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Former Indians owner dies at 84

Associated Press

CLEVELAND -- Richard E. Jacobs, the former Cleveland Indians owner and commercial real estate developer, has died. He was 84.

Richard Jacobs bought the Indians in 1986 with his brother, David, and owned the club until 2001.
Jacobs' real estate company confirmed the death on Friday, saying he had been in ill health. No other details were immediately released.

Jacobs and his brother, David, bought the Indians from the Steve O'Neill estate in late 1986 for $40 million. David Jacobs died in 1992.

Richard Jacobs focused on restoring the struggling American League franchise's profitability and making it competitive on the field.

The team's new ballpark in downtown Cleveland became Jacobs Field when it opened in 1994, and the Indians made it to the World Series in 1995 and 1997. Jacobs owned the club until 2001.

The park was renamed Progressive Field last year, after Jacobs' naming rights deal ended, and Progressive Corp. bought the naming rights.

Jacobs was a low-key owner who preferred to let his baseball executives and manager be the face of the team.

During his time as the Indians' owner, Jacobs attended most of Cleveland's home games, sitting in his loge behind home plate.

He was chairman and chief executive officer of the Richard E. Jacobs Group, a firm in the Cleveland suburb of Westlake that he founded with his brother, David, and Dominic Visconsi in 1955.

The company developed the 57-story Key Center in 1991 at Cleveland's Public Square, the tallest building between New York and Chicago. The Jacobs Group is a national developer of shopping centers, office buildings, mixed-use developments and hotels

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RIP Mr. Jacobs... thanks for the great memories. The ballpark will always be "The Jake" to me.

R.I.P.

To be honest, I thought he had died a while ago. Still sad.

Tough day for Indians fans..

Those memories I have of the mid-late 90's will last forever... Not sure if anyone else did this, but before the Jake opened, they would have certain days in March of 94 where fans could come in and check it out.. I remember going on one of those "open houses" and my Dad immediately teared up when he walked in for the first time..

I am not usually a Livingston fan, but I thought this was a good article..

http://www.cleveland.com/livingston/index.ssf/2009/06/dick_jacobs_gave_the_cleveland.html

The field of dreams was just mud and sod when the tour of still unfinished Jacobs Field ended with a meeting in the office of Richard Jacobs, the owner who gave his name to the place.
"How much personal input did you have in building the park?" Plain Dealer colleague Tony Grossi asked Jacobs.

Jacobs shot a sideways look at Indians vice president Bob DiBiasio and said to Grossi and me, "Should I tell them the truth?"

DiBiasio shrugged his assent.

"Just every damn brick," Jacobs said.

Jacobs died today. Every brick of what is now called Progressive Field was his, every part of the rebuilding process of the Indians bore his imprint. The glory years of the 1990s came from the new foundation he and his brother David laid on the rubble of a franchise that had almost become irrelevant. The Indians had the national profile of a bump in the road when Jacobs and his brother, the silent partner, bought the franchise in 1986. The team was Art Modell's scrimping, ragamuffin tenants at crumbling, tattered Municipal Stadium.

All that changed when Dick Jacobs began to rebuild the farm system, an unglamorous but integral part of any franchise's success. He called the shots for the Indians from 1986-2001, and, most of the time, it was like Babe Ruth pointing to the fence in the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field and delivering a home run bigger than your dreams.

He brought in a clear-eyed old baseball man named Hank Peters, whose own top aides, men like John Hart and Dan O'Dowd, proved to be visionaries in cost containment and talent retention. With Jacobs signing the checks, the Indians locked up their top prospects with long-term contracts that provided security although they were not the maximum in market value.

Dick Jacobs was a man who valued his privacy. He worked best in the small circles in which he moved when negotiating business deals. For that reason, he and his brother met separately with the major electronic and print media in this market when they bought the team. It seemed to be an odd approach for so public a business as professional sports, but it was the forum in which he felt at ease. It was how he got things done. When the sin tax passed and the new ballpark rose, the baseball world suddenly realized what he had been up to behind the scenes.

The new ballpark became a recruiting tool, just as new facilities are for college athletes. Cleveland, a baseball joke, became a sought-after destination for veteran free agents, looking to be the last piece in the talent jigsaw that was being assembled. For several giddy years, the revenue Jacobs Field produced let the Indians play and spend as a big-market team.

Twice, in 1995 and 1997, the Indians reached the World Series. They would have been a threat to do so in 1994 too, the first year of the new ballpark, except labor troubles canceled the postseason. In the ninth inning of the seventh game of the 1997 World Series against the Marlins, Jacobs stood in the visitors' clubhouse at the Florida Marlins' stadium, the championship trophy gleaming on a table near him, protective sheets of plastic wrapping the players' dressing stalls, the camera lights burning, ready to record every detail of the Indians' champagne-squirting World Series victory celebration.

Out on the mound, Jose Mesa began to shake off catcher Sandy Alomar's signs for the fastball. The Marlins tied it up, baseball personnel rushed Jacobs from the clubhouse. He looked like a man in shock. In the 11th inning, the Indians lost. The champagne was removed. The cork stayed in every bottle.

It was as close as we have gotten to a championship in 45 years, and it was his money, his work and his vision that took us there. It was a near-miss and a near-miracle at the same time.

No franchise looked like more of a lost cause than the Indians. They did not get a lucky ping-pong ball bounce to save the franchise, as the Cavaliers did with the lottery rights to LeBron James. They were not in a league that shares television revenue and caps salaries, like the Browns.

Jacobs took the most forlorn franchise in cut-throat baseball, gave it back its pride, awakened the "Sleeping Giant" of the fan base, and made Indian summers more than an unseasonable warm spell in autumn. He was the greatest owner in the history of this city.

Always thought of him as the owner who brought back the Indians,

R.I.P. Mr. Jacobs.

Without him, we're not talking about the glory years of the 1990s, we're not talking about the almostness of 1995 or 1997. We don't have Jacob's Field and we may not even have professional baseball in Cleveland.

I will watch a Clippers game in Columbus in his honor.

I don't personally call them glory years,...but that was a great post.

Team hasn't been the same since he sold them.

R.I.P.

Exactly,...wasn't the same before he bought them,....

Agreed it was always be The Jake to me.

And why must they throw in the Jose Mesa ordeal also? Ughhhhhhh.

Sorry to hear that....R.I.P


It's still Jacobs Field to me.

I still call it Jacobs.

Condolences to the family.

RIP Mr. Jacobs.
His ownership brought me the best times and memories of the Indians that I ever had.
What a thrill that was back then. The lineups we had.
Those teams filled in the gap with the Browns not being around, something to put a smile on your face and not think of the Browns for at least a little while.

Good times never to be forgotten.

RIP Mr Jacobs.

You took a completely downtrodden franchise and made a winning team out of them ... and made one heck of a profit in the process.

All in all a job well done.

Bottom line? Dick Jacobs gave Cleveland Indians fans a lot to be thankful for -- Terry Pluto

The Plain Dealer
June 6, 2009

The reason the Indians remain in Cleveland is because Dick Jacobs bought the franchise in 1986. That's the real legacy of the Tribe owner from 1986-2001 who died Friday at the age of 83.

But there is so much more.

Jacobs loved to tell stories about growing up in the Goodyear Heights area of Akron. His first job was mowing neighborhood lawns. His next stop was Swenson's, a legendary Akron hamburger joint where car hops still roam. Jacobs once bragged to me that he started as a potato peeler for french fries.

"After a year in the kitchen, I worked my way up to carhop," he said. "You wanted to get to the big cars first. I could spot a Caddy coming two blocks away. I'd get my big foot out there and tell the other (carhops), 'That one is mine.' I figured which cars had the best tippers, and I made sure they were the ones I waited on."

Jacobs always wanted to be the first in line to get the best deal, and he did that with the Indians.

When Jacobs and his brother David made their bid to purchase the Indians in 1986, the franchise was owned by a dead man, the estate of Steve O'Neill.

His nephew, Pat O'Neill, was put in charge of finding an owner. We both had attended Benedictine High School, and that gave Pat O'Neill a comfort zone in talking to me about the pressure he felt to find a new owner for the franchise during the nearly two years he was the team's caretaker.

"I gotta find a Cleveland guy," he said. "And it has to be a guy who can get a ballpark built, or the team will move."

Pat O'Neill also knew that a good chunk of the sales price would go to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, and he wanted to secure the best price for that charity. There were out-of-town interests offering more money for the Indians, but Pat O'Neill was convinced that Jacobs could "get it done," as O'Neill told me.

"Dick came in and his words were, 'Is this team for sale? No messing around,' " O'Neill told me. "These are our kind of guys, they will keep the team here."

With Jacobs, business was very, very serious. When Jacobs bought the team, his company owned 40 shopping malls across the country. The former carhop was estimated to be worth $500 million by Forbes Magazine in 1986 and he owned 18 Wendy's hamburger franchises.

When the sale of the Indians was announced at $40 million, it actually amounted to $18 million in cash, $3 million to pay back a loan to the O'Neill estate and another $14 million in loans owned to various banks from deals made by previous Tribe owners.

Then consider that he sold the team to the Larry Dolan family for $323 million after the 1999 season. He also pocketed about $50 million in a public stock sale. Jacobs once told me that he lost about $40 million on the Indians from 1986-93, but financial documents made public after the team sold stock reveal the Indians pocketed about $55 million between 1994-99.

So Dick Jacobs made one the best deals in a lifetime of great deals.

But he also was a good deal for the Indians and their fans.

• • •

Only a Cleveland power broker and dealmaker like Jacobs could have tiptoed through all the self-serving mine fields that are a part of politics in Northeast Ohio. Jacobs knew when to apply just the right amount of pressure that could come from the heavy hand of a man who was part of the downtown redevelopment in the 1990s.

When former Browns owner Art Modell wanted Jacobs and the Indians to help renovate the old Municipal Stadium so both teams could play there (with Modell as landlord), Jacobs told me, "It's hard for two guys to share the same lunchbox."

It took eight years from the time he purchased the team to the formation of the Gateway Corporation, the passage of the sin tax and the construction of what became Jacobs Field.

In the meantime, he hired former Baltimore Orioles general manager Hank Peters to build up the Tribe farm system. He gave Peters the cash to spend on scouts and minor league coaches. He allowed Peters to hire and train young executives such as John Hart, Mark Shapiro and Dan O'Dowd.

Jacobs also withstood the public criticism for all the losing in the late 1980s and early 1990s as his baseball people needed time to build a strong foundation -- while Jacobs maneuvered to turn his field of dreams into a sparkling new stadium at East 9th and Carnegie Avenue.

Jacobs had the wealth to take the financial hit during those first eight years. He had the vision to hire good people and trust them to do their jobs. He had the inner toughness not to be swayed by public or media opinion.

When Major League Baseball expanded from four to six divisions in 1994, Jacobs ignored the advice of some in his marketing department and moved the Indians out of the East -- where they had solid gate attractions with games against the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Instead, his team joined Milwaukee, Kansas City, Chicago and Minnesota as part of the Central Division, where Jacobs believed that the fresh cash coming in from the new ballpark would give his franchise a competitive advantage.

The Indians had not been to a World Series since 1954, but Jacobs had a vision of the Indians winning the new Central Division. He could see it, just as he could picture a shopping mall in a dusty infield, a ballpark in a blighted section of a supposedly depressed city.

He really was the right man at the right time.

• • •

Jacobs also was lucky.

As the Indians moved into a new ballpark in 1994, Cleveland was beginning one of its most prosperous economic periods since World War II. That made Jacobs Field very attractive to corporations to buy suites luxury seats.

Then, the Browns moved after the 1995 season to Baltimore because Jacobs got a new stadium and Modell did not. The Cavaliers were mired in mediocrity with only the hardcore basketball fans paying attention.

The Indians suddenly emerged as the only real sports show in town, with a flashy new ballpark, a payroll in baseball's top 10 and a collection of young stars and solid veterans ready to rule a division without the powerhouses from New York and Boston. They went to the playoffs every year from 1995-99.

Jacobs enjoyed the winning. He told me that he liked to stand in his suite, watching the waves of fans wearing Wahoo red, white and blue pour through the gates, walking around the ballpark, believing they had just entered a baseball Disneyland in downtown Cleveland.

He also made sure his team had a profit margin of at least 8 percent beginning in 1995, as several Tribe insiders told me. He was willing to pay for stars, but not spend wildly. He rarely went to press conferences, but did appreciate the attention that came from having a team that went to the World Series in 1995 and 1997 in a town starved for a winner.

But by the late 1990s, Jacobs knew it was coming to an end. He told friends that the advantage that the Tribe had from the new ballpark (and the revenue it produced) was over. He said the sellout streak that reached 455 also could not last forever. Detroit and so many other teams were building new facilities.

The real money was now cable TV, and the bigger the market, the bigger the cut. Cleveland could never compete with New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles on that economic field.

Jacobs also was convinced that the Indians would not be able to retain young stars such as Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome, and he didn't relish the idea of owning the team when they left via free agency and the Tribe began to slip in the standings.

So he cashed out after the 1999 season, running up the price on the Dolan family to $323 million -- slightly more than even the much larger market Los Angeles Dodgers were sold for in that same period. He squeezed out every last dollar in an auction run by Goldman Sachs to find a new Tribe owner.

A few of Jacobs' critics told me that on his tombstone should read: HE BOUGHT LOW, HE SOLD HIGH. Or another said, "With Dick Jacobs, the bottom line always was the bottom line."

That indeed was part of the man.

But that aspect of his personality is why the Indians were revived under him, why the ballpark was built, and why Tribe fans had more fun during his regime than any time before or since over the last 50 years.

It's why I consider him the best owner in the history of Cleveland sports. It's why we can still go downtown to what remains a very nice ballpark and watch baseball on a summer evening -- and that means a lot to baseball fans all over Northeast Ohio.