The Detroit Tigers Are Roaring Again

Owner Mike Ilitch made risky moves—and threw good money after bad—to turn around this struggling city's big league team

by David Welch

SPECIAL REPORT

The Power 100

• The Power Players
• Big Leaguers You've Never Heard Of
• Forum: The BusinessWeek Power 100
• Power Bracket: Athletes
• Power Bracket: Coaches
• Power Bracket: Executives
• Roger Goodell: The Most Powerful Man in Sports
• Scott Boras
• James Delany
• Arte Moreno
• LaDainian Tomlinson
• Heidi Ueberroth
• Slide Show: Reporter's Journal -- Infamous Sports Moments
• Slide Show: MVPs Off the Playing Field
• Pro Athletes Show Him the Money
• The Detroit Tigers Are Roaring Again
• Don't Let That Smile Fool You
• A Family Feud Jeopardizes a NASCAR Brand
• Sports Lessons for the Business World
• Slide Show: The Power Panel

Story Tools

• post a comment
• e-mail this story
• print this story
• order a reprint
• digg this
• save to del.icio.us

MR. I He wants the Tigers mentioned in the same breath as the Yanks Michael Nemeth

It's a warm, late August evening at Comerica park in downtown Detroit, and the hometown Tigers are chasing the New York Yankees for the fourth and final playoff spot. The atmosphere is electric, and the sellout crowd is on its feet as the Tigers keep slamming away en route to a 16-0 victory. Over the four-game set against the Bronx Bombers, 170,000 fans filled every seat, with some paying $15 to stand on a balcony over the right-field wall. By mid-September, the team would draw a record 3 million, double the attendance in 2003.

The Tigers have become a hot ticket, not to mention a real turnaround story in a town hungry for comebacks. The team's resurrection isn't just on the field, either. Not only is attendance up, but almost every patch of advertising space in the stadium is sold out. Owner Michael Ilitch says he made money for the first time last year since he bought the franchise in 1992.

One reason is that making it to the World Series last year helped double season ticket sales, to more than 19,000 seats. Still, says Ilitch in a rare interview: "Building baseball was tough for me. It's an expensive sport. You lose a lot of money."

Pulling Out the Checkbook

How did Ilitch turn this money-loser into a winner? He threw good money after bad. In 2001, after a decade of mostly losing seasons and Gatorade buckets of red ink, Ilitch went for broke. He replaced a front office that had produced so many bad teams and went after Dave Dombrowski, whom Ilitch had watched build the Montreal Expos on a shoestring in the early 1990s and then put together a Florida Marlins club that won a World Series in 1997.

Promising to plunk down the cash for good players, Ilitch hired Dombrowski as general manager and president and brushed the mothballs off his checkbook. "They say you have to spend money to make money," says Dombrowski. "Mr. I is that way."

So the question that looms large is: Why wasn't he that way for the first decade that he owned the Tigers? After all, this is the same guy who built Little Caesars Pizza from the ground up. This is the same guy who revamped the hapless Detroit Red Wings—a hockey club so bad locals nicknamed it the Dead Wings—and went on to win three Stanley Cups in the past decade.

A Veteran of the Tigers' Farm System

And this is the same guy who was a shortstop in the Tigers farm system back in 1950s. But Ilitch endured a decade of Tigers GMs who made bad trades, showed no knack for selecting talent, and racked up a losing record that turned fans off. "I didn't make the right choices in hiring," Ilitch says. "I wasn't spending because it was all in disarray."

When Ilitch, now 78, had finally had enough depressing seasons, he went for broke and took chances too scary for most owners. He and Dombrowski needed a big name to show other star players they were serious about a turnaround. So they started courting future Hall of Fame catcher Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez, a perennial All-Star.

Dombrowski says their expectation was that "people would say if Pudge was willing to go [to Detroit], they must be committed to change." There were two red flags, though. Rodriguez was not only an aging star, but he had a bad back. Before signing the catcher in February, 2003, Ilitch met him at a hospital outside Detroit where doctors were checking him out. He convinced Rodriguez that, despite the fact that the Tigers had just lost a near-record 118 games, he would build a winner.

Bagging Big Names with Physical Baggage

Rodriguez seemed game, but the doctor's exam "wasn't a good report," Ilitch says. "You generally don't go against a doctor's assessment." But he did. Ilitch signed the catcher for $10 million a year.

Even after bagging Pudge, Dombrowski says the Tigers were getting feelers only from big names with physical baggage. Slugger Magglio Ordonez came on board from the White Sox for $15 million a year, after he had just had major knee surgery.