Back in the day, the gold standard for stadium architects, Helmuth, Obata and Kassabaum came to then-Orioles President Larry Lucchino with a detailed tabletop model of a new ballpark in Baltimore — a model that looked a lot like the firm’s most recent creation, Comiskey Park in Chicago.
Lucchino was not pleased. He wanted to make sure the architects understood the vision he had for what would become Camden Yards. “We want to do something that is more of a traditional, old ballpark,” he said. “And not Comiskey.”
In the meeting, Lucchino made that point in dramatic fashion: “I just ripped one piece of [the model] off after another,” he told me. “I said, ‘We don’t want this, we don’t want that.’”
One of the architects asked, “Larry, do you have any idea of what one of these models costs?”
He answered, “We’re trying to make a point here.”
If you’ve ever seen the new Comiskey — now called Guaranteed Rate Field — you know it was a point that needed to be made.
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The Chicago stadium, which opened up in 1991, a year before Camden Yards, is a sterile facility, with none of the charm and attraction of Camden Yards or the retro parks that followed.
It was a point made that changed baseball.
Lucchino passed away this week at 78 with a resume unrivaled in sports, one that makes you wonder why they will have waited until he died before enshrining him in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He will have a plaque there soon, maybe before the one he should have had years ago in the Orioles Hall of Fame.
You want a measure of how small and petty the late Orioles owner Peter Angelos was? Lucchino, the driving force behind Camden Yards, is not in the Orioles Hall of Fame. But Lucchino’s legacy is so much more, to the point where those unaware of his accomplishments have been stopped in their tracks this week and marveled, “He did that?”
Camden Yards set off a wave of ballpark construction — Jacobs Field, Coors Field, PNC Park, the Ballpark in Arlington and others, all following the blueprint established in Baltimore.
People claimed that steroids saved baseball after the 1994 players’ strike. It was bricks and mortar that saved the game, and Lucchino created it.
“It changed the economics of stadiums and teams much more than any of us understood at the time,” former baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said. “It was huge.”
Lucchino, driven out in Baltimore when Angelos took over, went across the country and, as San Diego Padres president and CEO, became the driving force behind that city’s Petco Park, which rejuvenated downtown.
When he became part of an ownership group that purchased the Boston Red Sox in 2002, Lucchino turned around and, instead of building a new ballpark, led the effort to save Fenway Park.
He was almost destined to save Fenway. His mentor, Edward Bennett Williams, the legendary lawyer who would own both the Washington Redskins and Orioles in his career, loved the Red Sox and had dreamed of owning that baseball team.
“I knew how much Ed revered the Red Sox, going back to his childhood days in Hartford,” Lucchino told me. “I never thought I wind up there.”
Lucchino, a Pittsburgh native, came out of Yale University Law School and worked for the House Judiciary Committee in its Watergate investigation.
Oh, did I mention he played basketball at Princeton with Bill Bradley and is the only person with a Final Four watch (from the 1965 NCAA playoffs), a Super Bowl ring (from the 1983 Washington championship team) and multiple World Series rings from the Orioles (1983) and the Red Sox (2004, 2007 and 2013)?
Lucchino’s talent went from the front office to the field. He helped build a winner in San Diego, and in Boston, he put in place the young mind who built championship Red Sox teams, breaking the Curse of the Bambino in the process.
Theo Epstein was a 20-year-old intern in the Orioles offices in 1993 when Lucchino tabbed him for greatness. He took him to San Diego and then to Boston, where Lucchino elevated him to general manager at the age of 28. Epstein would go on to lead the Red Sox to their first World Series title in 86 years.
Lucchino, who survived several bouts with cancer, could be difficult and demanding. He had the results to back him up. He reportedly died of congenital heart failure.
He stepped down as Red Sox team president and CEO in August 2015. His final sports project was as owner of the franchise’s Class AAA franchise, which moved from Pawtucket, Rhode Island to Worcester, Massachusetts. He oversaw the construction of a new ballpark in Worcester — the best in the minor leagues, of course.
I always thought Lucchino would wind up back here — either in Baltimore or Washington. He was excited about the news that both teams were on the market and talked about coming home. But he ran out of energy and time.
There is so much that Lucchino left behind in baseball. But the most valuable may be this:
The Red Sox were already an institution when Lucchino took over. But they were a bad organization, with a poor reputation for business and community service. Lucchino changed that, expanding the influence and reach of the baseball team throughout the New England community.
He met with employees and told them, “You’ve been in the ‘no’ business here. Now we’re going to be in the ‘yes’ business.”
This is a message that should be heard throughout the game of baseball.
• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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