Trouble Brewing in Vancouver Front Office
Owner and General Manager At Odds
by Caitlen Sullivan
Vancouver Sun Sports Reporter
October 20, 2004
With the 2004 MBWBA season just concluding with the ascension of the Madison Wolves to the pinnacle of baseball success, there is trouble brewing in the front office of the Vancouver Mounties. The Mounties have emerged under the tutorship of General Manager Joe Geoghegan to be a perennial contender for post season honors. But he’s not a happy camper.
Geoghegan took over late in 1996 as the Mounties were finishing up a dismal 62-100 season at the bottom of the Johnson League Pacific Division. In 1997 the team improved to finish second although still with a losing record (78-84). Geoghegan almost called it quits after 1998 when the club did not improve to a winning record but rather dropping to the cellar once again with the same record as in 1997. But he decided to stick around for at least one more season.
The rebuilding plan paid dividends in 1999, one year later than the original plan. The dividend was even better than expected, and Vancouver won its division and posted its first ever Landis Cup victory. Déjà vu success followed in 2000 with another division crown and Y2K Landis Cup success.
Disappointment followed in 2001 as the club finished second to the California Crusaders in the JL Pacific and missed the post season. 2003 and 2004 again saw the Mounties atop the Pacific Division and in the post season. This past year the club crushed a strong Omaha team in the first round of the playoffs only to lose a heart breaking seven game series to eventual Landis champion Madison in the Cartwright Series.
Now Geoghegan is decidedly unhappy with owner Albert Gallegos, and he went public on Vancouver Sports Talk Radio’s TEAM 1040 last night. Here’s just a brief snippet from the log of the show with host and former Mountie Jimmy Joe Janero interviewing Geoghegan:
[JJJ] So the Mounties came close but just couldn’t get by a tough Madison team. What’s your reaction?
[JG] I’m proud of the team in every conceivable way. They overcame the loss of the number two and number three men in the pitching rotation for the entire playoffs. Rather than using that as an excuse, players stepped up to get things done in other ways. They demolished Omaha and came within a whisker of beating the most powerful team in baseball. How can you not be proud and happy with success like that?
[JJJ] . . . and yet, it’s rumored that you aren’t happy. What’s up with that?
[JG] I’m unhappy with the owner, Albert Gallegos. I guess unhappy would be a massive understatement. I’m furious, I’ve told him so, and I’m not sure I want to work for a skinflint like him for very much longer.
[JJJ] What’s the problem?
[JG] Well, look. The Mounties just drew over 4 million people for the regular season for the first time in the team’s history going back to 1973. They did that despite raising ticket prices for the second year in a row. We showed a profit of more than $43 million. We have been consistently successful on the field. We even negotiated a media contract for next year that is UP by an astonishing $16 million. And the money grubbing Gallegos slashes our budget by $23 million? That’s insane. The budget for next year is actually less than we are currently paying our players and staff.
[JJJ] Well, yeah, but under the league’s new financial guidelines you get the keep all the profit and use it as you see fit. And if Kestle goes to free agency as expected, then your payroll will show a substantive drop.
[JG] Both of those statements are true. We do not plan to extend Kestle since he would be unavailable for most of next year with his injury and may not return from the injury as the same pitcher he was. Look. Here’s the rub. We negotiated our current player contracts under the assumption we would have similar budgets to what we have experienced in the past so long as we experienced similar success. That assumption is now null and void. Yes, we can use the profit, but the league is going to mandate that some substantive portion of it be used for capital improvements on the stadium. And we don’t know the details of that at all. So we can’t use all the profit as we see fit. Even if we could, if we run over budget for staff and delve into the profit to pay the bills, that will result in dwindling profit margins in the future. And that is not a sustainable model for running a team. Eventually we’ll be at a deficit. The only way to successfully run a franchise long term is to do within budget. The bottom line of that in the short term is that we plan to stay within budget for 2005 and we will be totally out of the market for signing a replacement for Kestle for next year.
[JJJ] So what will you do?
[JG] Well, for next year it looks like we will have to survive on the field with our current pitching staff less Kestle. We’ve got some good guys in the remaining rotation, and if Shane Wookey is sound after his latest major injury, we could be OK. But we most likely are shut out of free agency as a means of improving the club. That’s not a position I like to be in.
[JJJ] So it’s business as usual for you?
[JG] The team should do OK next year. We have a solid nucleus up and down the lineup. But, no, it’s definitely not business as usual for me personally. I don’t like working for a penny pinching miser who wouldn’t know a baseball if it hit him in the face. When’s the last time you saw him at a game? Bah! I should shut up before I say something I will really regret?
[JJJ] You don’t regret what you’ve said so far?
[JG] Not in the least. I’ve only said what I feel, and I think it needed to be said. I’m sure I’ll hear about it from Gallegos. I thought about retiring after the 2003 season, but I signed a two-year deal through the end of next season. But remember, I am, after all, the oldest GM in the league, and I’ll turn 70 before that contract runs out. I think maybe after next year it will be time to sever my relationship with Gallegos. I have more enjoyable things I can be doing than helping him ruin a lot of good work by a lot of people in building up a very successful baseball franchise.
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