He’d Be Owner with Both Oars in Water

If Henry T. Nicholas III, the 39-year-old technology billionaire, does get a chance to invest in the Angels or Mighty Ducks and run the teams. . . .

If the co-founder and chief executive of the Irvine-based computer chip company Broadcom Corp. is destined to become the next Michael Eisner, the next man who writes the check for our last-place baseball team, here’s something he needs to know:

Nicholas is stronger and in better shape than 99% of the Angels now.

He gave $1.28 million to the UC Irvine rowing team this summer. Right away, that should make you like the guy.

Rowers are the hardest-working, best-conditioned and most unappreciated athletes in the world. So when Nicholas, who rowed at UCLA and who was not happy when the school dropped the men’s crew program shortly after his graduation, made his windfall donation, he asked to meet with some of the Irvine rowers. Nicholas challenged the captain of the men’s team to a chin-up contest.

Guess who won?

“I crushed him,” Nicholas said Thursday. “I did 27, 28 chin-ups. The kid did, like, 17. Frankly, I was surprised. A senior in college, in prime shape, I thought he’d beat me.”

OK, Nicholas, 6 feet 6, is not short of ego.

For a prospective owner of a major league baseball team, this is not a bad thing. George Steinbrenner has ego. Ted Turner has ego. They’re both a little nuts sometimes, they both say and do crazy things sometimes. And they both have produced championship baseball teams for large chunks of this decade. They both, more than anything, seem to love baseball as a sport and not as a money-making bottom line, asset or debit on a corporate report.

So here’s another thing about Nicholas.

He seems to love competing and he seems to love sports.

“I’m an investor of Gotcha Glacier,” Nicholas said. Gotcha Glacier is the planned indoor, four-story sports facility to be built in the parking lot of Edison Field, where people will be able to surf, rock climb, snowboard and participate in many other extreme sports. “The CEO of Gotcha is in my office. I just came out to return this call.”

You’ve got to like a guy who wants to invest in a Gotcha Glacier. Maybe he could get some of the snowboarders and surfers to teach some of the Angels how they could fall down and not get hurt. Snowboarders are really good at that.

But listen to Nicholas talk about rowing. If you don’t know much about the sport, know that rowers are up before dawn and onto the water. They are back on the water after dark. When an oar hits the water as part of a men’s eight, the biggest boat, an individual rower is deadlifting between 500 and 600 pounds of force.

Rowers hardly ever compete in front of large crowds. They make very little money, even if they win an Olympic gold medal. Rowers may be the last true amateur athletes left.

“Rowers attract people who are naturally competitive,” Nicholas said. “Many athletes like to be in an arena in front of a cheering crowd, receiving adulation. Then there’s the other type of athlete who wants to test the limits of his own endurance, to take pleasure in winning for its own sake. The competition is satisfaction unto itself.”

It was not possible to trick Nicholas into talking about the Angels. Or about whether he’d like to buy the Angels. Or about whether he’d like to run the Angels. “I did give one comment last week that nobody ran with, which kind of surprised me,” Nicholas said. “The Angels suck.”

Well, OK, but tell us something we don’t know.

And Nicholas did.

“A baseball team really belongs to the community,” Nicholas said. “An [baseball] owner belongs to the community and a corporation has to recognize that. Disney has spent a huge amount on players. You can’t criticize them for that. But what [the Angels] are really lacking is a soul. A corporation can’t provide a soul. A manager can provide a soul.”

If Terry Collins felt a shiver run down his spine about 5 p.m. Thursday, we know why.

Dan Guerrero, the Irvine athletic director, said that Nicholas, after attending an Irvine executive luncheon, approached Guerrero. He asked Guerrero about the rowing program, about its funding, about its goals, about the commitment of the school to the program.

“I said, ‘You look like a rower,’ ” Guerrero said. “He said that he had rowed at UCLA in the ‘80s and was disappointed UCLA had dropped the sport. I talked about five minutes. He asked what our long-range vision was, the kinds of things we needed to be competitive. That was it.”

Next thing Guerrero heard was that Nicholas was giving his rowing program $1.28 million. The yearly crew budget is about $100,000 for the men and women. This is a big deal.

Duval Hecht, who is the founder of Books on Tape and who has been involved in UC Irvine crew for nearly 35 years, mostly as coach and often as a contributor of his own funds, said, “I did not know Henry Nicholas before this. And I am bowled over. When we met with Henry, he was probing the depth of our own commitment, of whether we were up to this kind of gift. No question, there will be expectations from Henry inherent to this gift.”

Nobody knows yet who will own the Angels next year. If it is Nicholas, we will certainly hear bad things about him. There will be people who don’t like him, who find his confidence insufferable, who will say he is a showoff and a preening peacock for bragging about his chin-ups and his skydiving and surfing and all the other things he says he likes to do, “along with working 100-plus hours a week.”

But you know what? Baseball needs more people like Nicholas, like Steinbrenner, like Turner. Baseball needs owners with ego, owners who are 39 years old and can do 27 chin-ups, fewer Disneys and Fox Corporations and Tribune Corporations (owners of the Cubs). Owners who think of baseball as a sport more than as programming for a TV station or a way to sell merchandise.

“Rowing demands a lot of ego to participate in, to believe you are up to the physical demands,” Hecht said. “Then it takes someone who can sublimate that ego to achieve the common purpose of the boat.”

Sounds like someone who would make a good baseball owner, doesn’t it?

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com