Wichita vets its baseball partner(s)

The City of Wichita tells us it has thoroughly vetted the majority owner of the new Wichita baseball team.

It appears that the owners of the New Orleans Baby Cakes baseball team talked with the City of Wichita before the team received permission from Minor League Baseball. The Wichita Eagle reports: “A Minor League Baseball team may have violated league rules by talking to Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell before seeking approval from the league, according to a letter from the league’s attorney.” ¹

While the letter doesn’t name the New Orleans team, the Eagle reported in the same story, “A city official confirmed Wednesday night that Longwell was communicating with the Baby Cakes.”

This revelation is relevant for a few reasons.

First, if we look at the timing of this letter, the city — at least Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell — knew of this transgression over a year ago. ²

These rules of minor league baseball were considered so sacred that the mayor used them as a pretext for conducting negotiations in secret, particularly withholding disclosure of a side land development deal. (Although the city did disclose, at least somewhat. ³) Apparently, these rules didn’t mean much to the majority owner of the New Orleans team — someone the city says it has “thoroughly vetted.” Now we know that Schwechheimer is alleged to have these rules regarding moving his team to Wichita.

By the way, the rules of minor league baseball that the city shared applied to the team, not the city. The letter the mayor received warned the team could be fined, not the city

When the city was notified that the team had broken the rules, didn’t this raise a warning flag?

Second, the city says it vets its partners thoroughly, including baseball team majority owner Lou Schwechheimer. But in this case, we don’t know the identities of all the partners. All we know is that one Lou Schwechheimer is a majority owner. When asked what proportion of the team he owns, the city replied, “Over 50%.” Either the city does not know the number, or is not willing to tell us. ⁴ There’s a big difference between owning 51 percent of something and, say, 95 percent.

The team owners are breaking their stadium lease in New Orleans in order to move to Wichita. There is much press coverage of the owners making grand promises to the people there, only to start planning to move the team within two years. ⁵

Now the majority owner makes grand promises to Wichita. But the city says he’s been “thoroughly vetted,” and relies on long-term agreements with him.

Why won’t Schwechheimer reveal the identities of his partners or the percent of the team he owns? Why is the city willing to enter expensive and long-term agreements without knowing this?

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