to that, is getting harder all the time.

In previous years, Herrick’s statement might be cause for civic panic. But it’s a buyer’s market now.

Besides the Mariners, Herrick has talked to seven financially distressed franchises, some of which, like Montreal and Pittsburgh, are more likely candidates for relocation than the Mariners. At the same time, the number of viable new markets is shrinking.

Baseball already has seriously diminished its teams’ options by granting expansion franchises last month to Phoenix and St. Petersburg, Fla., the two cities most frequently used by teams as evidence that they can go elsewhere if local government doesn’t pony up the public dollars, said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist and author on the business of baseball.

Phoenix and St. Petersburg were the last top-20 markets with either a modern stadium or the money in place to build one, and an ownership group ready buy a team if the club’s current owners, like those of the Mariners, are not interested in running the team in another city.

“It’s gotten tougher for a John Ellis or a Bud Selig to say, ‘Build me a $250 million stadium or we’re leaving,”’ Zimbalist said of the Seattle and Milwaukee owners. “The balance of power has shifted away from baseball. John Ellis does not have the same leverage as Jeff Smulyan had.”

Zimbalist goes so far as to say of the Mariners’ threat, “It’s a bluff.”

Paul Isaki, Mariners vice president in charge of business development, said the club has not explored its options beyond Seattle and will not do so until the chance of getting a new stadium is ruled out.

But if and when that happens, Isaki said, “we will investigate and pursue that option (of selling and moving the team) as strenuously as we’re pursuing a stadium.”

The labor fight of the past eight months certainly has caused its own set of problems, dampening public enthusiasm for the league. Milwaukee voters last month rejected a stadium-funding bill by a 2-1 margin. Financial World magazine estimates franchise values rose only 3.3 percent the past year, lowest among the four major sports leagues.

Without a revenue-sharing agreement that protects teams from smaller markets, the pool of cities that baseball can expand into is limited, because the league is more dependent on local revenues than football or basketball.

But even with financial peace, the Mariners have fewer options than at any time in franchise history. While as many as 10 baseball-less areas want a team, few if any have the stadium, potential ownership, economy and demographics to accommodate a franchise move.

Groups from Orlando and northern Virginia were runners-up in the recent round of expansion, and have inquired about moving teams to those areas. Yet neither has the green light to relocate teams.

Unlike other leagues, baseball, through its anti-trust exemption, controls the relocation of franchises. No baseball team has jumped to another market since 1971, when the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers.

Moving a second team to central Florida cuts into the marketing area of St. Petersburg. Tampa Bay owner Vince Naimoli “just spent $145 million and gave up five years of national (TV) revenues to join baseball. You don’t think he’d speak long and hard against that move?” Zimbalist said.

Herrick is inclined to wait for the next round of expansion, which he expects to come up soon after baseball resolves its labor problems. Baseball has talked about adding two more teams before the end of the decade, to ease congressional pressure to repeal its anti-trust exemption and to give each league a more-manageable 16 teams.

Another factor working against a Mariners move: competition from other leagues. Besides baseball, the NHL is planning to expand again and lesser sports, like arena football, are moving into growth markets and absorbing civic funds.

Next year, two more sports leagues plan to begin play. Major League Soccer, with World Cup organizer Alan Rothenberg at the helm, expects to have teams in 10 cities. The United Baseball League has already announced six of its eight charter franchises.

Both leagues are more business plans than reality at this point. But if either starts, baseball won’t be the only game going during the summer months. Fans will have options and so will municipalities, whose empty stadiums will have new tenants.

“If the Mariners should leave, you’ve got another league (the UBL) that’s going to come in there immediately,” said Zimbalist, who helped design the UBL.

The Puget Sound area is the No. 12 market in the nation, making the Mariners anything but a “smallmarket” team. And with Portland, Vancouver, and the rest of the Northwest, the Mariners have one of the five largest regional markets.

“Small revenue” is a more apt term for the Mariners, who are losing money almost as fast as they’re losing options. By the end of the season, Ellis estimates, the owners will have dumped $150 million into a team they paid $106 million for in 1992. Without a winning team, or a new stadium, or a significant revenue-sharing agreement within baseball, they’re doomed to more financial losses.

But as critical as the 1995 season is to the future of the franchise, and as important as a new stadium is to the Mariners, the days when the most effective way to rally public support was to point in the direction of the highway are fading.

“Maybe Seattle does need a new ballpark,” Zimbalist said. “But people there should sit down and find a solution that fits into their urbandevelopment plans, and the deal should be balanced. Because this time around, the city has a lot of leverage.”