"Serving up Success," from the 2011 Magazine
"Second to None," from the 2011 Magazine
"15th Season," from the 2010 Magazine
"A Rivalry is Born," from the 2008 Magazine
"Mark Prior on the Mound," from the 2005 Magazine
"Seventh Heaven," from the 2004 Magazine
"The Comeback Kids," from the 1998 Magazine
"A Season to Remember," from the 1997 Magazine
"They won. They lost. They battled back." from the 1997 Magazine
"How the Lugnuts
came to Lansing," from the 1996 Magazine
From the 1996 inaugural Lugnuts magazine:
How the Lugnuts came to Lansing
Tom Dickson had a floundering team.
Mayor David Hollister had an ambitious dream.
How a handshake - and hard bargaining -
brought Minor League ball to Michigan's capital.
by Eric Freedman
Tom Dickson fell in love with baseball as a child, when his father pushed his head beneath the turnstile so he could get in free to Kansas City A's games. His own baseball career peaked in Little League when he struck out 17 batters while pitching a no-hitter. "It went downhill from there," he laments. "Everyone got bigger and stronger than I was."
David Hollister tried baseball too, first in Little League and then on his high school team in Battle Creek. "I played catcher because nobody else wanted to. I enjoyed it but I wasn't very good."
As it turned out, the two men proved to have proclivity for baseball - just not on the diamond. Dickson, a Chicago advertising executive, put together a multi-million dollar deal to buy a floundering Midwest League team and successfully pitch the idea of basing it in Lansing. And as mayor of Lansing, Hollister caught Dickson's pitch and helped make it a reality.
It was no easy game to convert what naysayers called a pie-in-the-sky idea into the tangible concrete and steel of the Lansing Lugnuts and the team's new Oldsmobile Stadium.
It all began five years ago when Dickson first pondered the challenge of applying sophisticated marketing and business techniques to a sports franchise. Lacking $100 million to buy a Major League team, it had to be the minors - yet at that point in his life, he'd never even been to a Minor League game. Methodically, he got to know a team broker and began shopping. When the Single-A Waterloo, Iowa, Diamonds came on the market, he jumped at the prospect, signed a commitment letter, and then spent months raising about $2 million to pay for it.
The new owners, with Dickson and spouse Sherrie Myers as managing partners, moved the Diamonds to Springfield, Illinois, for the 1994 and 1995 seasons, losing games and money. About the only thing the renamed Sultans of Springfield did win was the dubious status of the league's lowest attendance. So Dickson searched for a new home. There were talks with officials in Dayton, Ohio; Lake County, Indiana; and the northern suburbs of Chicago. And there was Lansing, whose demographics, size, economic base, and community enthusiasm fit the profile in Dickson's mind.
For years, a blue-ribbon comittee in Lansing unsuccessfully explored the possibility of luring Minor League baseball to Michigan's capital city. Meanwhile, Grand Rapids and Battle Creek - each about an hour's drive away - secured their own teams.
Shortly after Hollister won election in 1993, a broker approached the city with a deal, and struck out. "It was all smoke and mirrors. It wasn't real," the mayor says.
About a month later, Dickson approached the city with his proposal. Hollister was skeptical but willing to listen. "I took him around to show what's happening here, to give him the hype," Hollister recalls. And to insist the new stadium be built downtown, and only downtown. The result: Dickson found the city eager to work with him. He offered a partnership for a long-term commitment, and they shook hands.
It would take lots more than a handshake to get to ground breaking, however. There was an intensive financial background check into Dickson and his fellow investors, for example. There were five months of clandestine negotiating sessions - some held away from City Hall, some by telephone conference. The talks were so secret that even the biggest baseball booster on the City Council didn't know they were going on, Hollister says. There was debate over the site, and calculation of what it would cost to build the stadium and how it would be paid for. Lansing officials studied the impact of Minor League baseball on other cities.
Hollister, who had attended Tigers games a couple of times a year with his children, even went to his first-ever Minor League game, in Battle Creek. "It was fun. There were activities between innings," he explains, wearing a Bugs Bunny baseball tie in his City Hall office, a few blocks down Michigan Avenue, from the $13-million stadium.
"It was an arduous process," Dickson says. "We had to negotiate everything from the amenities, to the payment terms, to who would pay for what, who would put in the desks, who would put in the phones, who would put in the computer systems." It proved tougher to finalize the stadium project than to buy the Waterloo Diamonds. Finally, the contract was signed, complete with a 15-year lease - the longest in the minors. They agreed on a minimum of $85,000 rent per season, but that's expected to be only a small fraction o fthe attendance-based rent the team will actually pay. Under the partnership approach, the more money the Lugnuts make, the more money the city makes.
Even with the deal signed, planning was far from over. The stadium itself had to be designed and bids solicited, and the city insisted it be entirely handicap-accessible. Everyone pitched in. Construction unions promised not to strike. Oldsmobile pledged $1.5 million toward the cost of the new facility. Michigan State University committed itself to play Big Ten baseball there.
Businesses were lined up to sponsor fireworks displays and other activities.
Baseball is a game, but it's also big business. As Dickson puts it, "There's something magical about the business of baseball. Everybody thinks it's cool, but most people don't understand the economics of it, and the risks."
For the mayor, the bottom line meant more than a fair rental rate and concession revenue. It also meant ensuring that the stadium would serve as an economic development tool and a catalyst for tourism, restaurants, and other downtown businesses while providing affordable family entertainment.
Then there was the matter of a team name. More than 2,000 suggestions poured into a contest sponsored by the Lansing State Journal and WILX-TV, including the Crabs, Governors, Lumberjox, Spark Plugs, Mudwumps, Bullfrogs, and Ballhogs. Dickson chose Lugnuts, sparking lots of ridicule, some compliments - but plenty of attention. An eye-catching purple mascot, Big Lug, was introduced as the team prepared to sell tickets for its opening season. Why Lugnuts? "It was just corny enough for me to fall in love with it," Dickson says. "I'll take the praise or the blame."
Pitcher Dickson's mind wanders for a moment from the business of Minor League baseball to the mystique. "There's a kind of innocence to it. There's something about baseball that's intoxicating, and this is the game in its purest form."
What happens now to the Lugnuts is up to the public as much as to the owners and the players. The first season will go gangbusters, generating momentum for a hot second year. The third year will be the critical test of continuing interest, according to Hollister, the catcher.
Meanwhile, Lansing celebrates. "It's a remarkable unifying thing," the mayor says. "It's united the community in a way I've never seen in my 30 years here."
Eric Freedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from East Lansing, spent
most of his
Little League career on the bench. He played outfield when the coach let him on the field.
