Ted Rogers didn't know a forkball from a horseball and couldn't have cared less. He had people for that.
What Rogers had was uncommon vision and a bloodhound's nose for a good business deal. Those instincts led him in dozens of disparate directions throughout his entrepreneurial life, always on the cutting edge of technology, from FM Radio to cable television, to publishing, to mobile phones and, yes, to baseball.
He owned this newspaper (the Toronto Sun) for a time and Paul Godfrey, then the Sun's publisher, who has taken a few sudden turns down the path of life himself, remembers how Rogers became the unlikely owner of a sports franchise.
"I had known Ted for a long time but we worked very closely together when he owned the newspaper," Godfrey said yesterday. "He certainly knew my interest in both baseball and football at that time and never once expressed any interest in sports at all. He was a pure businessman.
"After he sold the Sun and I was leaving (as Sun publisher), with no game plan in place, I got a call from him in early July of 2000 inviting me to breakfast at his house.
"I nearly choked on my granola when he said: 'I want you to run my baseball team.'
"I replied: 'I didn't know you owned a baseball team.' "And he said: 'I don't, but I want to buy (the Blue Jays) from Labatts.'
"It took me about a nanosecond to accept."
Rogers paid Interbrew, Labatt's parent company, $160 million for the Jays in late summer of 2000. It was a time of some distress in the baseball industry, especially here in Toronto where ticket sales had dropped dramatically and revenues were flat at the SkyDome. In short, just the kind of turnaround situation that made Ted Rogers' eyes sparkle.
"Without Ted Rogers, it's hard to imagine just what the baseball landscape would look like in this city," said Paul Beeston, who has returned as interim president.
"Would it be gone? I tend to think not, but we might have had absentee owners. In a strange way, for someone who really didn't care about baseball, Ted had affection for the team."
Mostly, though, Rogers knew instinctively where the fertile ground lay.
"See, Ted was one of the great visionaries, the type of guy who was thinking three steps ahead," Godfrey said. "He didn't know much about sport but he understood the business of sport. He could see how it fit with his media business and he also knew the value of the ball club was at a low point. He saw no downside, only upside. He could see the ball team and the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) would be great vehicles for the Rogers brand. He may not have cared a lot about sports but he realized that sports was the culture of the common man.
"More than anything, he felt strongly about putting something back into the community by making sure the Blue Jays remained in Toronto.
ADDED VALUE
"Now the club is probably valued at triple what he paid for it."
Perhaps. But don't try telling that to the Blue Jays employees who were laid off yesterday in a massive restructuring of Rogers Communications media arm, of which the Blue Jays are just one part.
Godfrey is winding down his role with the Blue Jays, readying for a Dec. 31st departure for his new role as CEO of the National Post and he, like most, is anxious to see what the new face of the franchise will look like.
"I guess the major issue will be whether the next CEO shares the same long-term vision that Ted Rogers had for the team," he said. "Over the short term, I would say the next two years or so, I'd bet the team will stay in Rogers hands. What happens beyond that depends, I'm sure, on the company's direction, the economy, foreign exchange and the attitude of the fans in Toronto.
"I know one thing: Ted would want the Jays to remain in Toronto but now that will be someone else's call."
