Many posters seem to believe that Larry was behind a lot of the palace intrigue with the Sox over the years – meddling with Theo (and leading to the gorilla suit), smearing Tito on the way out the door (courtesy of The Dentist), and messing up negotiations with Lester (lowballing him to the tune of $70M). The thing is, I have no idea if any of that is actually true, partly true or just rumor. But that viewpoint is a thing.
I think personally my problem back in the early days of the new ownership his primary weekly media obligation was early AF on the Dennis & Callahan show. Larry came off as a smartass and ornery, but in retrospect that is exactly the attitude he should have had with those guys in that spot...
I was on that flight down to DC, trophy was sitting across the aisle from me.
They promised us brick like Camden Yards, and instead gave us blue sheet metal like a warehouse.
Worcester was fifth in the International League in attendance in 2023 and also drew fewer fans last season than the Albuquerque Isotopes of the PCL and the Dayton Dragons of the Midwest League.
Law student here willing to relocate. Plus I can contribute my debt to the effort.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/11/30/sports/worcester-red-sox-sold/
Should one company own over 1/5 of all minor league teams? I guess they don't compete like MLB ones do, but it seems weird.
Put differently, should one company own 3/4 of the Red Sox minor league teams? (They already own Portland and Salem)
Haha, really? The taxpayers quite literally financed the business and helped him run it by building its place of production.
I for one am absolutely shocked that Larry Lucchino yet again showed himself to being a lying scumbag.
My view of Lucchino is more mixed. LL feuded openly with Theo, then hired Bobby Valentine almost immediately once he was gone. It’s possible we won in spite of LL more than because of him. But I wouldn’t deny him credit for the Fenway renovations, and at the end of the day he was at the helm for the most successful run in the club’s history, which has to count for something.
I think people would think it would be better if he didn't rip an institution away from a community that nurtured it for decades in order to get a tax-payer provided windfall somewhere else and then immediately cash out.
Quite unlikely that anyone in the area could put together a bid in the same area code as MegaMiLB, LLC's.. But Larry was almost certainly aware of that when he made his fatuous statement about wanting to sell locally.
Weren't there a couple of attempts by LL & company to build a new park in Providence and Pawtucket? And IIRC there was a signed agreement in place with one of those cities that went sideways.
Doesn't seem great.
"Went sideways" doing a lot here. LL's ownership group is pretty far from blameless about the decision to bail in favor of W.
I don't believe that I assigned blame in any direction, but please feel free to educate me.
How many more teams would Diamond need to buy for DOJ/FTC to start to investigate?
Then what should he have said? Or what should he have done? Sold it for under market price?
He could've not bought a beloved community institution expressly for the purpose of using tax-payer funds to personally enrich himself, ripping the institution from the community itself to do so, and then immediately cashed out, while paying lip service to an idea of local ownership that he had no intention of actually following through on, and then sold it to a group that has no connection to the community that currently supports the institution and would not hesitate to subsequently rip it away again in the future if it makes financial sense for them to do so.
I get the emotional part. But I don’t get the whole blaming LL for Pawtucket’s loss, and “extortion”, and having this evil plan to enrich himself all along stuff. Do you think the town Fathers and Mothers of Worcester are kicking themselves today for having been taken advantage of by this slick city charlatan?
That 38 year owner had died in 2015 and in 2018 LL et al bought the team from his widow and other Pawsox executives who had inherited the team
He would've been happy to keep the team in Rhode Island if the taxpayers paid for it. Like, yeah, obviously it's good for business if you can get a local government to foot your capital costs and assume the risk while you retain the profits for yourself. It still makes you an asshole.
And when they wouldn’t he went to Worcester where the taxpayers happily footed the costs. And I think they would do it again if the situation arose.
Why do local governments offer tax breaks and other incentives to get businesses to relocate to their area and shouldn't they be expected to succeed?
If it's a conventional business, it might be because the local government wants to add jobs or facilitate the development of new industry. If it's a sports team, it's because billionaires have spent the last 30 years playing on the emotions inherent to the sports industry to convince local governments to give them money, even though it's been proven time and time again that publicly financed stadia do not economically benefit the local areas themselves.
True, but they provide social pride in many cases that seems to be sufficient that the programs continue even though they are not economically beneficial. And for Worcester here, it was the lynchpin of a neighborhood revitalization whose value can’t be measured simply against the cost of the charity to the team.
I guess I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that a person can't be criticized for something they did as long as it made personal financial sense for them.
Nothing. He shouldn't have brought "local ownership" into at all. It was a gratuitous misdirection.
The idea of stadia as "lynchpins of neighborhood revitalization" is largely a myth. And if Worcester's goal was simply to revitalize Kelley Square, it would have been far more effective for the government to invest in housing and transportation.
that’s not what I said
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. I said we loved games in Pawtucket, I’m on your side. And we have zero knowledge if there was a local alternative. Do you think LL went into this sale with the buyer already in the bag? I’d like to think, and I believe @Midnight Ryder Jones would agree, that if a local buyer had popped up, especially one with more money, he would have sold locally. Had a local buyer shown up with a slightly lower bid it would have been interesting to see the result. But we never heard of an alternative offer . . . Should LL have just waited for that local buyer to arise a year or five from now?There are many ways to revitalize a neighborhood. Worcester in 2023 is a whole lot different than Worcester in 1993 or even 2008. It has a higher population than Providence does. This opportunity presented itself and the city took it. Were they regretful of the choice twelve months ago? Are they now? If not then I’m not sure how you can say this was a bad choice for them. And the population is up 15% in the past twenty years, so I think housing has preceded this development.
The population of Worcester has increased, but the housing supply hasn't even come even close to increasing proportionally. And this isn't a problem unique to Worcester; Massachusetts is in the midst of a state-wide housing crisis, largely because local governments here (like in much of America) have spent the last ~80 years making it extremely difficult to build housing (usually with racist and classist motives in doing so). The fact that governments make it harder to build housing while literally subsidizing stadia for billionaires is gross, and Larry Lucchino is gross for taking advantage of that for personal gain. The fact that, as you pointed out, countless other sports owners have been doing for decades all over America doesn't exonerate him.
I'm not really arguing from the point of view that LL abandoned Pawtucket and should burn in hell or do penance forever, nor do I think he was somehow morally obliged to sell locally and/or at a lower price than he would otherwise get. But a nineteen-day span between his announcement about intending to sell and identifying the purchaser makes me suspect there's a very good chance the sale was in the bag at the time of the initial announcement, or that he had a pretty good idea of where it was going. There was no reason for him to create an expectation that he was going to try to sell locally, just as there will be no reason for his inevitable proclamation that no local groups emerged as viable during his exhaustive nineteen day search. If you're going to take the money and run, just fucking do it and get lost.that’s not what I said
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He had an agreement with RI and Pawtucket for a roughly $90m ballpark, the team paying for a bit less than half and the rest split between city and state, signed by the Governor in 2018. The team's cited reason for bailing on that agreement was RI refusing to guarantee the bonds in the wake of G38's videogame company mess. But, within months of the may 2017 announcement they would build a new Ballpark in Pawtucket, the ownership had started negotiating with Worcester for what became the Polar Park deal. So, an ultimately $160m ballpark agreement with the city and state covering $100m and the team's payments for their $60m massively back-loaded. This wasn't a case of "they couldn't get a deal" in RI, or even that they tried to use Worcester as a stalking horse to drive up RI's investment, they seem to have detected pretty early on that W would cut them a sweetheart agreement and went for it.
I think you are exacty right, and the bolded part is key. I find it hard to believe that a more locally based investor, or short of that, a non-conglomerate investor who could plant local roots, might eventually emerge to purchase one of the marquee teams in minor league baseball, *if* LL allowed enough time for a market to develop. For the short amount of time that lapsed between announcing the team was for sale to the time a buyer was announced, it is highly unlikely that any one could have put together a legitimate purchase proposal from scratch (unless they were already wealthy enough to have $50 million in loose change rattling around in their pockets).
This is very accurate. Just a few things to add to it . When Mondor died he left the team to his widow and gave Mike & Lou each a piece of the team. Lucchino and the other folks bought it for around 25 million . Lou took his buyout , and bought another AAA team and passed away before he was able to see his new stadium open for the Omaha Storm Chasers. Mike is still with them in a " title " only role. They brought Skeffington in to get a new deal done in Providence, and if anyone was going to get it done it was him. He died not long after while trying to get the deal done. They were working to try to get the deal done, but LL has been around long enough to not pull all his eggs in one basket. They still had a deal with RI, and at the last minute the state tried to double the cost of the teams investment . The state figured they would never leave, and LL called out their bluff by having Worcester in their back pocket.
