Larry Lucchino to sell the Worcester Red Sox to Diamond Baseball Holdings
- Thread starter soxhop411
- Start date
When I was a kid I always said if I hit some massive Powerball level lottery, I would buy a minor league team. Not major league, even as a kid I knew that wouldnt be enough to own a major league team. But a minor league team.
Alas, I have not won the Powerball. Sorry, larry.
Alas, I have not won the Powerball. Sorry, larry.
Why is he a dick to sell the team?
Of course he's going to sell to the higher offer, but why not take him at his word that if a local buyer is close or the top bid he wouldn't prefer them?
He's 78 and ready to move on. It's his prerogative. Like him or not, he's one of the reasons we won it all in 2004 which will always earn him respect from me.
I'm more upset that his group moved them out of Pawtucket. Growing up 15 minutes from McCoy makes me biased.
Agree. Presumably the team is locked into Worcester for at least another 20 years, so there's on danger of them relocating.
Fair enough. Of course, he bought the team when he was 70; makes you wonder if anyone in Worcester had the presence of mind to ask him about how long he planned to stick around before they backed up the money truck for the stadium development.
I also grew up 15 minutes from McCoy. You're right I should never get mad at Lucchino for his role in 2004, but I also still bear a grudge for leaving Pawtucket so I'm kind of irrational.
It pisses me off that he is selling them 2 years after moving them out of a place that had a long standing fan base to Worcester. It's just shitty.
I think the upset is more that he moved the team to Worcester. If he was going to sell less than ten years in, perhaps he should have not bothered and left the team in Pawtucket.
My question is that he's part of an ownership group. Is he just looking to cash out himself so it's only a portion of the team he's making available or is the whole thing for sale?
Salty ass RIers. If I have to drive 45 minutes to see a AAA baseball game, I also want to be able to stock up on weed, smack and Table Top Pies. I can do that in Worcester, not Pawtucket.
I blame him for Bobby Valentine. Can't help but wonder if Dombrowski would only take the job if Larry was gone.
Also weird that he "retired" from the Red Sox and then popped up with the Pawsox ownership group.
Also weird that he "retired" from the Red Sox and then popped up with the Pawsox ownership group.
Eh, people are mad about losing the team in Pawtucket. The Woo stadium rocks and the experience vs. going to Fenway is better if you're in Central MA. Huge fan of how it all worked out. Supposedly it's not a great economic deal or something but who the heck cares that's future Worcester's problem.
Can't believe it took 16 posts until this came in.
I'm in for a share, although I'm not local anymore.
The Providence-Warwick MSA is nearly double the population (1.68M) of the Worcester MSA (978k). GDP / Capita is lower in Worcester too, albeit marginally.
There's not an economic case that the team is better off in Worcester. And you can't even justify it based on the team owning the stadium and getting some tax breaks or something, because they don't, it's city-owned. Instead, Worcester floated $146M in bonds to fund the construction and stands to lose, rather than gain, $40-60M for its trouble. That's nearly a full Schilling! Apparently the ballpark is profitable on an operations basis, but not by nearly enough to fund the debt service (even if you make favorable assumptions about nearby commercial development), hence the loss. It's a vanity project, for both city and owner. They didn't even design it to hold concerts at the stadium, because they "wanted it to be just like Fenway", so that prospective money, also down the toilet.
"future Worcester's problem"? Hardly. It's already today's problem. What else could that money have funded locally? Are the schools particularly great? Any potholes in the roads? Maybe their airport could be more than a curiosity if you could get there by any means other than driving through 2 or 3 residential neighborhoods? A ballpark was not near the top of anyone's list of priorities, except a couple of city officials that Larry wined and dined.
And yeah, it's a 35-year lease agreement. They're not going back to Rhode Island, not within the lifetimes of a decent fraction of SoSHers.
Attendance has been way up since they moved, that seems like a pretty decent economic case
That is somewhat misleading because once the team announced it was moving, people began to stop going. Also, we don't know what if any new ballpark bump there may have been with a new stadium in Pawtucket.
It's way up from what it was recently in Pawtucket even before they announced they were leaving. 2013 was the last time Pawtucket topped this year's Worcester attendance.
You're right that we should compare the current state to the counterfactual of "they stay in Pawtucket". But that's looking at the value to the team. The value to the city is what it is, even despite the current attendance (which generally accompanies new ballparks and new teams, but can taper off).
And as to that counterfactual, let's remember that Pawtucket made a pretty good offer to keep the team: paying ~40% of a $73M new ballpark, plus some tax breaks. If Worcester doesn't come out of nowhere with a folding chair, those attendance numbers probably go up in that rebuilt RI ballpark. The same amount? Who knows, but that's the apples-to-apples comparison, imo.
Attendance was plainly and significantly down prior to the sale and prospective move. But, as @InstaFace points out, attendance in an aging ballpark in a not-particularly-convenient or shiny part of town to that in a state-of-the-business minor league part isn't an illuminating comparison. It's not even on the level at which you would compare the two--Pawtucket and RI proposed a ballpark + some retail, while Worcester proposed what amounted to an urban development undertaking that happened to include a minor league ballpark.
Fannies in the seats are good, of course, and yeah, the contracts dictate that those seats will be available for the next several decades. But game attendance is just a piece of the big picture that Worcester and MA were betting on here, and even that will be dependent to some extent on how committed the new owners are to the team and the city.
It's a brand new ballpark with some exciting young players on the field, meanwhile the Red Sox 44 miles away are charging a sizable ransom to watch a team that's not performing. If attendance weren't excellent one would have to conclude Polar Park is a dump. I've not been, in photos it still looks like a soulless blue mall but hey in person I'm sure it's cool.
"Woo Sox" is still an astoundingly terrible moniker.
I'm hoping Pedro buys the team. He's spent a considerable amount of time in Worcester and seems to really enjoy being involved.
Sounds like there are sound cheap Worcester muni bonds to buy!
The next owner just has to build some luxury residential units and gentrify the area to take it to the next step
I don’t know about smack, but you can get weed in North Seekonk, the south side of North Attleboro, and Attleboro proper, all not too far from Pawtucket
They bought the team for 25 mil. Per the Globe their estimated worth is 50 mil.
Yeah, cancer is shitty too. AFAIK, LL's has been dealing with the disease for not the first time. He's looking every bit of 78 and more. I think that even though he's earn some degree of villain status during his time in Boston, he was also instrumental in bringing Theo to Boston, played a large role in the Fenway renovations and IMO that ballpark in Worcester is quite a little gem. Minor league franchises on the move may feel shitty, but it's become commonplace and the move is definitely more central to the Sox core of New England fan base. Him selling is likely a matter of getting his personal affairs in order.
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There is a dispensary in Pawtucket, right off of 95 near the Providence line, with billboards proclaiming it's ease of access. Based on the needles we find in the park and the methadone clinic a few blocks away I'm gonna say finding snack around town isn't a trial either.
There is also a place in Hope Artiste village called PVD pies that is pretty good. Not Table Talk mind you, but about two blocks from the weed dispensary which is brilliant on its own level.
Lucchino is completing with the PawSox what John Fisher is currently trying to do with the A’s. For that, his ownership group deserves equal scorn, regardless of whether you like the new ballpark and/or location better.
He screwed over one municipality, convinced another to screw themselves, and is now getting out of Dodge. What a guy.
He screwed over one municipality, convinced another to screw themselves, and is now getting out of Dodge. What a guy.
The exterior facade is cheap-looking and horrendous, at some point new ownership will do something about that (most likely try and shake down Worcester for more $).
smackf
I won't take all this Worcester slander. Real talk: Worcester > Pawtucket > Boston.
The Worcester MSA is an unusually bad measure of the economic opportunity that exists for a team there — it sweeps in communities in north-central Massachusetts and eastern Connecticut that are too far removed from Worcester to contribute meaningfully to attendance, and leaves out the MetroWest suburbs east of Worcester (because they are part of the Boston MSA) which are probably the fan base ownership had most in mind when they moved the club.
http://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US49340-worcester-ma-ct-metro-area/
Rhode Island is probably still a better market if you could build a stadium in downtown Providence, or maybe down by the airport. You’d never put the stadium in Pawtucket if you were starting from scratch.
And at the end of the day, it is a business. He bought something, made changes, and likely added significant value to the company and its partners, and now, for whatever reason, he wants to sell it.
I have never understood the disdain for him on this board. He is a critical component of Camden Yards and Petco being built, Fenway being rebuilt, and the Red Sox being successful this century.
Amen. Lucchino was the CEO when the Sox broke through in 2004, and had a hand in hiring Theo and Tito. People can blame him for individual moves and non-moves (which almost certainly assumes a lot of facts that none of us really know), but he was part of what most Boston sports fans view as the most important, and indeed life changing championship in Boston sports history, and then he was part of three more.
As to selling the WooSox, deciding at 78 that he wants to step back and smell the roses seems pretty smart to me. He has no obligation whatsoever to sell to a local buyer. He has not obligations to any fans period. None of us helped finance his purchase or helped him run the business. That he has expressed a willingness to pursue such a buyer in the first instance is a bonus.