Will Any There Be Takers for Padres? : Reported $50-Million Price May Be Too Much for San Diego Investors

hear local businessmen tell it, Joan Kroc could have a tough time finding San Diegans willing and able to ante up a reported $50 million to buy her unprofitable Padres.

“I don’t think the locals would have the money to put (a deal) together,” said E. J. (Buzzie) Bavasi, the former Padre president and general manager, now retired in La Jolla.

When Ray Kroc bought the team from businessman C. Arnholt Smith for $12.5 million in 1974, Bavasi recalled, the best offer from area investors was for $4 million.

“If you were in Beverly Hills, there’d be 80 guys buying the team,” deadpanned a wealthy and prominent San Diego businessman. “They want their name in the paper, they want the ego trip. Here, you can’t get the richest people in town to give you 10 cents for the symphony orchestra.”

Even a Padre official acknowledged that with a reported $50-million price tag, “we’re talking about a lot of money, and I don’t know if there’s that kind of money around in San Diego. You’re talking about a guy with a lot more than $50 million.”

Area businessmen who are sports boosters are considered the most likely to be interested in buying the team. But they’d better be prepared for high visibility and red ink and lots of headaches.

The most likely buyer prospects might be found among the membership rosters of the Padres Community Advisory Council and the Greater San Diego Sports Assn.

Among those most often mentioned as potential buyers are beer distributor Leon Parma, 1988 Super Bowl task force head Bob Payne and Intermark Chairman Charles (Red) Scott.

But Parma earlier this week said he isn’t interested, Payne couldn’t be reached for comment and an associate of Scott’s said the entrepreneur isn’t interested either.

There has been speculation that team President Ballard Smith is trying to put together a group of investors, but a source close to Smith said Thursday night that he has no intention of buying the club from his mother-in-law.

Smith, the source said, wants to branch out into other businesses. (He’s already part-owner of two radio stations in Utah with KFMB radio general manager Paul Palmer.)

Other wealthy San Diegans who could afford to buy the team maintain that they don’t want to.

Ernie Hahn, a shopping mall developer, said he’s not interested. Nor M. Larry Lawrence, Hotel del Coronado chairman, whose prefers basketball.

And it’s difficult to imagine Union-Tribune Publisher Helen Copley, who tends to be publicity shy, purchasing the highly visible Padres.

Art Rifkin, who four years ago sold the local Coca-Cola Bottling Co., said that “under certain circumstances, if the group were correct, yes, I’d be interested.”

But, he quickly added, the consortium “would have to be a compatible group with similar financial capabilities and stability, interested in baseball and the community.”

Combining all of those criteria may prove difficult, especially for a team that will lose money in 1986, as it has for all but two of its 18 years.

The Padres needed to draw 2.2 million fans in 1986 to break even. They drew about 2.1 million.

The Padres made money only twice--in 1985, when it made slightly less than $1 million in pretax income, and 1984, when pretax profit reached $2.5 million thanks nearly entirely to revenue generated in the National League playoffs and World Series. (The team is a Sub-S corporation, meaning that its profits are pretax. Taxes are wholly assumed personally by owner Kroc.)

Without a winner, the team may not be a good business investment, said one source close to the club.

The only kind of potential buyer who Kroc may find is someone such as Marvin Davis, the flamboyant oil and former movie tycoon who last was said to be interested in the team.

Or someone such as Jack Kent Cooke, the eccentric Washington Redskins owner and former Laker owner. Two months ago, Cooke made inquiries about the Angels, according to Bavasi, who was the Angels’ general manager from 1977 through 1984.