Michael Gartner Part 1
Wehofer: [00:00:00] For our debut episode. I sat down with our chairman and owner Michael Gartner. Michael's had a great career in journalism with stops at NBC news, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. In addition to his local impact with positions at the Des Moines Register and owning the Ames Tribune. In this episode, Michael will talk about his memories of professional baseball in Des Moines, going all the way back to his youth, share the backstory of how he became the owner of the Iowa Cubs, his unique relationships for former Iowa Cubs managers, Mike Quade and Ryne Sandberg, and the process and experience of winning a Pulitzer Prize.
Here's my conversation with Michael Gartner.
For our debut episode of our Iowa Cubs podcast, we're pleased to have our chairman and owner, Michael Gartner is our guest today. And Michael, not everybody that grows up a baseball fan gets the chance to own a minor league baseball team someday. Um, you have to be in the right place, the right time, and a lot of factors go in.
What were the circumstances that allowed you to, Realize your baseball dream of being a minor legal owner, or it at least embark on this journey.
Gartner: [00:01:14] At the time in the late nineties, the team was owned by Kenny Grandquist, primarily, and I owned the Ames Tribune, the newspaper up in Ames. And I was sitting at my desk one day and the phone rang and it was my good friend, Michael Giudicessi, who was a lawyer in town who I'd worked with for a long time and was a friend.
And he called me, he says, I heard the Cubbies are set for sale. And I said, so what, he says, I think we ought to buy them. And I says, what do you mean, we? I says, you don't have any money. He says, that's why I said we. And so I called up Kenny Grandquist down here at the ballpark, and I said, Hey, I heard that you're thinking of selling the cubbies.
He says, where'd you hear that? And I said, does it make a difference? He says, well, I guess not. He said, what if I were thinking of selling? This is why I said, well, if you were thinking of selling, I might be thinking of buying. He says, come on down. So I went down that afternoon and bought the team. I had no idea if I had paid too much, too little, I had no idea what was worth.
He mentioned the price and I thought, well, we can do that. We ,Mike, and I can do that. And, and so, I bought it and then, unfortunately, and we had a handshake deal. And then on opening day, a few weeks later, he was in his suite up here and he had a stroke or a heart attack and he died and nobody knew I'd bought the team. And, then, and nobody knew it was for sale and then would be buyers came out of the woodwork. So I went to his widow and I said, you know what, how to deal with Kenny to buy it? She said, yeah, I know it. She said, but you know, there's a lot of other people want to buy it and so she raised the price, but I said the Giudicessi, should we do it? He said in for a dime for a dollar, my dollar, and so, we bought it and it was, it was great. We hadn't owned it very long, and I got a call from Branch Rickey. The president of Pacific coast league. And he called me up and congratulated me on buying the team.
And he said, how does it feel to have just paid more money for a minor league baseball team than anybody in history? I said, well, I really was really happy about the purchase until this phone call. But it was good. And, and, and, you know, everybody says, I own the team, but in fact, my family and I own 70.5% of it.
Mike owns 23.5. Sam Bernabe owns 5%. And Doug Dorner, a doctor in town owns 1%. His dad had been a minority owner when Kenny owned it and we bought out all the minority owners, but I knew Doug since we were boys. And I said, you know, you're crazy. I'll buy you out. It was a pretty good price. You're crazy to stay in, but you can stay in if you want, but only.
After you talked to both your lawyer and your accountant. And he called me back and he says, I've talked to my lawyer and accountant and they told me not to do it, but I'm in. And so he's been our partner also for the last 20 years. That has been, it's been great.
Wehofer: [00:03:54] Know, I understand that it wasn't just as simple as getting in the car and coming down for that meeting, that there was an adventure on the wayto buy the team?
Gartner: [00:04:01] Yeah, we had to, we had to meet with, we're going to meet with Mrs. Grandquist with Linda and her advisors. And. Mike and I were driving, drive it down. And we got stuck by it back by a train over on the East side. And I said, we're going to miss the meeting. And she was going to sell it to somebody else. We're going to miss the meeting. And the next day there was a paper, a picture in the paper of this train going by and me standing there waiting for the train to get by.
So I said to Linda, I said, you know, it was a legitimate excuse. We couldn't get round that around the trains. So, so we bought it and she was happy and I was happy. And. Mike was happy. Everybody's been happy.
Wehofer: [00:04:37] And then you moved on this side of the train tracks. So you'll neverbe late to the ballpark again
Gartner: [00:04:41] I didn't have to drive down from Ames anymore.
Wehofer: [00:04:45] Visiting with Michael Gartner and, and, and talking about, lots of different memories as part of the broadcast today.
And, um, becoming the owner of the team follows along with a long history that you had as a boy growing up in Des Moines and coming to baseball games, um, A long time before it was the Iowa Cubs and AAA baseball. What are some of your, your memories coming to games with, with your dad?
Gartner: [00:05:09] I think, but I'm not sure that I was at the first game ever played in this park, which would have been in June of 47 or 48.
My dad was a big baseball fan. He had started out as a sports writer and, so, he taught me how to keep a box score when I was young and he taught me, he said the only two things he ever taught me in my life with how to keep a box go and how to type, and they've been the only two skills I've ever really needed.
So, so I think I was at the very first game down here and I'd been, then we came down a lot afterward. He didn't drive. We, we, take the street car down or a friend would come with, one of my buddies and his dad and they'd they would drive. And then when I was 15, I went to work in the sports department of the register and Tribune, answering the telephones.
There was no internet in those days. And as a dictation typist, because sports writers would go and cover something and then they'd call it in. And I could type faster than most people because my dad had made me learn when I was 10 and, often, and sometimes before, late at night, I just come down here and sneak in and watch a game and then go back to work.
And I was at one game one time and a guy was kicked out, and it was unclear to me why. And after the game, the empires would often come up to the sports department and wait for Bill Bryson, to, finish writing his story. And then they'd go out for a few beers. And so the umpires, the umpires were up there.
And Hey, can I ask you a question? So that you're honest is I was at the game tonight and you kick somebody out, says, okay. What did he, what can you say? What do you have to say to him to get kicked out? And he says anything that ends in you. And so I remembered that, also, so, yeah, it was, I came down here a lot.
It was lots of fun. You know, the old ballpark, where the ballpark, this, this is, there were lots of ballparks before this one. And the main one where the first, you have to be very careful how you say this. The first organized baseball game with permanent lighting at night, it was played, you know, you have to make it there's a lot of qualifiers in there was up at sixth and Holcomb where North high school is.
And, it was a big deal. I think it was in the thirties sometime. I can't remember the date. And Bob Feller told me one time that he was at that game. Bob, Bob feller was a great storyteller, but you always wanted to, you know, you need to fact check. And, and he said, I was at that game and he says, you know, they, they roped off the, there were so many people that game, they roped off the outfield, so people could stand around and I've seen pictures and they did. And he said, and so as a result, you know, he said a lot of balls were hit and there he says there were more doubles that would be a ground rule double.
There were more doubles hit in that game than in any game in baseball history. I says, no kidding. Well, as it happened, we had the box score down here at the ballpark. And so I came down the next day and I looked at there were three doubles in that game. Well, it was a great story.
Wehofer: [00:07:52] Never let the facts get in the way of a good, a good baseball story.
What was it about coming to those games or about the game of baseball that, that caught your attention? Yeah, for all of us working in the game, there had to be something that got in our blood and gotten our system about the game of baseball, because it, it, it, it's not the most glamorous thing in minor league baseball at the time.
Gartner: [00:08:14] The pace, no clock and the beauty of it, you know, later when I grew up, I was having lunch one day when I was the editor of the Register, and, and, there were a bunch of old guys talking about baseball and there was a very burly executive in town, kind of a gruff guy. And he said, you know, what's great about baseball. And I said, what? And he says, it's like ballet. He said, you look out and everybody's moving, everybody's moving, kind of in coordination with each other.
And it takes these great muscles. He says, it's very much like ballet, and I'd never thought about it, but it is. It is, you know, they're coordinated the way people move. A new batter comes up, they're shifting shifting positions. And this was before there were, shifts, infield shifts when batters came up, everything.
But, just the beauty of it, the pace, the pace of it. And the fact that, you could identify. With a player, even in class, this was Class A, Western league in those days. And, and, but you could identify with a player and follow them through. And, and, the box score, the intricacy of a box score is really neat.
You know, nobody keeps a bar, nobody goes to a football game and keeps a box score or a basketball game really. And it keeps, it keeps track of assists and, and, unforced errors and everything. But you come to a baseball game and even now, yeah. You look out in the stands and there's people out there and bring their own score books.
And they, they watch, you know, half the people out there don't know, don't know who you're playing. But there's this core who come down and they know every player and they keep all the box scores and then they keep them at home and they look back and they'll say, you know, last year when this guy came through from when this, when this guy came through from salt Lake, you know, he went 0-4 against so-and-so right now.
I mean, you know, it's just the, everything about it, everything about it. It's great.
Wehofer: [00:09:57] Well, a lot of interesting parallels to being a journalist and telling stories. Every baseball game is a story to tell in and of itself as a, as a broadcaster. That was it. It was never two identical baseball games ever. And you always had something, even if it was 11 to one, if you knew.
The story behind the story, there was something else interesting in the seventh ending that might or might not happen to him.
Gartner: [00:10:19] They got the one where there was a suicide squeeze or, or, or something like that. Yeah. And the other thing about baseball and journalism is every day is a new day. You know, it's not with all due respect to my friend, Giudicessi and all the lawyers.
I know, you know, who will work, who will work some of years on one case, you know, tomorrow's a new day.
Wehofer: [00:10:40] Yeah, absolutely. Um, the other thing about baseball, I find most interesting is the people, all around it, the fans, the umpires, the players, the managers, the people that work in the game, who are a couple of relationships that you've developed through baseball that you never would've had the opportunity to come across.
If not for your involvement in the game and, and people that mean a lot to you because of it.
Gartner: [00:11:07] The person I enjoyed the most was Mike Quade, who was the manager here for four and a half, maybe five years. I'm a pretty liberal Democrat and he's a pretty conservative, Republican. He's real smart. And he's just fun to talk to.
And so I would go down to the dugout every night before the game and we'd sit there for 10 minutes and talk and people thought we were talking about baseball or something like that. And we were usually talking politics and things or things like that. And he was just fun, fun to talk to. He could tease and be teased, which is a great, ability he could, he could take it and he could, he could give it, which made it, made it lots and lots of fun.
The, one time, I said to him, you ever heard of a man named Norman Borlaug? Norman Borlaug won the, won the Nobel peace prize. He saved more lives than anybody in history when he invented the green revolution. He was a farm boy from Cresco, Iowa who went to, the university of Minnesota. And I'd gotten to know him over the years.
And, and one night we were having dinner in Des Moines and he said, you know, he said, I could have been the shortstop for the Chicago Cubs. And I said, you know, and I could have won the Nobel peace prize. I says, what are you talking about? And he said, yeah, I was a pretty good baseball player. And I was on the baseball team at the university of Minnesota.
And my junior year, I had to make a choice between a forestry lab, taking the forestry lab, which I needed or stay in London on the team. So I took the lab. He said, if I'd stayed on the team, he said, I would have been a major leaguer. And I would have been, you know, Well-known guy. I says, yeah, you might've achieved some fame, Norman, but anyway, I said, why don't you come down and throw out a first pitch some night?
So he said, I'd love to do it. Oh, he was just all excited about it. And by this time he's probably into his nineties, not that that's old. And, so I went to Quade and I said, I was talking to him. I said, you ever hear of a guy named Norman Borlaug? He said, Norman Borlaug, the great scientist.
The guy who saved all those lives. The green revolution guy says course I've heard him one that he said, he won a Nobel peace prize. Why? And I said, well, I said, he's going to throw out the first pitch tomorrow night. And he's a huge baseball fan and he wants to meet you. He says well, I really want to meet him.
Well, it was a Friday night, so I said, okay, so Norman goes out and there's 10,000 people here in Norman, goes out to the mound to throw out the first pitch. And after he's done, I walked Quade out to the mound to meet him, to shake hands. And we're about halfway between the mound and home plate. And I introduced them and, and, Quade says is such a, such an honor to meet you, Dr.
Borlaug. He says, I have a question. And what, like what's, what's that, and he says, is there anything wrong with genetically modified foods? So what's this at Borlaug says, of course not. He says, that's what hybrid corn is that there's nothing wrong at all. So then Quade looks at me and says, see is all you liberal sons of ******.
He says, there's absolutely nothing, nothing wrong with this is the greatest man in the world. There's nothing wrong with it. Meanwhile, Quade is saying. But if it's a left-handed batter and the wouldn't the second basement want to move just a little bit more, a little bit more to his right. And, and Quade wants nothing of that conversation.
He says, he says, what about milk? What about, but milk, you know, that they add these things to it. And there's conversation going on for five or six minutes. And I'm looking up in the crowd and I'm thinking. If anybody up there, nobody up there can possibly believe what this conversation is about out, out here.
And they both had a wonderful time. So, he's of all the guys, he was the most it's fun. I think, you know, they're all fun in there in a way. Sandberg was fun. Sandberg, was, easy to talk to and, fun and, and his wife was very nice. One time. It was a kind of a chilly night.
And I was up in the suites up here in the press box and I walked by and there was a Mrs. Sandberg and, the wife of Mike Mason, the pitching coach, and they were in eating a sandwich. And I walked behind us. What are you guys doing? It's Oh, it's kind of cold outside. We decided to eat up here and I says, do you want something to drink?
They ask what? And I said, you want a glass of wine or something? And they said, sure. And I said, well, there's lots of wine. I don't drink. But I said, there's lots of wine down in the box, down there, come on. Then we'll go down. And so we went down to the box and there were two guys from the Chicago Cubs sitting in there and , they didn't say anything.
They were just watching me and everything. And so I opened the refrigerator. I said, You know, take your pick. I don't know, good wine from bad wine. And I'm sure there was both in there. And they said, how about that right there? So I said, okay, so I got out a corkscrew and I'm trying to open and
I can't get it open, you know, and I'm doing everything and I can't get it open. And finally, I think it was Mrs. Mason said, perhaps you should try to unscrew it. It was just wine with a cap on it. So. I said, okay. And then poured them a glass and put the bottle back in. And we walked out and about five minutes later, just by coincidence, Sam Bernabe the general manager here, and my partner and my wife happened to walk by and saw us and walked in and Bernabe says, Oh, man.
He says those guys from Chicago threw you under the bus to your wife, says we happened to walk in there after you went. And they said, your husband is the dumbest guy there's ever been. He doesn't even know how to open a wine bottle and they went on and on and on about it. And meanwhile, Sam had the bottle with him.
And so he said to the ladies, this is, you know, I've got the bottle, if you w if you want to polish it off. So they each had them with a glass of wine, and that was it. And the next morning I came into work and there was the bottle of wine on my, the empty bottle on my desk. And in Sandberg's writing on the label and it says, Hey, Michael says, okay, "Looks like you were poking when you should have been screwing, Ryne."
I still got the bottle down there.
Wehofer: [00:16:36] They never let you forget it.
Gartner: [00:16:37] No, no, no. That's, that's the one thing they're just unforgiving. They're just unforgiving about it. Everything.
Wehofer: [00:16:43] That's why, hitters get hit by a pitch nine years after they flip the bat into spring training game against the pitcher. They never forget any of those kinds of things.
Gartner: [00:16:51] Never, ever forget.
Wehofer: [00:16:52] Yeah, you mentioned Sandberg. And for me, that season was a real education of understanding what it's like to be in proximity to famous people.
Gartner: [00:17:02] Yeah.
Wehofer: [00:17:04] I would say that you're probably really well known. But I've observed you in public. You don't get interrupted on a constant basis unless it's by people that, that, you know.
Gartner: [00:17:12] Yeah. And then my family and my family doesn't want anything to do with me, so they don't come up and interrupt, but yeah,
Wehofer: [00:17:18] But between baseball, and your time in journalism, and especially your time at NBC, you've been around a lot of famous people and Sandberg was the most obvious example of that for me.
But what, what did you learn over, over your career about, being in those circles and the, and the, and the funny things that happen because people lose their minds when they realize who they're, who they're close to sometimes.
Gartner: [00:17:41] Yeah. Some of them walking through an airport with Willard Scott. Willard Scott was the weatherman for, for the Today Show for years and years and years.
And he was kind of a character kind of a bumpkin in a way. And walking through an airport with him. Whereas I could walk through, walk it in three minutes, it would take him a half an hour, all the people coming up and coming up and he was out, he came out to Des Moines with me one time. One of the things that NBC, I could pick six charity events that he had to go to every, every year at no fee.
And so my wife was running a charity event for something, I don't know what it was. And I said, I'll get Willard out here and they'll do a plug on the Today Show and, and, So we came out the night before and we're going to go to dinner that doesn't exist anymore, I think it was called Rosa's on Southwest ninth, Italian place, my wife and I, and he, and I think another couple were having dinner and the check came and the waitress gave it to me.
And I went to pay it and Willard said, what are you doing? I says, I'm paying the check. He says why? I said, well, because we ate here and the check, he says, No, no. He says you're with me. He says, nobody, I haven't picked up a check forever, which I believe he was very, very tight as I was while I live here, I'm going to pick up and pick up the check.
He said, you're just nuts. You're just nuts. You shouldn't have to pay for this meal. He says, we've been sitting here and he says probably 15 people have come up to ask me for my autograph, which is true while we're, while we're sitting here, you know, I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Scott and, yeah. And, so there's the fame, and a lot of them have sort of defense mechanisms about how to deal with it.
But, but there are great, you know, I mean, Joe Garagiola was a greatest of all. One time, he was at NBC for two years and, so. I liked him a lot. And his wife, I like to both a lot. And so about every two weeks, we'd go out to dinner and they were always the same place, a restaurant about six blocks from where I lived in, in New York.
And in New York I had a car and driver and so take us down. And, and if, if Joe and his wife were there out of stuff, the driver to wait and to take them home because they lived uptown. So one time. It was 10 30 at night and we were walking out and the driver was there and I said, take Joe. And I can't remember his wife's name, really nice lady, home.
And, and Joe said, get in the car with us. We can take it. I said, Joe, I just live four blocks away. I need to walk off this dinner anyway. Dammit get in the car. I says, Joe, Joe, I live here. I know this neighborhood. I live here. He says, get in the car. I said, what's this all about? He says, look, he says, if something happens to you, I lose my job.
Wehofer: [00:20:13] We're visiting with Michael Gartner today on this, debut episode of Iowa Cubs podcast. And, speaking of, of, famous people and being well-known and things we've mentioned the Nobel peace prize, but, um, you have a very distinguished, claim on your resume as having won a, a Pulitzer prize.
Gartner: [00:20:32] I did.
Wehofer: [00:20:32] And I've never met another Pulitzer prize winner.
I've never met any Nobel peace prize winners. I've met a few MVP's and Cy Youngs but that is a whole different scale of things. So I imagine more people are like me than not. How in the world do you even get in the consideration for something like that. I think about the hall of fame and you're sitting in a room where you get a call, or how does, how does all of that work?
Gartner: [00:20:55] You have to have a really good curve ball.
You just, you get nominated. I think, my partner in the Ames paper nominated me, and then it goes to a process to a jury, you know, maybe 500 people nominated for that category. And then. Juries look at it and then they'd pick maybe that they keep winnowing the pile until they finally come down to the top three or five.
And that goes to the Pulitzer prize board in New York, which is 15 or 16 editors and academics and the president of Columbia university. And then they debate for two days. And then they bestow it on you and then they give it to you. And then the next day you go to work.
Wehofer: [00:21:39] Was that ever something that you considered as a goal of yours? Is that like the hall of fame or if, if it happens at the end of your career...
Gartner: [00:21:46] No, you don't set out to do something like that. You know, it's, it's a lot of luck, a lot of timing. A lot of who was on the jury, that what kind of stories did the jury like, you know, or, or things like that. It's an honest process.
I happened to be on the, I think I'm the only person who ever won a Pulitzer prize after being on the Pulitzer prize board. The Pulitzer prize board, which rotate, you can be on it for nine years. I was on for 10. I had one stub year, but, it's, you can't win if you're on the board, but it's full of people who'd won them before they went on the board.
And most of them by that time or publishers or editors or something. But, when I was on it, I was the editor that the Des Moines Register. But then later, two friends and I bought the Ames Tribune and I wrote, after I left NBC, I wrote every day and I was writing the editorial. I was long gone from the Pulitzer board.
And so I was one of the few guys who was still was still writing, but it's really, it's really, really interesting. Like, especially when you do about the novels and nonfiction and everything, because you read all these now you just get inundated with books to read at home and everything to be prepared for the meeting.
And so. You settle on something you say, I know this is the winner. It's so far above, and then you go into the meeting and here's all these great academics and these smart guys and men and women and, and, poets and everything. And, and all of a sudden, nobody likes this book or three other people like this book and you go around and there's these, there's these great debates about it.
And, And, and everything. I remember one time it came down and, and you vote and you vote. And I remember one time I was, I was really pushing for a biography of something. I can't remember what it was. And, Mike Sovern the president of Columbia university, he was a great guy, was pushing the other end.
So we go around and it's eight, and I'm sure I'm going to win. I mean, I'm going, and it's eight to seven against me. And he looked over at me and he says, you may be a great editor, but you don't know how to count votes.
So some poor guy or woman lost the Pulitzer prize because of one vote. And they'll never know that, you know, they'll never know that. And, and, which is really, really too bad, but, it's interesting. It's fun and winning one, I happened to be the president of the Pulitzer prize board on the 75th anniversary of the prizes.
And so they invited every living Pulitzer prize winner to this big banquet at, Columbia University. And it was full of poets and historians and great editors and great reporters and, you know, just jam thing. And the, and the master of ceremonies was the guy who was also on the Pulitzer board, a guy named, a great, columnist for the New York times named Russell Baker.
One of the great columnists of all time. A very droll guy and he gets up and he looks out at this, this assembled masses of all these men and women, you know, and looks, and he says, I know the first line of the obituary of everybody in this room.
And that's really what it is. You know, there's, I think the prize was $3,000 or something, a little glass or something, but, it is, it's a, it's an obituary changer.
Wehofer: [00:24:49] Well, it's a, it's a great honor. And, and I have to say that I use that, over the heads of our media relations interns from time to time to make sure that they're diligent in their grammar and their punctuation.
I said, you can't write for this organization and send out bad work. We have a higher standard to hold ourselves to, when it comes to those things.
Gartner: [00:25:08] Well, I'm, I'm basically, was a newspaperman. You know, all my life. My dad was a newspaperman. My mother's father was a newspaperman. And, I knew from the time I was a kid, that that's what I wanted to be.
So it was, just kind of, and, and my brother was a newspaperman for a while before he got into politics and, and, it just, kind of in it. Yeah, it was in the genes.
Wehofer: [00:25:26] Well, if you're going to do it, do it well, and you certainly...
Gartner: [00:25:28] I can't pound a nail. I mean, my best friend from college, his dad was a carpenter and, you know, he can build that.
He became a lawyer, but he can build all these things and everything, you know, and I. I said, how do you do that? And he says, how do you write a sentence?
Wehofer: I hope you've enjoyed our debut episode of unwritten rules and Iowa Cubs podcast with our chairman, Michael Gartner we'll have more with Michael in our next episode, talking about his work with Judge Pratt, to bring your annual citizenship ceremony to the ballpark. Michael's love of dog days at the ballpark and the missed opportunity to bring minor league baseball, to Dubuque among other topics.
Be on the lookout for that episode and a two-part interview with Tommy Birch of the Des Moines Register coming up later this month. Be sure to like, share and subscribe to unwritten rules an Iowa Cubs podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. And until next time I'm Randy Wehofer thanks for listening to unwritten rules.
an Iowa Cubs podcast.
