He’s Veeck as in Life Used to Be a Wreck

Mike Veeck, president and co-owner of the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League, is painting a picket fence in front of Midway Stadium. He’s wearing gray sweatpants and no shirt on a warm afternoon. Libby, his wife, has a brush, as does anybody who passes by and asks.

Veeck’s plan for the grassy tree-shaded area enclosed by the fence is to have celebrities periodically conduct reading sessions with children during the season.

“Another marketing breakthrough,” he says, laughing.

Among the expected celebrities will be actor Bill Murray, one of his co-owners.

Murray is preparing to play Veeck’s father, Bill, in the movie version of Ed Linn’s book, “Veeck as in Wreck.”

Asked if he considered taking the role, Mike Veeck says, “I’m having enough fun playing real life.”

The signs scattered around Midway Stadium read “Fun Is Good.”

It’s the motto of Veeck and his team, and the fans seem to endorse it. The Saints have played to 90% capacity since Veeck and others helped reestablish the Northern League as an independent four years ago.

At 45, Veeck is also an officer and part owner of the Butte Copper Kings of the Pioneer League, a Tampa Bay affiliate, and the Fort Myers Miracle, a Minnesota Twin affiliate, which is ironic because the Saints have provided the Twins with some attendance competition only seven miles from the Metrodome.

Those affiliations are also ironic in that Veeck hasn’t always--and doesn’t now--have the closest ties to organized baseball. Missing from the dictionary handed down from his father is the word conformity.

Bill Veeck rankled the baseball establishment as owner of the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox, and once said:

“What we are trying to do is to get the whole city in a frame of mind where [people] are asking, ‘What’s that screwball going to do next?’ ”

A chip off that block? Mike Veeck, among other things, signed Darryl Strawberry when no one else would. Veeck smiles and says:

“I don’t care if it’s the Copper Kings or the Saints, if you don’t think I hear my dad laughing. . . .”

Bill Veeck employed a midget as a pinch-hitter. Mike Veeck staged a ballpark seance designed to reach Thomas Edison, baseball’s unsung hero for inventing the lightbulb.

The medium arrived in a limo, but failed to reach Edison, claiming that some guy named Joe kept getting in the way.

Then there was “Mime-O-Vision,” Veeck’s response to instant replay. He hired five mimes to recreate close plays, but the mimes became instant targets for hot dog-throwing fans. Did Veeck mind?

“We sold 26,000 hot dogs,” he says. “It was great.”

All of this since resurfacing, sort of, as president of the independent Miami Miracle of the Florida State League in 1990.

Unfortunately, Veeck had paid a price, in part, for his ill-fated promotion, the 1979 Disco Demolition that turned into a riot at old Comiskey Park while working for his dad.

Every time Veeck pursued even an entry-level position in the major leagues in the ‘80s, that came back to haunt him.

“I just think it was an easy place for teams to hang their hat,” Veeck said. “I think it was more a matter that I was perceived as a troublemaker--with some justification.”

Part of it too was his name.

“I’m extraordinarily proud of my lineage, to say the least,” Veeck said. “But if it’s the best name to have among fans in the stands, it’s the worst in the boardroom when you’re looking for a job.

“I always thought I’d be judged by my body of work. It shows how naive I was.”

He hit bottom in 1986. His father died, his first wife left with their son, Night Train (named after the James Brown version of that song), and Veeck recognized the destructive path he was on “and crawled into Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Two friends and longtime minor league operators, Van Schley and Marvin Goldklang (now part owner of the Saints and New York Yankees), provided Veeck with the opportunity in Miami, a steppingstone to the success in St. Paul and elsewhere.

Veeck makes more than 250 speeches a year, selling baseball.

“It’s the greatest game in the world,” he said. “All I’ve tried to do is dress it up a little.”

He was even offered an important position at the major league level last winter--marketing director of the Florida Marlins.

“I gave it a lot of thought,” he said. “I went 15 years between job offers, but I ultimately decided that being asked was more important than the job itself.”

Besides, how much painting could he have done with the Marlins?