Padres Press Clips Tuesday, January 22, 2013
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Padres Press Clips Tuesday, January 22, 2013 Article Source Author Page Fowler's negotiating prowess serves Padres well UT San Diego Center 2 Will Padres TV impasse drag on UT San Diego Hall 5 Headley seeks $10.3M in salary arbitration UT San Diego Center 8 Paris: Padres offseason is hardly a hit UT San Diego Paris 10 Heath Bell toils again for Towers in NL West UT San Diego Jenkins 13 Padres sign two players, exchange figures with three MLB.com Brock 15 Padres agree to terms with Thatcher, Cabrera MLB.com Brock 16 Winfield: Confident in Padres; Hall vote was 'correct' MLB.com Bloom 17 Gregerson among six to represent Friars in Classic MLB.com Brock 20 Venable avoids arbitration with Padres MLB.com Brock 21 Padres Minor Leaguer Clark heads to Japan MLB.com Brock 22 Padres seek first All-Star Game at Petco Park MLB.com Brock 23 Rodriguez's resilience pays off MiLB.com Theiss 24 Padres' window of contention ESPN.com Insider Martinez 26 1 Fowler's negotiating prowess serves Padres well By Bill Center12:27 P.M.JAN. 21, 2013 Ron Fowler might be the perfect person to arbitrate the Time Warner-Fox television fight. In my view, Fowler has already pulled off one miracle when it comes to the Padres. Why shouldn’t the Padres executive chairman be able to negotiate a deal to get the Padres on television sets throughout the county? Fowler’s miracle? During the tumultuous Padres sale situation last year, Fowler navigated the interests of the minority partners he represented – plus the Padres and Padres fans – through very trying times without a single lawsuit being filed. That enabled the foundation to be set for the Padres new ownership group – led by Peter and Tom Seidler, Kevin and Brian O’Malley and Fowler plus a portion of the minority partners he once represented – to buy the Padres from majority owner John Moores last summer. Fowler’s role in the negotiations came clearer last Tuesday as he and Peter Seidler appeared at San Diego State’s Lavin Entrepreneurship Center. The big news was Fowler’s announcement that he would be contacting Time Warner directly to see if he can end the cable system’s refusal to carry Padres games to the majority of cable customers north of the I-8. But just as interesting was Fowler’s discussion of the events that eventually ended with the new ownership group gaining control. Jeff Moorad claimed to the end that his group would eventually be approved by Major League Baseball. According to what Fowler said, he was told in March that was never going to happen. Last March 18, two months after Moorad’s bid to complete his purchase of the Padres from Moores had been stopped short of coming up for an official vote by other owners during last January’s meetings in Palm Springs, Fowler and two other minority partners met with powerful Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf. “Reinsdorf made it absolutely clear that the chance of our owning the Padres was about zero . that our ownership bid would never come up for a vote,” said Fowler. “The Commissioner (Bud 2 Selig) confirmed that on the 20th. Jeff resigned the next week. Our ability to close the sale was not going to happen.” Although they had made no enemies, Fowler’s group of minority owners had been cast out with Moorad. Moores quickly decided he would seek new owners. But a number of the minority partners thought they should still own the Padres. In business, such collapses usually result in a volley of lawsuits. Said Fowler: “My job was to keep the majority partner (Moores) from suing the limited partners, the limited partners from suing the majority partner and the limited partners from suing themselves.” Lawsuits were threatened, but none were filed. Fowler pulled it off. For the next three months, as Moores met with potential owners, Fowler kept the limited partners informed and aligned. As Fowler said, some potential buyers “flamed out after three weeks.” Meanwhile, Fowler “reminded (his) people they were not going to lose money.” And as the O’Malley-Seidler group came to the forefront among the Padres suitors, Fowler negotiated a plan to have the former minority owners who wanted to remain involved with the Padres become part of the new ownership group. Caught in the middle of the negotiations was the $200 million up-front money from the Padres new television agreement with Fox. That $200 million was divided between Moores and the minority owners. The new owners never saw that money. “I have to give (Padres CEO) Tom Garfinkel credit for holding things together,” said Fowler. “Buddy (Black) did a great job of keeping players focused. Negotiations continue Just because the Padres and their three arbitration-eligible players – Chase Headley, Clayton Richard and Luke Gregerson – have exchanged contract figures, it does not mean that compromises can’t be worked out. The sides have until the yet-to-be-set day of the hearings to reach deals. 3 Left-handed starter Richard and the Padres are $645,000 apart with the club offering $4.905 million and Richard seeking $5.55 million for 2013. Right-handed reliever Gregerson was $3.75 million for 2013 compared to the club’s offer of $2.875 million, a gap of $875,000. The big difference is the $3,225,000 between the $10.3 million Headley is seeking and the $7.075 the club has offered. 4 Will Padres TV impasse drag on? By Matthew T. Hall6 A.M.JAN. 20, 2013 The hollow, hackneyed phrase “die-hard Padres fan” took on new meaning and new gravity with the death of Richard Wexler. After seeing every Padres game since his move to San Diego in the World Series season of 1998, Wexler was thrown a curve in the ninth inning of his life: He couldn’t catch his team in person or watch it on TV. Imagine how that buckled the former semipro ballplayer’s knees at age 103. Wexler died Jan. 7, eight days before Padres co-owner Ron Fowler said the team would finally intervene in an impasse that left 42 percent of the county’s pay-TV customers with dark screens during 2012 games. The phrase “about time” only applies to those of us who have it. With Opening Day around a hot corner, attention is shifting to the two remaining holdouts who won’t play ball with Fox Sports San Diego — Dish TV and Time Warner Cable. Speculation is that Dish, the county’s smallest TV provider, will show games this season, but Time Warner, the county’s second-biggest, may not. By one estimate, Time Warner serves about 22 percent — or 185,000 — of the county’s pay-TV subscribers. If you’re looking to lampoon San Diego’s status as a minor-league sports town, 22 is hardly much better than 42. It’s a void. Maybe a deal gets done and we’ll all be complaining about catcher Yasmani Grandal’s 50-game steroids suspension when the season starts April 1. Maybe not. Nancy Grobe, Wexler’s daughter, said this: “I hope that Time Warner, in tribute to him, will broadcast the Padres games this season. It was a great sadness for him to miss all of last year’s games. Shame on them.” She and I struck up a conversation in August, much the way I’m hoping Padres and Time Warner executives conduct their talks: fruitfully. “You can only imagine how sad he is,” Grobe emailed me on Aug. 9, more than midway through last season. “It has really impacted the quality of his life.” “Thank you for having so much heart,” she wrote as the season ended but my push to televise games didn’t. “I can only hope that my 103-year-old dad will still be with us and will have the Pads’ Opening Day to watch on TV.” 5 Similar frustration has spread. Some fans have dropped season tickets while others have switched TV providers. Many have lost patience with, and fervor for, a team that owns a 20 percent stake in Fox Sports San Diego and should have ushered in a deal a year ago. Lock the executives in a room, one said. Encourage an exodus from Time Warner, another said. Fox Sports is demanding too much, a third told me. “I am as disgusted as other fans that absolutely nothing has progressed in the past 12 months,” said Tierrasanta resident Jim Norr, 64. “My 6-year-old grandson, Nixon, and five of his pals could have agreed on something in far less time than has transpired to date.” Hear that? First-graders are better at jobs they don’t have than Fox Sports and Time Warner executives are at theirs. At a speaking engagement Tuesday, Fowler said he was encouraged by the team’s new, lead role in negotiations — but not to the point of guaranteeing a deal. It’d be some guarantee. Fox Sports and Time Warner have had no meaningful dialogue since early last season, and spokesmen for the two companies remained tight-lipped last week. They shared a combined five sentences for public consumption. “We have no update to report on negotiations,” Time Warner’s Dennis Johnson wrote. “With regards to the Padres’ plans to talk with us directly, we always have an open door.” “It’s less than three months until Opening Day,” Fox Sports’ Chris Bellitti emailed me. “We hope that Time Warner Cable comes around to see the value in the Padres just as other providers in San Diego have.