Amid rumors, speculation, and assorted bloggings that Peter Magowan is thinking about retirement, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about the good and the bad since he’s been in charge. You guys pretty much ignored my piece on league-wide offense trends (only seven backtalks?), so I guess you’re only interested in ranting and raving about Giants topics exclusively.
I think he’s been terrific for the franchise, between bringing Bonds to SF, stopping the team from leaving, and building the best damn ballpark in the game, he and the rest of the ownership group must be applauded. A standing ovation wouldn’t be out of order just for that short list, really.
On the other hand, he has stayed the course with Sabean, even as Sabean’s made one disastrous decision after another, both in whom he’s chosen to have wear the orange and black, and the outlandish contracts he’s doled out in signing them.
Agree? Disagree?
Let me hear from you, write long and loud, and I’ll front page the best.
25 Backtalkers
[...] Original post here [...]
The Magowan Era should be divided into two parts.
He and his group get a standing ovation for their work through 2002. They saved the franchise for San Francisco (the Tampa Bay Giants just doesn’t sound right). He/they signed Bonds (the best free-agent signing in MLB history). They brought in Dusty Baker, who did a superb job. They brought in Brian Sabean, who turned the franchise around in a year and gave San Francisco its longest sustained period of success since the Giants moved west. Last, and certainly not least, he was the driving force in the construction of Pac Bell, arguably the best of the new parks.
The dividing line is the 2002 World Series. After the Giants kicked away San Francisco’s first championship, things started to fall apart. He ran Dusty out of town, brought in an out-of-touch replacement, would not spend to give the greatest offensive player in postwar MLB history enough support, purposely dealt away high picks for old role players who had limited use and no upside (Michael Tucker) but would not make bids for premium talent (Vlad Guerrero). He presided over the collapse of the scouting department. He milked Barry for all he was worth, turned a blind eye to BB-related problems, then threw Bonds over the side and basically stripped the franchise of any remembrance of him.
For the second part of the Magowan Era, he’s being saluted now by flocks of empty seats, which speak louder than anything I could say.
He did not stop the team from leaving. The move was blocked by the MLB owners/commish in order to keep the team in San Francisco (which is better for the league, apparently). Magowan was just one among a group of investors who was willing to pop some $$ in and take the team from Lurie. He is also the one willing to be the leading man, though he never had the most shares of the team.
Please stop perpetuating this rumor. Magowan did not build the ballapark. Magowan may have been the one to sign Bonds, but you can bet the rest of the ownership group had a say.
I don’t know what has happened, but this site is not what it once was. You spend most of your time raving, but it is often misguided. And now you are fellating Magowan when he may be on the way out the door when you should be decrying him for the current state of the team.
I couldn’t disagree more. Did MLB stop the Expos from leaving Montreal? The ONLY reason the move was blocked was a viable ownership group was organized by Magowan.
Magowan and his group also did all the heavy lifting in terms of working through 3 elections, meeting with community groups, the mayor’s office, the supervisors to build a coalition to win an election. Without the public funding that most communities lavish on their franchises. That constitutes “building” the park in my mind.
I well remember the Lurie years when this team was a perpertual flight risk, the fact that the Giants should be firmly situated in SF for the next 50-100 years is the central achievement of Magowan’s tenure and certainly worth the gratitude of Giant’s fans.
You may disagree but it doesn’t change the truth. The Expos were in a very bad market for MLB. The Giants are in one of the top markets in the country.
Yeah, they built a ballpark but not for me and not for you. They did it for $$$. They were basically given free land of very high value to build what at the time was a sure fire way of boosting revenue and equity. It worked perfectly. Now if you skip down to James Wangs post you’ll see how this has worked out.
With all due respect, SYWF, but you can go fuck yourself.
Misguided? Fellating Magowan? Perpetuating rumors?
Geez, what a douchebag I must be. Sorry if I’m such a piker.
I guess you must have inside knowledge about how the Giants weren’t really gonna go to St. Petersburgh, or how every other team has secretly financed their own ballpark, or how it was an anonymous group of investors –what a fun word for someone who doesn’t actually have $100 million dollars to put into a baseball team that’s been hemorrhaging money for a decade– who should share the accolades, as opposed the guy who took the bullets as the face of the franchise.
I’ve criticized Magowan as much as anyone. I’ve been writing about the fucked up direction the team has been going in for years. All of the mistakes Magowan’s made don’t change the things he did right, of which I mentioned just a few. If it weren’t for the ownership group that he led, the Giants wouldn’t be here, Barry Bonds would’ve been a Brave or a Yankee; and there’d be no PacBell Park. Oh, and I’d suggest that putting together a $100 million dollars for a baseball team that had been doing so poorly the owner was thinking about either selling the team, or moving it to Florida qualifies as a stretch in imagination, balls, and as we can see now, vision.
I’ve opened myself to criticism and correction for the whole time I’ve been doing this. If someone has a point that proves me wrong, I front page them.
Go away, if my work has slipped so much you can’t take it anymore. Or better yet, WRITE SOMETHING YOURSELF, that other people can comment on, for six fucking years; and stop posting anonymous comments here about what a poor job I’m doing.
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:UPcHPdMVQWMJ:query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html%3Fres%3D9E0CE2D91138F932A25752C1A964958260+magowan+giants+move+st.+petersburg&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a
It’s pretty clear from this article, written in 1992, that the league did NOT NOT NOT want the Giants to move and had precedent for blocking the move. Lurie had already agreed to sell the team. Magowan was NOT NOT NOT a savior. He was just one of many who were willing to make an investment to keep the team here.
Now, what did I say:
He (Magowan) did not stop the team from leaving. The move was blocked by the MLB owners/commish in order to keep the team in San Francisco (which is better for the league, apparently). Magowan was just one among a group of investors who was willing to pop some $$ in and take the team from Lurie. He is also the one willing to be the leading man, though he never had the most shares of the team.
Also…I used to write for your site, in fact. The experiment never worked out very well, but IIRC I wrote the longest of the initial seven that you invited.
So…Fellating Magown – check
Perpetuating rumors – check
Misguided – my own opinion. Your tone on the site is so full of anger nowadays I often question why I come at all. I constantly have to remind myself that the state of the Giants is a bitter pill and that before things turned into shitsville this was my favorite site.
So, please remember…Magowan DID NOT save the Giants from leaving San Francisco.
Oh, nonsense. If the Giants were making money, Lurie would not have sold the team. If the Giants were making good money, a local investor would have been easy to find. The Giants were drawing, what, 300,000 fans a season at the time, in a crappy cold windy stadium?
It’s ludicrous to claim that Magowan and partners just willy-nilly threw their money away to do MLB some kind of favor. Get real. No-one who’s that much of a madman even has $100 million.
And LURIE backed out of the deal with Tampa Bay, on the morning the team was to be sold.
And how many teams have built new stadiums in the last 15 years that weren’t municipal facilities, which has been well documented by Baseball Prospectus as screwing a city out of money? And oh yes, where the ballpark is was a fine fine neighorhood – just people beating down the doors to be there.
Do you find outrage at the Bonds situation not worth raving about? Perhaps protesting ludicrous injustice is a positive quality? You in turn accuse this site of being too negative and then of being too pandering. Maybe it’s neither.
Sounds like you’re just posting here to talk shit at John – “fellating” huh? I can tell the level of literacy and intelligence involved. This is a great site, with intelligent writing – don’t post leud nonsense just to be contrary and grind an axe.
Move mouse. Hilite the hyperlink. Click. Read.
what an jerk – did you exist at the time? have you any clue of baseball history whatsoever? glad you believe everything you read in the papers. what an ignoramus.
I think Mags and Sabes are pretty much equal in blame for this situation.
Before everyone starts lauding Peter Magowan for keeping the Giants in SF, bringing in Bonds, organizing the financing of Phone Co Park, etc. or for excusing him for being 66 yrs old, having family commitments, etc. or for being tired and tarnished from dealing with the PED scandal, we should all remember that Magowan is a businessman and knows how to make money. He wants to sell out his 15% ownership share, because he wants to get out at the top of the Giants value. His share is worth $70M.
The Giants prospects for revenue increase are slim to none for next several years. As the regional and national economy goes down the tubes, so does the on field prospects for the Giants and overall short-term value of the club. It makes great business sense for Magowan to get out now. He is 66 yrs old. Can he afford to wait another 5 years or more for the next plateau of club value, when the Giants might actually be competitive on the field again? When else will he get to enjoy the shrewd and aggressive investment he made in the Giants over 15yrs ago?
As I’ve written in the past, I’ve felt that Magowan and Baer have had a hand in the atrocious recent signings of Rowand and Zito. No one trying to jump start a rebuilding effort would make these moves. These signings were stupid PR moves (are those ‘Gamer’ ads even still on the KNBR?) made by the urgings of Magowan and Baer. Hell, they had to market something about the team. Sabean has made many mistakes during his 10 year run of desperation trying to win while he still possessed the best hitter ever. But he’s admitted to these mistakes and I believe is trying to rebuild. Rebuilding is not Magowan’s cup of tea. The wants the most value out of this team now, so he can sell out at the best price. You may decry this as too cynical for a lifelong Giants fan like Magowan, but I think $70M has a way of skewing your thinking for what is best for the team.
Another year of this management schism might bring on the signing of such free agents like Jeff Kent or a similarly cooked John Smoltz for PR purposes. Magowan’s departure would at least end this management divide. At best it would mean the firing of Sabean, when the new grey-haired preppy takes over. Hopefully, Magowan’s replacement will be an owner interested in building franchise value by investing in overseas scouting and player development.
I’ve never understood the Baer hate from Giants fans. My understanding is that Baer’s job isn’t to make team-level decisions — it’s to put the best PR spin on the decisions that others have made.
No Baer is involved in team-level decisions. Which is why people hate him so much.
[...] John wrote an interesting post today on …. Change is goodHere’s a quick excerptAmid rumors, speculation, and assorted bloggings that Peter Magowan is thinking about retirement, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about the good and the bad since he’s been in charge. You guys pretty much ignored my piece on … [...]
Good with obvious player moves (e.g. Bonds over Williams) and with obvious money moves (e.g. keeping the franchise in SF and the stadium). Do these aspects of his ownership group really merit praise? He put money into the franchise. Great, thanks for that. What else was he going to do?
Bad with just about everything else (e.g. medium and long term goals for the franchise, little flexibility, terrible innovation, avoidance of risk to the detriment of the franchise [see: Sabean, Brian or Alou, Felipe], choosing to resign his daily front of incompetence [Sabean, Alou], likely tinkering with baseball moves that he knew nothing about [see: Zito, Barry], cowardice in the face of the enemy [Selig]. His most profound and lasting failures are (or will be) Sabean and Zito.
Overall? Fine with me if he leaves. For his tenure I’d give him a C-…and that score is because Bonds was so freaking good that he saved Magowan’s ass.
well, they’re all in it for the money. duh. it’s how they go about it that affects us lowly fans – maybe they/he made dumb player moves that meant a crappy franchise now, but we do have a damn team and we did have Bonds. whaddya want? asses in the seats, me couchpotatoing in front of the tv and having a winning team is where the $$ come from, zito wasn’t signed for the purposes of losing money, neither was anything else. if anything, we should whine about how magowan managed his investment badly, and thus has less millions.
nobody intentionally fields a bad team in order to make more money – doesn’t work that way. except of course for the marlins.
Easy to summarize… 10 great years, 5 shitty ones.
Magowan had a unique set of skills that allowed him to navigate the impossible San Francisco political arena and actually accomplish something that benefitted the city, the franchise, the fans, MLB, and the corporations he works for and represents. Namely, the Park. Very few people had the money, the savvy, the contacts, the patience, the persistence and the vision to make that a reality. “Politics is the art of the possible.” Peter Magowan made something happen that most folks thought was impossible. Giants fans quibbling about the Park are off base–it is a hell of a thing and all of baseball has enjoyed it. You could make an argument that signing Barry Bonds was the greatest free agent move in the history of the game. That was quintessential Magowan: one player who was truly a difference-maker with long ties to the team and Bay Area, brought in at the moment of acquisition, in the midst of uncertainty. It was politics, PR, marketing, a great investment, and a sound baseball move all in one. Not many men claim a track record like that. This site has documented Magowan’s fall from grace, and he’s earned the opprobrium, to be sure. But if we hit the rewind button and replay Game 6–I know we have all done it far too many times–and alter history and WIN the fecking World Series in 2002, then Magowan completes his trifecta. Park, Player, Ring. (I’m not including “saving the team” in the list, and, at the time, that was enough for me to cut him a lifetime’s slack.) The failure to win the championship when it was in our hands will haunt the team the way McCovey’s line drive in 1962 did for forty years. Magowan cannot be blamed for that–bad luck, bad decisions, bad play, and a determined opponent get the credit. The wind came out of the sails after that Dark October, and a scrambling, desperate, penurious and out-of-touch mind-set took over the Front Office, and the Barry-less 2008 Giants is the result of that collapse of leadership. Great accomplishments and great failures–quite a legacy. “He who never fell, never climbed.” If Peter Magowan takes his bow and walks off the stage I’ll be standing and cheering, and I hope the rest of Giants fandom will be as well. But if you are mumbling “good riddance” under your breath as you do, I’ll forgive you.
look, no matter what anyone says, peter and the rest of the investors did save the franchise from moving to tampa…the deal was done…finito…they were as good as gone…and they did buck both the league and naysayers and built a privately financed park, saving local taxpayers millions and helping to reinvigorate the mission area (with the help of an earthquake)…however, since 02, it has been mistep after mistep
however, he is only 66, which in the world of ownership, makes him a baby
he doesnt have to sell off his shares to step down as the face of the team, he just has to go to the board and ask for a replacement
if all this is true, i just hope they find a baseball man and not a buisinessman
would hate to see the giants become the niners
yeah – maybe I’m remembering wrong, but wasn’t the move to Tampa completely negotiated, all but the signatures on the sale? I can’t imagine anything closer. And yeah, we all (I assume) were around for all the politics and referendums around a new stadium – the answer was “no”, “no” and “no again”. And the biggest bitch I could have about Hoy Hoy Park is that it’s a few blocks from Market. Life is rough.
And anyway, in the “lack of championship” category, everyone knows the playoffs are a crapshoot; and, the maybes could be endless – a better setup man than Rodriguez when Robb Nen’s arm was falling off? That one game to replay in Atlanta? Switching Kent and Bonds in the batting order? Who the hell knows? Didn’t virtually everyone see Felipe Alou as an improvement at the time? Maybe he was too old school, or just too old, or overrated because the Expos weren’t supposed to win – but still, I really doubt there were too many wailings about the choice at the time.
We got a contender for 6-odd years. That, in modern parlance, is a dynasty. Or 10 and 5 as Jay T says – same point. One has to realize that for the current team to be a contender, you’d have to chop off five wins for the last X number of years. So instead of Durham, Alfonzo etc etc the team should have done what? What they’re doing now, except we would have already been bitching for the last few years. “Should have signed Vlad!” – right, and we would have one superstar surrounded by replacement level guys – sounds familiar?
marc, please take a look at vlad’s salary package, which is a bargain in today’s market
he wouldnt have been surrounded by “replacement” players….bonds shouldnt have either
the fact remains…sabean has done a piss poor job at development, and the brain trust should have seen that years ago
they should also have seen the flaws in the “draft only pitchers” philosophy…but they didnt
but getting rid of peter wont solve most of this orgs problems
Well, I don’t see how signing Vlad would have changed those other things. My point is that hindsight is golden, and I don’t seem to remember too much hand-wringing at the time decisions were made – including Pierzinski. Sabean got lucky with Jeff Kent, got unlucky with Pierzinski. Vlad was considered a very high injury risk, and anyway, anybody who remained productive and signed a contract when Vlad did is under market price by now. He sure won’t be soon.
It’s a common management problem in all arenas to take a huge asset and exploit it to the point of diminishing returns. Thus, many “proven” players to support the asset, and very little devoted to prospects (risk) – conservatism in the environment of having a cash cow. Most such situations include a blindness that their money-maker situation might have a sell-by date. Then when that happens, not to get even more too silly, you shoot the cow – as they have done. Of course, what follows is an awful organization – in the real world, those businesses go under.
Anyways, losing the managing owner almost always results in a new GM – 9 times out of 10. New broom sweeps clean, piss in the corners, etc etc etc. The GM is always the owner’s “boy”. Sabean won’t last a year once Magowan is gone.
On another note, Fire Joe Morgan has done some more logical defending of Barry Bonds and why it’s ridiculous no team has signed him yet (and they tear another stupid sportswriter to shreds)…
http://www.firejoemorgan.com/2008/05/boogeymanness-obp.html
Man, these guys are my new heroes.
oh and john should be interested in this
soon to be released in theaters is the documentary, “bigger, stronger, faster”, about the hypocracy of the steroids debate