Insider baseball

Part 3

by Dan Kennedy

For the moment, the Red Sox are playing it quiet. And business-community leaders argue that the team is smart to work behind the scenes rather than try to impose an unpopular idea on a combative neighborhood, as Kraft attempted to do.

"I'm more optimistic that they don't have something specific that they're going to roll out, saying, `This is what we're going to do,' " says Paul Guzzi, president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, explaining he takes the Sox' non-stance as a sign that the team will put a premium on communicating and reaching out.

But if Harrington and his point man for a new stadium, Sox vice-president John Buckley, are communicating and reaching out, it's news to developers, consultants, and others who make it a business to keep tabs on big construction projects.

Robert Walsh, a developer who's friends with both Menino and Buckley, and who was recently identified in the Boston Herald as someone who could play an important role in building a new ballpark, says, "I haven't talked to John Buckley since well before spring training started. I don't know what the Red Sox are doing."

Adds Michael Goldman, a political and business consultant: "I think the Red Sox believe that, unlike the Patriots, they are a sacrosanct commodity, and that eventually something will happen to their benefit. You often wonder sometimes whether they think of themselves as junior Blanche DuBoises, depending on the kindness of strangers. Well guess what?"

Whatever the Red Sox end up doing, their principal political asset is that -- well, they're the Red Sox, with 96 years of tradition, from Cy Young to Babe Ruth, from Ted Williams to Mo Vaughn. An organization that's virtually synonymous with the Jimmy Fund, which has been helping kids with cancer for 50 years. An institution that genuinely appears to be trying to overcome its legacy of country-club smugness and racism by reaching out to the African-American community. "From what I can tell about the past, this is an awful lot better than it ever was. I've been here for 10 years, and it's gotten better every year," says Art Taylor, associate director of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

The one option the Red Sox don't have is to do nothing. At some point within the next 10 to 15 years, team officials predict it will begin costing more to keep the crumbling ballpark standing than to build a new stadium. Even more important, the team has an unusual ownership situation: John Harrington is not the owner per se, but rather the head of a trust that has run the team since the death of owner Jean Yawkey, in 1992. Under the terms of the trust, Harrington will eventually have to sell the team, though Sox spokesman Bresciani says there's no deadline.

Nevertheless, Harrington has a mandate to maximize the team's value before sale, and a new stadium is a big part of that. Indeed, Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran (D-Mattapan) cites the trust in his populist argument against using any taxpayer money to help pay for a new stadium. "They need to increase the value of that franchise to give the beneficiaries of the trust a big payout," Finneran says. "That's the real game here. It's not the game on the field."

Boston lawyer Mike McCormack, a former city councilor, recalls talking with a top Red Sox official a few years ago, after it became clear at a public hearing that South Boston would not welcome the team with open arms. "He said, `We thought they loved us because we're the Red Sox. Boy, how wrong we were,' " McCormack recalls.

Far from energizing the Sox, though, McCormack says the experience seems to have scared them into inaction. "The Red Sox have done zippo," he says. "If it was anybody else other than the Red Sox, it would doom them. It's like an election. You have to start out with the premise that you're an underdog in the race, and that you're running against an incumbent. You can't just go for the quick hit. You've got to devise a strategy and stick with it."

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.