A Big-Timer Takes a Shot at the Minors

Ira Reiner is the district attorney of Los Angeles County. Therefore, most people think his life’s dream is to be governor. Or, maybe, U.S. attorney general.

Hah!

If Ira Reiner could be anything he wanted to be, it would be the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The New York Yankees. Heck, the Seattle Mariners.

Ira Reiner would a whole lot rather be haggling with a .250-hitting second baseman than plea-bargaining with an ax murderer.

Baseball is a game you begin at the bottom. Even Babe Ruth served in the minor leagues. Willie Mays, too. Baseball is not easily learned at any level but only a microscopic number of baseball people--Sandy Koufax, Al Kaline--start at the top and stay there. Even owners need breaking in.

When most people think of a D.A., there comes to mind a picture of a guy getting clobbered on cross-examination by Perry Mason. But in L.A.--or New York--it’s a traditional steppingstone to even bigger things. Earl Warren started as a D.A. So did about one-third of our lawmakers.

So, why would a guy one rung up the political ladder, well connected and ambitious, want to dabble in--of all things--bush league baseball.

Because he would rather be center fielder for the New York Yankees than attorney general. When he said as a kid that he would like to become a Washington Senator, he meant batting cleanup not heading a committee.

“It’s Walter Mitty stuff, there’s no money or prestige in it,” cheerfully admits Ira Reiner, adding that owning a team is the next-best thing to playing for it.

So, he put together a deal and bought the--are you ready for this?--Stockton Ports. Ta da!

Chances are, you have never heard of the Stockton Ports. But have you heard of “Casey at the Bat”? Of course, you have.

Well, Mudville, that was Stockton. When San Francisco sportswriter Ernest L. Thayer wrote his famous verse in 1888, he was referring to a forerunner of the modern Stockton teams, a nine that played its games in the Mudville Flats area south of the city. Reiner bought more than a piece of a team, he bought a piece of history.

The outlook might not have been bright for the Mudville nine that day--and it hasn’t improved greatly over the century since.

You don’t have to love baseball to buy the New York Yankees. You just have to love getting your name in the papers. But you have to love baseball to buy the Stockton Ports. Roy Campanella said you have to have a lot of little boy in you to play the game. Well, you have to have a lot more to buy it.

You see, baseball is a funny game. It doesn’t depend on colleges to train, teach and publicize its neophytes. Taxpayers and wealthy alums don’t furnish it with the raw material to run its business. Baseball pays for its own ore, then refines it itself, unlike football and basketball.

It’s a deficit operation. Minor leagues could not exist without subsidies from the majors. But neither could they exist without a whole bunch of Walter Mitty types who fulfill childhood fantasies by owning and operating real live organized baseball franchises. I mean, Branch Rickey started this way, didn’t he?

Growing up in Los Angeles, Ira Reiner learned all about minor league baseball. Before Walter O’Malley brought the game West in 1958, that’s all L.A. had.

Reiner cannot only name all the players on the 1947 minor league Angels but can recite their batting averages, field numbers and batting weaknesses. He can tell you every home run Clarence Maddern ever hit and who was on base at the time. He’s the only guy in City Hall who remembers Cece Garriott.

Minor league baseball used to be the backbone of sport in this country. Radio eroded it somewhat but television killed it in its sleep.

Movies such as “Bull Durham” and even an abortive television series or two have made it semi-fashionable again. Not lucrative, just chic.

Reiner says he bought the team the way you might buy an old sled you rode downhill as a kid, or as you might buy an antique as a reminder of better days.

Actually, he didn’t buy it himself. D.A.s are not to be confused with Melvin Belli and F. Lee Bailey and Perry Mason. There’s no money in putting criminals into jail. It’s keeping them out that keeps you in diamond rings.

What would impel a public official who has sent gangland figures to prison, unraveled crooked financial schemes, dealt with drug traffickers, con artists and armored car heisters to get in the uncertain, red-ink business of Class-A baseball?

In minor league baseball, having a good year is breaking even. The big league partner--in Reiner’s case, the Milwaukee Brewers--provides the players, manager, trainer, equipment and a lot of encouragement. It’s up to Reiner and associates to provide the customers and keep the doors open.

“You can’t just throw open the gates and have the mayor throw out the first ball anymore,” Reiner warns. “Minor league baseball is 90% promotions. You have to give away caps, bats, balls, helmets, radios.”

There were times when he wanted to give away the Stockton Ports. But not many.

“It’s Americana,” he says. “It’s like walking back into 1910. You can close your eyes and imagine one of those players out there is going to be another DiMaggio. Aaron. I look at my son serving as batboy and I’m 14 years old again myself. I think that’s what baseball is all about. A shared passion. A commitment to tradition.”

He actually wanted to buy a Mexican Pacific League team and play winter ball in the L.A. area. But he found that baseball’s delicate cross agreements wouldn’t permit that. So, he procured a backer, a friend, Geoff Cowan, and went in search of a team of one’s very own.

The San Francisco Giants weren’t available. So, he bought into the team Casey struck out for.

He’s a long way from George Steinbrenner, Peter O’Malley or even Joan Kroc. But he’s an owner. He can take batting practice in spring training if he wants.

He’s also the only owner in baseball who can get you one to 10 if you throw things on the field. And if you throw the spitter, he may throw the book at you. And know what section of the penal code pretending to catch a ball you only trapped is a violation of.