Squirrels’ Lou DiBella, after boxing fling, reconnected with first love, baseball

In seeking one job, Lou DiBella found another.

That twist of fate led DiBella to where he is today, the managing general partner
of the Richmond Flying Squirrels, headed to a new stadium next season, CarMax
Park. The franchise he oversees, currently a Double-A affiliate, is contractually
connected to Richmond for the coming 30 years.

DiBella watched the Flying Squirrels play Chesapeake on Wednesday at The
Diamond and during an interview motioned to the crowd of 8,277.
“They did it. They got us a ballpark,” DiBella said of the Richmond fans.
DiBella, however, was the central figure in the 15-year process to replace The
Diamond, and his position of advocacy for a baseball organization in Virginia’s
capital came about largely because George Steinbrenner told DiBella “no”
decades ago.

Off to HBO, boxing

DiBella, 64, made his money and national reputation in boxing rather than
baseball. That’s not the way he planned.

DiBella was 28 and five years into a job with a New York law firm after graduating
from Tufts University and Harvard Law School. He looked into working as general
counsel for the New York Yankees, and their famed owner, Steinbrenner. DiBella
went through a series of interviews with Yankees officials, and the final meeting,
with Steinbrenner, was scheduled.

“I was supposed to go in Friday. I took the day off from the law firm I was working
at,” DiBella said. “The phone rings at my apartment, literally five minutes before
I’m leaving to go to the Bronx.”

Steinbrenner’s secretary called to tell DiBella that another candidate would be
filling the position.

“She felt terrible,” DiBella said of the secretary. “She knew I was all in on the job.”
She asked DiBella if he liked boxing. Responded DiBella:
“Why are you asking? I love boxing.”

The man who was getting the job with the Yankees also had been offered the
position of chief lawyer for HBO Sports, and that vacancy interested DiBella.

“I had a suit on anyway. I had my résumé in my pocket anyway. I went to the
HBO building on 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue. I snuck past the security
guards,” DiBella said.

He got the job. DiBella evolved into HBO’s vice president in charge of
programming from 1989 to 2000 and brought a popular boxing component to the viewing platform.
DiBella eventually began promoting boxing matches.

“My first love in sports was not boxing, it was baseball,” said DiBella, who grew
up in Brooklyn and still resides primarily in the New York area. “My first hero in
sports was, arguably, (Muhammad) Ali. But it was Ali simultaneously with
Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays and Tom Seaver.

“I never went to a boxing match until I was in my teens. I’ve been going to
baseball games since I was 5 years old.”

Ownership ambition

DiBella, a lifelong New York Mets fan, played baseball, recalling that he could hit,
but he was a substandard fielder. He thought about some sort of career in sports,
with baseball preferable. Then came the law career, pursuit of the job with the
New York Yankees, HBO and boxing.

“I did two things when I started making real money. I paid off my ridiculously
astronomical student loans. I had almost $200,000 in student loans,” DiBella
said. “The second thing I did was I bought season tickets to the Mets, because I
just loved baseball.”

At that point, he first considered ownership of a baseball team. DiBella invested
in the Altoona Curve, a Double-A franchise in the Eastern League. In exchange
for funds contributed, DiBella wanted to be involved in operations decisions, a
way of learning the business.

In 2005, a group led by DiBella purchased the Norwich Navigators Double-A
franchise in the Eastern League for about $9 million. It was a struggling setup in
Connecticut, with inhospitable spring weather and an unfriendly stadium location.

“I thought I could make it work, but the (stadium) was in the middle of industrial
park. It was never going to work there,” said DiBella, who was inducted to the
International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020. “We bled money. Like we lost half-a-
million to a million a year for five years.

“I had never lost money in my life like that, ever, and it was other people’s money,
and I was feeling (uncomfortable) about that. So I wasn’t even taking a salary. I
ran the team for five years, and I didn’t make a dollar.
“But, you live and you learn, you know?”

Richmond-bound

Some Eastern League owners wanted DiBella to sell the team, which drew
poorly.

The Richmond market opened, with the Triple-A Braves of the International
League leaving town after the 2008 season for Gwinnett County, Georgia,
because of dissatisfaction with The Diamond. No other Triple-A franchises in the
IL were interested – or able, because of lease agreements at their stadiums — in
moving to The Diamond.

A few Eastern League franchises desired relocation to, essentially, a Triple-A
market with a good baseball history. By a close owners’ vote, DiBella’s franchise
was designated as the one on the move, with the strong possibility he would sell
to a Richmond-based ownership group. That $15 million deal, very close to
completion, dissolved because of the purchasers’ lack of funds.

DiBella remained in charge. He brought the franchise to Richmond on Sept. 23,
2009, and invested about $2 million in upgrades at The Diamond.

“No one expected an immediate turnaround. No one,” DiBella said.
‘Driving’ toward Triple-A?

The Flying Squirrels have been among Double-A’s attendance leaders since their
start in 2010. The value of a Double-A franchise ranges from $20 to $50 million.

Richmond, because of its Triple-A demographics and baseball tradition and new
ballpark under construction, would be worth significantly more than that, according to a veteran industry source. A Richmond return to Triple-A, sensibly with the Washington Nationals, will be in play with CarMax Park.

The Flying Squirrels since their inception have been the Double-A affiliate of the
San Francisco Giants. Major League Baseball determines which minor league
teams partner with which MLB organizations. The Giants could want to stay in
Richmond, and the Nats could want in, which would initiate an interesting MLB
discussion involving geography, the Giants deserving to get time at CarMax Park
after dealing with The Diamond for 15 years, and the shuffle in the minor leagues
that would need to be executed with a city going from Double-A to Triple-A.
Washington’s Triple-A affiliate is in Rochester, New York.

The Richmond franchise’s emergence coincided with the blooming of Scott’s
Addition, the adjacent neighborhood now loaded with residential and nightlife
options. The Diamond District, a $2.4 billion, 67-acre redevelopment project, is
scheduled to surround CarMax Park, the $130 million ballpark rising just to the
south of The Diamond on North Arthur Ashe Boulevard.

“I want to be driving the growth of this part of the city from the get-go,” said
DiBella, who has roughly 30 partners in the franchise ownership group.

DiBella sees Richmond less hesitant to change than it was a decade ago, counts
the cranes around the city as a way to gauge advancement and senses an
energized wave of young professionals taking root in the area.

“I’ve grown to love this town,” DiBella said. “Now I’m here every other week,
pretty much, and that’s never been the case. This year, I’ll probably spend 100
days, 80 days, here. I’ve never done that before.

“But it’s really easy to do because in 15 years, I’ve made a lot of friends here.”
 
John O’Connor (804) 649-6233
joconnor@timesdispatch.com