Yankees338
Bronze Contributor
I was talking to djs13 about baseball earlier, and he recommended I look into the Los Angeles Angels' owner, Arte Moreno. This was the closest I found to a success story. Hopefully, any other baseball fans here will appreciate it.
USATODAY.com - Moreno a thorough baseball manMoreno a thorough baseball man
By Greg Boeck, USA TODAY
TEMPE, Ariz. — Arte Moreno got his hands dirty with all the other dads. He dug holes for the outfield fence. He put up the lights. He raked the field and lined it. In time, he helped turn a pile of rocks into a Little League field of dreams for a Phoenix youth program in which his son played in the late 1990s.
By Rob Schumacher, USA TODAY
"To me, that was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done," says Moreno, a lifelong baseball fan and one-time youth baseball coach who turned a modest billboard business into an $8.3 billion payday and baseball ownership.
"Building a Little League field, that's where these guys come from." (Related items: Moreno's vital stats | New-look Angels)
Nearby, Bartolo Colon warms up his $51 million right arm with pitchers and catchers on the first day of spring training for the Anaheim Angels. This is Moreno's new field of dreams, a playground where Little Leaguers have grown into millionaire big leaguers and a proving ground for the maverick newcomer who has bucked the economic tenets of the game.
Since buying the Angels from the Walt Disney Co. for $183 million last May and becoming the first Hispanic to own a major sports team, Moreno has endeared himself to his latest customers by slashing prices on tickets, souvenirs and concessions to bring kids back to the ballpark. He even turned his back on a potential $3 million in yearly revenue by choosing to name the ballpark Angel Stadium instead of seeking a new sponsor after Edison International opted out of its contract.
At the same time, he enraged some fellow owners by targeting $147 million to sign five free agents — four of them Latin — in a splashy offseason.
At the last owners' meeting at Troon, Ariz., last month, some owners responded to Moreno's big spending in belt-tightening times by giving him a cold shoulder. He said the snubs disappointed him more than they upset him. "Anybody cares when they are not accepted. I'm playing a game within the guidelines set up."
But Moreno isn't apologetic about signing Colon (four years, $51 million), right-hander Kelvim Escobar (three years, $18.75 million), outfielder Jose Guillen (two years, $6 million) and prized outfielder Vladimir Guerrero (five years, $70 million).
By nature, Moreno is a fierce competitor, and baseball at the top is a dog-eat-George Steinbrenner world. "Losing makes me puke," he says.
In the end, Moreno says he answers to no one but the fans. "The fans own the team. I'm the economic caretaker."
Responding on all fronts
This is how Moreno has defined himself since childhood. The roots of his customer-is-always right mind-set that has seeded his wildly successful business career come from humble beginnings as the oldest of 11 children growing up in Tucson.
Arturo 'Arte' Moreno file
Born : August 1946 in Tucson.
Family: Married to Carole, his second wife; has three children.
Military: Drafted and served in the U.S. Army from 1966-68, including Vietnam duty.
Education: Graduated from the University of Arizona with a marketing degree.
Moreno on Moreno: "I love to see the sun come up in the morning. It's a new day. I don't dwell on the past. I'm very interested in the future. I'm a planner-plotter type. I'm like three or four yards and a cloud of dust. I'm going to get there. I might not be the fastest getting there, but I'm going to get there."
On dining with President Bush: "We talked baseball. He liked the signings. I wanted to talk about his trip to Iraq on Thanksgiving Day. It was emotional for me. I was in Vietnam and saw Bob Hope."
Notable: Moreno has an article on Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in the top drawer of his desk at Angel Stadium. "I try to take little pieces from how others do their business. I'm always trying to improve."
"We had a big family, but my parents were always welcoming to anybody who came to our house," says Moreno, 57. "There were always a couple extra kids hanging around. My dad would say, 'Who's this one?' "
Putting customers first paid off handsomely in business and is paying off in baseball. The Angels won the World Series the year before Moreno bought the team but drew 3 million for the first time under his watch — 750,000 more than the championship season.
Upon taking over, Moreno expanded the $5 ticket for youths 12 and under to 18 and under. "If I have a stadium 90% full of kids, then I'm a happy guy. Long term, for baseball to exist as I've known it, the kids have to come to the park."
He introduced a $3 ticket on Tuesday nights. He offered a $5 family package Monday-Thursday. He lowered hot dog, popcorn and beer prices. He slashed the price of baseballs with an "A" logo from $10 to $5 and sold out the first night. He brought in a $7 cap and sold 60,000.
"One of the first nights, a working-class gentleman came up to me with his four boys, all with hats on, and he said, 'I went into the store and got my boys four hats and it cost $28.' "
The Angels finished 18 games out of the playoffs but scored financially. The club made $2.5 million more on concessions and $1.25 million more in souvenir sales than in 2002.
"On the business side, I don't feel challenged at all," Moreno says. "I'm very comfortable."
He addressed the baseball side in the offseason and came away with a team expected to contend for the American League championship.
"He wants to win," says Escobar, a native of Venezuela.
Escobar says Moreno's heritage — he is fourth-generation Mexican-American — influenced his signing. "He's the only Hispanic owner in the majors. To be part of this, I feel proud of him."
The influx of Hispanic players in a Southern California market heavily populated with Hispanics can only entice more fans, but Moreno says he didn't target the Hispanic players. "Absolutely coincidental," he says. "We targeted more than those players. We looked at the whole menu."
He says his Mexican-American ethnicity is his "No. 1 pride point. Nobody is happier than when I'm down in Mexico on a beach with a beer. I love my heritage." But he downplays it as a baseball owner. "First thing is, I'm an American," says Moreno, who saw action in Da Nang in Vietnam.
He clearly has an edge, however, among the growing Latino population in the game. At the news conference introducing Guerrero, Moreno translated for his new star. He spoke Spanish to Colon in recruiting him. And when Escobar joined the team, Moreno welcomed him in Spanish.
"It is a big deal," Escobar says. "When you are on a team and the owner is Latin, that means a lot to you as a Latin."
Working his way to the top
But Moreno seamlessly crosses cultures. He was building the billboard business with partner Bill Levine into the company that Infinity/CBS bought for $8.3 billion in 1999 when he grabbed a shovel and worked on the Little League field.
Angels lineups then and now
Pos. '02 World Series Salary Projected '04 Salary
C Bengie Molina $350,000 Molina $2.025M
1B Scott Spiezio $2.275M Erstad $7.75M
2B Adam Kennedy $375,000 Kennedy $2.5M
SS David Eckstein $280,000 Eckstein $2.15M
3B Troy Glaus $4M Glaus $9.9M
LF Garret Anderson $5M Jose Guillen $2.2M
CF Darin Erstad $6.25M Anderson $6.2M
RF Tim Salmon $9.65M Vladimir Guerrero $11M
DH Brad Fullmer $4M Salmon $9.9M
P Jarrod Wasburn $350,000 Bartolo Colon $11M
Total $32.53M $62.645M
Source: USA TODAY research
He and his wife, Carole, live in a Spanish-style, 8,750-square-foot mansion with their son, Rico, 16, and daughter Nikki, 15, in the same exclusive Phoenix neighborhood where singer Glenn Campbell resides. Moreno, who also has an older son, Bryan, from a previous marriage, has a second home in La Jolla, Calif.
But he is more consumed by his family than any worldly trappings.
"Being a father is the most important job a male can have," he says.
Jimmy Walker, a business associate, says Moreno would be comfortable driving a 5-year-old pickup truck to work. "He never tries to be showy or promote himself with his high net worth," Walker says.
"He hasn't changed one ounce," says Barney McShane, who runs the youth program where Moreno coached his son for 10 years and built the field. "He has no pretense."
Moreno is a quiet benefactor in charities — he donated $1 million to a Jewish Community Center built in Scottsdale in honor of Levine's deceased wife — and chooses to work behind the scenes to help his alma mater, the University of Arizona.
"He's not a guy who wants to be visible or seen," Arizona athletics director Jim Livengood says. "He's an AD's dream. He'll do anything, within reason. He doesn't say, 'I'll do this if.' He's not a quid pro quo guy. He's almost too good to be true."
Moreno was drafted into the Army and served from 1966-68.
"If anybody went to Vietnam and told you they weren't scared, those are the ones you have to worry about," he says.
He then went to Arizona on the GI bill and got a marketing degree but had to work his way through school selling shoes. The store owner left a lasting impression on him.
"He looked to see if our hair was cut, our shoes were shined and if we had a tie on," Moreno says. "It was about how we serviced clients and the customer is always right. I tried to carry that on."
In 1973, he got into the billboard business and ultimately redefined the industry.
He worked for a couple of billboard companies before joining Levine in 1984 at Outdoor Systems, a small Phoenix-based fixture. They turned the company into a national force, increasing sales from $500,000 to $90 million and going public in 1996. Three years later, they sold Outdoor Systems for $8.3 billion.
"The guy is unusual," says Levine, who owns 10% of the Angels. "He's very disciplined, very focused. He changed the nature of the industry. Everything is customers. Believe me, he'll take care of those fans."
Field of dreams is now his
Moreno first embraced baseball fans as one of 17 partners — including actor Bill Murray — in ownership of the Salt Lake City Trappers from 1985-92. Like most of the partners, Moreno never sat down at games. He mingled among the fans, drank beer and smoked cigars. "I had more fun than anyone should be allowed to have," he says.
But he also took copious notes at shareholders' meetings.
"He was very diligent in listening," says Dave Baggott, former Tappers general manager who is now president of the minor league Ogden (Utah) Raptors. "While others poured coffee and said hello to each other, he would take a legal notepad with three sharpened pencils and take notes. He'd ask questions. He was all business."
The partnership bought the team for $150,000 and sold it for $1.5 million.
Moreno has a golden touch, but he hasn't succeeded in every business move.
He got a ring as a minority shareholder in the Arizona Diamondbacks after they beat the Yankees in the 2001 World Series, but attempts to buy controlling interest in the team and replace managing general partner Jerry Colangelo failed.
"He put an offer out there that I basically presented that was not what the partners wanted to do, and he took issue with that," Colangelo says.
Moreno says, "Our differences were more business-related."
Their chilly relationship warmed recently when President Bush, on a campaign visit to Phoenix, invited the two to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.
Moreno still owns 5% of the Phoenix Suns, the NBA team run by Colangelo. And he still goes to Diamondbacks games with Rico.
This is still his backyard, his home, where he built his field of dreams long before he bought one.
***
Contributing: Joseph A. Reaves, Craig Harris and Jonathan J. Higuera of The Arizona Republic
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