Can’t Kick Tony Tavares Around Anymore

Ticket prices up? Revolving door for coaches? Mighty Ducks a civic disgrace?

Tony Tavares took the heat. But now, he vows, you won’t have him to kick around anymore.

After five years as the stoic face of Disney’s professional sports empire, Tavares has kicked himself upstairs. After introducing Pierre Gauthier as the Ducks’ team president recently, Tavares shuffled to the side of the room and pointed to Gauthier with glee.

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” Tavares said. “Talk to him.”

The most powerful sportsman in Orange County, Tavares runs the Angels and Ducks, one of few executives in the country charged with operating multiple franchises. The Sporting News last year ranked him among the 50 most powerful figures in sports.

As the public face of Disney’s teams, Tavares blended the passion of a fan, the authority of an executive and the accessibility of a spokesman. Instead of enlightening fans, his candid comments tended to infuriate and alienate them.

Now, however, Tavares aspires to transform himself from Orange County’s favorite pinata into more of the traditional, private Disney executive who insulates himself with lieutenants--in this case, Gauthier for hockey matters and Angel General Manager Bill Bavasi for baseball.

As Gauthier shook the last of dozens of hands at his news conference, Tavares privately vented his frustrations. No longer, he explained, did he feel compelled to cooperate with those he believed would mock him or ignore his answers if they did not fit a predetermined image, most often one that portrayed him as a penny-pinching micro-manager.

“This is one of the only industries where you can do a great job and be painted as being incompetent,” Tavares said last spring.

But can Tavares immunize himself from criticism simply by hitting his mute button? The traditional Disney executive does not work in professional sports, where the bottom line is not corporate profits but scoreboards that illuminate winners and losers for all to see. Disney’s teams fly no championship banners.

“The nature of most of their businesses is that management is not subject to second-guessing,” said Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. “You don’t have people booing Goofy as he walks down Main Street.

“It’s in their best interest to try to manage negative press, but that’s hard to do in professional sports. If the fan base and the media determine you’re not trying to win, they can turn on you pretty quickly.”

Lightning Rod for Criticism

During trying times, Tavares almost always had something to say, and not in language neutered by a spin doctor. Last year, the trying times overwhelmed the good.

Duck superstar Paul Kariya missed the first 32 games of the hockey season in a contract dispute, the most enduring blotch in a brutal Disney sports year. The stains kept coming: the firing of popular and successful Duck coach Ron Wilson after the 1997 season, the inability to override baseball rules and suspend the Angels’ Tony Phillips after his arrest for cocaine possession during a crucial point last season, legal duels with Fox Sports over broadcast rights, cost overruns on the renovation of Anaheim Stadium and ticket price increases in hockey and baseball.

This spring, as Wilson led the Washington Capitals into the Stanley Cup finals, the Ducks fired two assistant coaches, then fired head coach Pierre Page three weeks later.

Tavares said he was shocked by what he called “personal attacks” surrounding the decision to fire Wilson after the Ducks’ stirring 1997 playoff run, but he refused to present a case for the dismissal. The public scorn, accelerated by Wilson’s belief that the stated “philosophical differences” translated to nothing besides a personality clash with Tavares, failed to subside.

Said Tavares: “It’s no secret the Wilson thing has done a lot to tarnish [my] image.”

In April, as Disney celebrated the opening of the remodeled Edison Field, Tavares joined luminaries at home plate. Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, standing next to Tavares, received a restrained mix of cheers and boos.

There is no diplomatic way to describe how Tavares was received by 45,000 fans that night, except perhaps to say that the booing sounded unanimous.

Tavares is a lightning rod for criticism because he’s the one who explains why a company that spent $19 billion to buy ABC would not consider bidding $19 million on Roger Clemens or Darryl Kile, free-agent pitchers desperately coveted by Disney’s baseball team.

But Tavares is just another middle manager in the Disney kingdom, following Eisner’s fiscal policy.

His more outlandish comments--”I was not eating Snickers bars and soaking my feet in Ron’s blood,” he said in explaining his absence from the news conference announcing Wilson’s dismissal--do not alarm or offend Eisner.

“I think he handles himself very well,” Eisner said. “On a few occasions, he’s gotten emotional. He’s never said anything to embarrass me. He tells the truth. He says it like he sees it.

“I come from New York. To me, Tony is reserved.”

A Steep Learning Curve

Eisner recruited Tavares six years ago from a background in arena management, asking him to determine whether Disney could make money in professional sports and, in particular, the NHL. When Disney hatched the Mighty Ducks in 1993, Eisner installed Tavares as president, his first job in professional sports after two decades running sports arenas and concert halls.

A former accountant, Tavares started as controller of the Providence, R.I., Civic Center and rose to become president of Spectacor Management Group, which runs arenas and stadiums across the country.

If Disney had not diversified its sports division, Tavares probably would have accepted thanks for successfully launching the Ducks and then departed.

Over the last three years, however, Tavares has negotiated an agreement for Disney to purchase the Angels from Gene and Jackie Autry, negotiated a stadium lease and renovation agreement with the city of Anaheim for Anaheim Stadium, supervised 18 months of construction in the $117-million renovation project and explored potential Disney involvement in the NBA, NFL and Major League Soccer.

Tavares merged the Angels’ business operations with those of the Ducks, dismissing many Angel employees with experience in baseball marketing and forcing exhausted employees to operate two teams with a staff size sufficient to run only one.

Said one former employee: “I was going to kill myself working there.”

Disney has approved several recent hires, including Gauthier, in attempting to relieve the chronic personnel shortage.

In trying to enlarge a shrinking Angel fan base, Disney implemented such sideshows as cheerleaders and game shows atop the dugout roof and decibel-busting countdowns to the first pitch.

The Angels’ remaining loyal fans were horrified and weren’t shy about saying so. Attendance dropped in each of the first two seasons under Disney management, despite lavish spending on marketing, and Tavares apologized for the experiments.

“I think that was one of his problems,” said former Angel President Richard Brown, who resigned before Tavares could install himself in that position. “Most of the people on the business side were very new to the industry. He gets in there, new himself and relying on people that are new. The learning curve was extraordinarily steep. He, for all practical purposes, had a tougher job than I did.

“You can be the greatest marketing geniuses in the world. Until you have a feel for the industry, you’re not going to be successful. Baseball is different than ice hockey. You can’t put Dixieland bands on top of the dugout and expect people to be mesmerized.”

‘Someone Has to Speak Out’

The Dodgers won the hearts of Southern California baseball fans--and won championships--under the benevolent ownership of the O’Malley family. No one booed Peter O’Malley, except perhaps in sorrow when he sold the franchise to Fox this year.

But O’Malley never stood and slammed his fist or hurled objects in frustration over a botched play, as Tavares does in his suite, in full view of any fan who cares to look. O’Malley never publicly critiqued his team, as Tavares does.

O’Malley never denounced the major league drug policy as ludicrous, as Tavares did, or decried as “absurd” a rule that permits him to join “three other morons in my league” in a minority bloc of owners that can veto major changes.

“Maybe Peter is more seasoned than I am,” said Tavares, who represents Eisner among baseball’s owners. “Certainly, we’re different people. I think it’s more about emotion. We have a lot of similar views. Peter is a very principled guy.

“He doesn’t let his thoughts hit his lips as easily as I do at times. To me, that is both an asset and a liability. If people see things that are wrong and sit back and don’t call for change because of protocol or some other reason, then change never occurs and inequities can exist for longer periods of time.

“Someone has to speak out when they see something wrong. That falls in the asset category. As far as liability, maybe I offend some people with some of the things I’ve said. I don’t do it with malice. It’s done with the intention of trying to make a bad situation better.”

Tavares chews out employees, particularly those unwilling to share his fanatical dedication to perfection. Once, when a satellite dish malfunctioned in his suite, Tavares hollered at the hired hand who had tried his best--but failed--to fix it.

But Tavares has a compassionate side. Bill Robertson, former communications director for the Angels and Ducks, asked for a few days off after learning his father had received last rites and lay near death in Minnesota. Tavares told him to stay in Minnesota as long as necessary and directed an assistant to arrange a plane ticket so Robertson could leave that day.

“He is a very sensitive man, contrary to what’s been written and said,” said Robertson, now a vice president for the NHL expansion team in St. Paul, Minn. “He’s got a great sense of humor. At any given moment, he’ll come down the hall and crack a joke.

“His door was always open. But I’m sure some people were too intimidated to go in.”

Robertson marvels at Tavares’ attention to the tiniest detail, the trait that compelled him to tour the stadium construction site at any hour over the 18-month project, sometimes wearing a hard hat, T-shirt and shorts.

On one Friday, Tavares walked into the Arrowhead Pond dining room and asked Robertson what happened to the fish and chips. The Ducks win, Tavares said, with fish and chips on the Friday menu.

“I think our record was 11-1 when we served fish and chips on Friday,” Robertson said. “That’s the kind of attention to detail I’m talking about.”

High Hopes for a Low Profile

Wilson did not consider that obsession quite so marvelous. Although Tavares stirred controversy with his comments, Wilson said Tavares continually dictated memos urging him to stop talking so freely.

Tavares demands that his general managers strenuously defend their moves and strategies. But never, he insists, has he directed a general manager to acquire a particular player or directed a coach or manager to use a particular player.

“If asking questions is perceived as interference, then that happens every day,” Tavares said. “Do I have opinions? Of course. Anybody that follows the sport has opinions. Are there players I like or don’t like? Of course. I’m human. But I don’t let that interfere with people’s ability to do their jobs.”

Said Robertson: “He was the counterbalance for the entire organization. If the GMs wanted to make a move, he saw it as his job to play devil’s advocate. If I wanted to do a press kit a certain way, he wanted to make sure why I was doing it.”

Tavares monitors media coverage closely, and no item is too small to infuriate him.

“I had a tough time accepting the fact that a media person had the right to an opinion,” he said. “I have now gotten a little more seasoned--or calloused.”

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Tavares, 48, lives in Villa Park with his wife, Elizabeth, and the youngest of their three children. Peel away the public mask, his family and closest associates testify, and beneath the glib nature and stoic demeanor rests a sensitive man uneasy in the glare.

“One of the hurtful things is having your family read stuff about you they know is not true and having other kids say things to your kids or people say stuff to your relatives,” Tavares said.

“If I never read my name in the paper again, it would be a day too soon.”