Witt Tees Off on Padres, the Clippers, and Writers

San Diego City Atty. John W. Witt, speaking to a stadium management conference here Monday, said the city’s negotiations with the Padres on the team’s lease at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium are “stymied” and that the club has no intention of signing a long-term lease.

Witt said the city has not been able to secure the Padres’ assent to two key requests--that the new lease, to begin next year, extend to the year 2003, and that a “specific performance” clause be included that would legally bind the Padres to remain in the city for that time.

The city attorney said that the National League team’s negotiators “not only said no, but ‘Hell no,’ ” to the specific performance clause, which would have given the city the right to a court injunction, if necessary, to prevent the team from moving.

As for a lease extension to 2003, he said that city officials recently received a letter from National League President A. Bartlett Giamatti saying that baseball Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth doesn’t want teams to sign any stadium leases longer than seven years.

Witt said Giamatti had cited financial uncertainties in organized baseball stemming from a possible downturn of television payments and an approaching new round of collective bargaining with the players’ union for wanting to limit leases to “between five and seven years.”

Facts Are Confirmed

In New York, Ueberroth’s office confirmed the basic facts of what Witt had said about the baseball office’s communication.

But, Witt said, it is his feeling that “the commissioner and the National League should be represented at the table, if they are going to dictate the terms” of the Padres’ next stadium lease.

Witt said he has been one of the San Diego officials participating in the lease renewal discussions with the Padres. A negotiating session was held at the Padres’ office at the stadium Aug. 28, he said, and another one had been scheduled for this Friday, although it is possible that the talks will be put off until after the World Series.

Witt was speaking here to an open meeting sponsored by the International City Management Assn. He did not know a Times reporter was in the room until after he had finished.

Padres President Chub Feeney, reached at the club’s offices in San Diego, confirmed that negotiations are ongoing, that the commissioner’s office has suggested leases of no more than seven years to all major league clubs, and that another meeting with the city is scheduled for Friday.

“Beyond that, I don’t want to comment further,” Feeney said. “I do not want to do lease negotiations through the newspaper. That is as far as I am going to say.”

During his talk, Witt made some highly provocative points:

- He accused the Padres of engaging in “big lie” tactics during the negotiations by telling city officials that no other club in big-league baseball had a specific performance clause in its lease. The city was quickly able to show that the Philadelphia Phillies did, he recalled.

- He said that team owner Joan Kroc had been so impressed with the amenities in the luxury box belonging to Chargers’ owner Alex Spano on a recent visit to the stadium that Witt has concluded that “if we can figure out a way to give her a box as nice as he has . . . we’ll probably get an agreement (from her for a lease extension) we can live with.”

- He accused sportswriters of being “great whores,” saying they side with the owners in such lease negotiations and that, in order to get a fair shake from the press, it is necessary for city officials to go to the newspapers’ editorial boards and their city hall reporters.

- He said San Diego officials had not been at all sorry when the Clippers professional basketball franchise moved out of the San Diego arena to Los Angeles. “We wanted the Clippers to go,” he said. “The Clippers smelled up the place so bad.” A moment later, however, he said, “I misspoke myself when I said we wanted the Clippers to go. We just wanted their owner (Donald Sterling) to go.”

Later, informed that a Times reporter had been present, Witt tried to tone down some of his remarks.

He said that perhaps it had been unfair to characterize the Padres negotiators as using “big lie” tactics, since it was possible that they honestly did not know about the provision in the Philadelphia Phillies’ lease.

“I’m not accusing the Padres organization of being at all unethical,” he said. “They have made no threat that they are going to leave San Diego.”

Witt added that not all sportswriters are “whores,” but said it is true that many owe their allegiance to the team owners, because they regularly receive free food at games and because they know that, if sports franchises leave town, “there will not be as much sports to cover.”

Finally, he said that it would be “just fine” if the Clippers returned to San Diego, as long as they do not bring Sterling with them. Sterling, he explained, is disliked because of his “showboating” and “quarreling with arena operators.”

Out of Limelight

Witt’s remarks during the meeting, attended by scores of stadium managers and representatives of private firms serving the stadiums from throughout the country, as well as a few news reporters, came despite what he said was the city’s interest in keeping the lease negotiations out of the public limelight.

“It’s important that the negotiations be done at the table and not in the press,” Witt told the meeting. “But I warn them (the Padres) that when the contract goes to the City Council, it will have to be politically viable.”

The city’s bottom line in negotiating with the Padres, he said, “is to keep the income stream from the stadium the same as it’s been under the old lease.”

To this end, he explained, city officials have been trying to set a “floor on basic rent.”

The lease negotiations had been further delayed by the abortive sale of the Padres to the owner of the Seattle Mariners, George Argygos. During this time, he said, San Diego officials talked to Ueberroth and were told there should be no lease extension of more than one year pending the arrival of the new owner.

When the Argygos deal collapsed, the longer-term extension talks with the Padres resumed, Witt said.

The city attorney said San Diego officials in their direct talks with Ueberroth had been given “a pretty firm understanding” that the commissioner “does not favor franchise transfers as a means of threatening for better terms in stadium leases.”

And, he reiterated, San Diego officials are pleased that the Padres have not used those tactics.

Memo to Ueberroth

In New York, meanwhile, Ueberroth’s top deputy, Ed Durso, the executive vice president of major league baseball, confirmed that “the basic facts” about the commissioner’s communications to San Diego as stated by Witt “are correct.”

Durso said it was he who had prepared a memo to Ueberroth that was enclosed by Giamatti in his recent letter to San Diego officials.

“It is not only San Diego where we favor a fairly short-term lease,” Durso said. “The same issue is coming up in New York, Toronto and Baltimore.”

Durso said that Ueberroth is concerned that, in a period of financial uncertainty, franchises do not find themselves locked into disadvantageous long-term leases. If conditions change, and the clubs start losing money, such leases in themselves can lead to a desire to move, he said.

“Conditions can change quickly,” Durso explained. “The Red Sox won the pennant last year and are playing under .500 this year. Pay TV can go down, advertising can fall, and teams are put in a very untenable situation.

“We, quite clearly, are looking to maintain flexibility and short-term leases.”