BY MATT LaWELL
CHARLESTON, South Carolina | The grandson of a team president who inherited control of the Chicago Cubs on little more than a dare, the son of a sports visionary who sparked the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox to World Series championships and drilled ashtrays in his wooden leg, and the father of two twentysomethings — a son with a wild nickname and a daughter partially blinded with retinitis pigmentosa — who want to dive right into the family game and make it on their own merits, famous last name be darned, Mike Veeck knows all about baseball. More important, he knows all about fun, and fun is good. You can read it right on the cover of his book.
Veeck started with the Chicago White Sox more than three decades ago, working under his father, Bill Veeck, who he refers to as his Old Man, then fell out of the game for a decade, cast away after the perceived disaster of Disco Demolition Night. An attorney and businessman named Marv Goldklang lured him back in during the lull between the 1989 and 1990 seasons to work in the minors. The last two decades have been filled with expansion and evolution for the Goldklang Group — which also includes Bill Murray and owns four teams, including the Charleston RiverDogs and independent St. Paul Saints — and Veeck. Now 61, he is a team owner and president, a college professor, a husband, a father, a son, a salesman, a showman, always a friend. He shares his story.
Take care of the fans personally, serve them well, listen to them and entertain them based on what they tell you. Stand at the gate, watch them come in and listen to what they’re talking about. They will give you unbelievable amounts of information. And where did it come from? Came from my Old Man, who got it from his Old Man, who said, ‘You just can’t go wrong if you listen to the people who frequent your establishment.’
My favorite is always, ‘Boy, that one last night didn’t work.’ It’s astounding how accurate they are.
You can’t take anything for granted, because it changes so frequently.
The last game of the 1977 season, the year we invented sky boxes and the year of the curtain call and the year of ‘Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye’, we finished in third place and an hour after the game, fans were still singing and they wouldn’t leave. I watched Rudy Schaffer (left) and Leo Breen and my Old Man, and the fans stayed an hour and a half. Guys were working on double-time, hanging around, and they didn’t care because they recognized, these fans, this is exactly what you hoped to do with your marketing efforts. They felt a piece of ownership. They didn’t want the season to end. We finished in third place and they didn’t want the season to end. That was a huge lesson. That’s what you aspire to. If they feel that ownership — it is their club, you’re just a caretaker.
"A century of Veecks in baseball? The guy who’s going to pay the most attention to it is working for the White Sox, Night Train. That means something to him. He’s the fourth generation. When I was a kid, it was a pain in the ass to be Bill Veeck’s kid. You loved him, but you resented him. Then, when you see his place in history, you make your own way and you realize you am what you am." — Mike Veeck
Disco Demolition Night. I talked about it from the very beginning. I had to. People are too young today and they don’t remember what an atrocity it was as far as everyone was concerned. Luckily, I know what a real atrocity is. I was raised by parents who actually know that people starving to death is more important than a forfeited ball game. From the beginning, it was therapeutic for me. I never expected it to become this warm and fuzzy memory now. It’s just shocking to me. They use it for fundraisers. The 25th anniversary was a fundraiser for public television, for God’s sake.
A century of Veecks in baseball? The guy who’s going to pay the most attention to it is working for the White Sox, Night Train. That means something to him. He’s the fourth generation. When I was a kid, it was a pain in the ass to be Bill Veeck’s kid. You loved him, but you resented him. Then, when you see his place in history, you make your own way and you realize you am what you am. There’s something that courses through Night Train’s veins that connects back to his great-grandfather. It really means something to him. Interesting cat, too. If you get near Chicago, you should give him a ring.
He had 970 games with the RiverDogs, as he likes to point out, before he cut his teeth in the big leagues. Just a staggering number. I had no idea I’d been ripping him off that long because he told me he didn’t realize you get paid working in baseball until the last four years.
Rebecca is home right now, actually. She is 20 years old, she graduated from high school and she is now learning to live independently — to cook and clean and handle her budget and herself, getting around on public transportation. We’re sitting there last week and Rebecca is literally applying for an internship with the Daytona Cubs. That’s what she wants to do. Rebecca standing at the gate with her cane, welcoming people, you can’t put a price on that. Obviously, I’m going to rip her off because I’m her dad, she’s going to make minimum wage.
People realize what a working approach Murray takes, not just to his acting career, but to his baseball ownership and how active he is. And he has great people instincts and he responds, especially, to the treatment in Charleston and St. Paul. People are used to seeing him around and he has come to represent what we stand for. And the best thing about Murray is, in all these years of knowing him, he hasn’t changed. He doesn’t have an entourage and he’s approachable. That’s why people love him. He won’t sign an autograph during a half-inning, but as soon as you have a break in the action, he’ll sign everything he can find. People don’t realize this, but mentally, they make the jump to the last Major League game they attended where they’re herded like cattle and where they can’t get to their heroes and touch them. Here’s one of the 10, 20 most famous actors and you can go up and get an autograph. What does that say? We could never create that without it being genuine. A fan walked up to Bill at a RiverDogs game, said hello, asked him to sign something and said how much he enjoyed his movies. Bill said he enjoyed the fact the fan was at the ball game. You talk about making a memory.
It doesn’t hurt that he’s a little goofy, too.
I never saw this social media thing coming. I understand it, I use it, but the absolute capabilities of it are just astounding, and the applications in our business are going to continue to multiply and multiply very quickly. But I still think the core business is a customer comes in and he feels welcome and you take care of him any way you can. The social media is a cool medium — to steal from Marshall McLuhan, I don’t think it’s a hot medium, I think it’s a cool medium — you can contact people and you can spread the word very quickly, but I still think what minor league baseball has that no other sport has is that ability to have those one-on-ones. Social media will drive people to the ballpark.
I’m really into the teaching. I’m teaching a graduate course at The Citadel in speech and an undergraduate course in sports marketing, and I love that, that’s how I’m going to ride out. I don’t know what took me so long to realize what a tremendous calling it is. It’s the most rewarding thing I can describe, next to my family and starting up a new ball club. Teaching is where it’s at. I just love it.
A few years ago, they asked me if I would do a semester and I did it and just absolutely loved it. The kids just changed my life. I had 26, the majority of whom were all smarter than I was, and I loved it. Then they called me and asked me to deliver the commencement speech for the graduate class. Afterward, they asked me if I wanted to take a three-year teaching gig and I jumped at it. I really believe I was auditioning with that commencement speech. I had 14 minutes and made them laugh. Somebody preceded me with the undergraduates and went an hour and 14 minutes and killed a couple of alums. I probably got it by subtraction rather than addition.
I went in there and, really, I think this is a common perception and a mistake teachers make across the board, and I bet you if you ask any 20 people you know who teach, they’ll tell you personally, you think, ‘I’m going to go in there and show them something.’ You leave about three weeks later, humbled, because of what you were learning from them. It keeps you so agile and so nimble.
"Take care of the fans personally, serve them well, listen to them and entertain them based on what they tell you. Stand at the gate, watch them come in and listen to what they’re talking about. They will give you unbelievable amounts of information. And where did it come from? Came from my Old Man, who got it from his Old Man." — Mike Veeck
My partner, aside from Bill and Marv, is a fellow by the name of Tom Whaley, and Tom and I and Bill — Marv wasn’t in this deal — we could have moved the Butte Copper Kings. When we lost our lease at Montana Tech, Tom and I kind of looked at each other and we presented it to all of our partners and we probably had a dozen, and we said, ‘We can make a lot of money if we hold this club another year and move it. Or we can double our money and sell it now to people who will play here one more season.’ And that’s what we did. We just don’t want to be involved in moving a team. We love start-ups, but it just became one of our guiding principles. We don’t want to be those guys. There are lots of good deals out there and it’s just not our style.
In 1957, we lived in Rocky River, Ohio. I was the perfect age and I became a Cleveland Browns fan. Football was my favorite TV game — I would rather sit in a ball park and watch a ball game, and I love football on television — and as soon as the Browns moved, that was it for me. Don’t even follow it, really. It just broke my heart. I lived in Maryland for a while, I went to Loyola, so moving the Colts in the middle of the night, it was tasteless. But my beloved Browns, Ray Renfro and Milt Plum and Lou Groza, those were childhood heroes of mine. That’s what affected so much over the years. You can make a lot of money moving a club. But what it does to a community when it loses its team — and sometimes they don’t realize it — I don’t want to be that guy.
There are no Cleveland jokes in our family. We stop dead in the middle of doing what we’re doing. ‘I don’t really think you got that right.’ You look at the Old Man, 2.6 million people in 1948, and that was only paid. You add the 800,000 he didn’t want to pay the amusement and business tax on, and that adds up in my book to 3.4 million people. People don’t get what a tremendous sports town it was. Unbelievable. Forty years before another major league team did 3 million people. Cleveland did it. That’s just factual.
I will be on a bicycle on the Mississippi paths in downtown St. Paul by 7 o’clock. You can make book on that. For a spin on my beloved bicycle. That’s where any work gets done.
I write columns there, I write advertising, I come up with ideas. I’m not fast, but I’m slow. I just poke along. I’m nosy by nature, so it fulfills that, I’m able to poke around and ride around downtown and see little places you’ve never seen before.
Three days a week, pretty much without fail.
There’s something mystical and inspirational about the Mississippi. It’s just always had that. I used to have to ride five hours in Chicago down to St. Louis just to sit there, before the casino boats were down there, just sit and watch the river.
I got a thank-you note this morning from a lady who was in a boat and didn’t realize there would be a Fourth of July show. ‘My husband and my daughter and I so loved that fireworks show.’ I’m thinking, ‘Did we sell boat tickets? We missed a spot!’
Matt@AMinorLeagueSeason.com ♦ @MattLaWell ♦ @AMinorLgSeason
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