Major-League Snub Royally Frustrating For Bobby Brett

Amazing but true: Bobby Brett finally found a team he couldn’t buy.

Turns out it’s the one he’s coveted the most.

The news that Brett and brother George had put together a group - Rush Limbaugh prominent among them - to purchase the Kansas City Royals was a surprise only in one sense: who in their right minds would want a piece of a proposition that reportedly lost $25 million in 1995?

Then came the second surprise: the Royals’ caretakers wouldn’t sell.

Not to the Bretts, not for the $100 million they offered. Not, they were told, to anyone at any price.

Pretty strange, considering the Royals have to be for sale. Their founder and guiding light, Ewing Kauffman, died in 1993, leaving the team in a charitable trust which has six years to find buyers who will keep the team in Kansas City.

So you might say what Royals CEO David Glass told Brett was a lie.

Or you might just call it baseball.

In any case, Brett will just have to keep himself occupied with the family’s buffet in Spokane - the baseball Indians, the hockey Chiefs, the soccer Shadow - and elsewhere. Soon, in all probability, he will announce that the motion to take the Indians from Class A to AAA status has died for lack of an enthusiastic second from the local baseball constituency. Later, he hopes to forge a partnership with the city and other concerns to doll up Albi Stadium, the great North Side white elephant.

But this doesn’t mean Brett has given up on owning a major-league baseball team.

“That was always a long-term goal,” he said, “from the time we started investing in real estate.

“And the one that always made sense, because of George, was the Royals. The California Angels are out there, but I don’t see us getting the nod over Disney.”

Brett began looking into the Royals nine months ago - with the full knowledge of the club’s board and Glass, who moonlights as the president of Wal-Mart.

The generic problems - no revenue-sharing, no labor agreement, the game’s popularity at a modern low - were obvious. So were the internal ones.

“But if everything was rosy, there’d be 10 guys bidding with more money and fancier resumes than us,” Brett said. “Our hope was we could get in there at a time of uncertainty and run the Royals like a business. Mr. Kauffman was Forbes’ No. 3 (wealthiest man in America) at one time and in his later years, he wanted to win. You can’t blame him. So the Royals changed from a philosophy of developing their own players to signing free agents. You had big money ownership running a small-market business.”

Recently, as the debts mounted, there was more hand-wringing over the bottom line than the standings. Indeed, the first real selling job Brett had to do was on his brother, now a Royals vice president.

“In a small market, you need every edge you can get,” Brett said. “George is the biggest asset that organization has.”

But someone else has a bigger edge.

Last month, the Bretts filed a letter of interest in purchasing the club. After a considerable wait, Bobby received a call saying the Royals were not for sale.

“I said, ‘You mean to tell me if I had a cashier’s check for $100 million…,’ he recalled, “and David Glass said, ‘The club is not for sale.”’

Naturally Brett is perturbed, and not only because Glass and Co. operated in bad faith for nine months.

“Whose best interest is being served?” Brett said. “The club will come up for sale the day David Glass decides he wants to buy it - on his terms, at his price.

“When you go to major-league meetings now, the Royals representative votes without having a penny invested. Why wouldn’t the team be for sale? People in Kansas City are asking questions - but it’s hard to get an answer when the ‘owner’ doesn’t live there.”

And had the deal come to pass, how would it have affected Brett’s properties here?

Not at all, he claimed. He would have moved to Kansas City - “but I don’t run these teams on a day-to-day basis anyway,” he said. And it’s Brett’s notion that the Royals should own all of their minor-league clubs. With a California League team in High Desert, the Bretts are already 40 percent of the way there.

Not counting the big club that got away.

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

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