Name: Ben Mondor
Position: Owner and Chairman of the Board of the Pawtucket Red Sox
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Background: Mondor bought the PawSox – then a bankrupt franchise – in 1977, after retiring from the textiles business.
Age: 76
Family: His wife, Madeleine
Residence: Warwick
PBN: I understand you’re going into semi-retirement?
MONDOR: Well, nobody’s ever gonna take my office, my box or my parking space. I’m 76. I’m tired. I enjoy it tremendously, and I feel great that we’ve achieved everything we have. There are a lot of things we want to do to the stadium, but it’s mostly cosmetic. But I’m satisfied. I’m very happy that the fans have taken us to heart and supported us so tremendously, so we’ll continue to do nice things for them. But I’m tired.
It sounds like business was good this season?
Well, 648,000 people came in here this year. That’s unbelievable, when you consider that when I came here in my first year (in 1977) we drew 70,000.
Is that a record?
Without a doubt. In fact, I get the feeling this year’s attendance is the one that we’ll gauge all future attendance on. It turns out that we had only two rainouts, which is very low. Usually we average more like six or seven rainouts. So we had a good weather year and this was quite a year. But oh, we’re gonna keep trying to beat it.
Did you ever think you’d see the day when the PawSox were drawing 9,000-plus a game?
No. We had nobody coming here in the 1970s. We used to average 250 to 400 (fans) a game. But like I told Mike (Tamburro, PawSox president.), ‘We’re gonna stick by our guns, we’re not going to give prizes away or any of that. We’re just gonna give the fans one thing: the best possible professional baseball outside the majors at the most economical prices.’ Our $4 and $5 seats have never changed in 25 years. We’ve never raised the prices for those blue seats, the general admission seats, never ever, and the other seats we’ve raised $1 since 1977. And free parking all the time.
How has the renovation of a few years ago enhanced the fans’ experience?
It gave them a new lease on life. This place was built in 1942 and it was a wreck in 1977. And we spent all the money we could to bring it up. But the (National Association of Professional Baseball) wanted you to have the very best you could for the players, and we have always wanted that too. As much as we tried – we fixed this, we fixed that – but we couldn’t afford to build a new stadium. And then came the American Disabilities Act. Well again, there was no way we could take and fix a stadium that was 50 years old and hadn’t been maintained. And finally, Worcester said they would build us a stadium. They said ‘We’ll give you the key and that’s it.’ Well then everybody got into the act: Fall River, New Bedford, Hartford. I’ve always said I’ll never leave here. Because, you know, at the time, we had 20 years invested with the fans, with the media, with everybody else. So then (Rep. Antonio) Pires (D-Pawtucket) came over and one thing led to another and the state floated a $12 million bond. We ended up putting up $6 million.
How difficult was it to spend $6 million out-of-pocket and not raise prices the next season?
We have what we call fiscal discipline. We don’t waste money. But we always will give the players and the fans the very best money can buy. I’m an old-fashioned man. Tighten the belt and you’ll make it. Of course, we had the $6 million. I’m a firm believer in cash reserves. We keep the prices low because, we are, in general – and I’m not being condescending now or anything – in an old mill town with a blue-collar audience. And we cater to them. They love us and they support us to the hilt. Hey, 9,000-plus come out every game. We lead the league in capacity percentage. We sell like 94 percent of our seats every time we open the door. After the renovation, the thing in the back of (the fans) minds I’m sure was ‘Oh yeah, now we’re gonna pay.’ And when they saw that this stadium didn’t make even a five-cent increase on anything, our love affair became a lifelong beauty.
How important is it to have a competitive team, to put a quality product out on the field?
See, a Triple A team is never planned. Our job is to make our parent team, the Boston Red Sox, better. And below us we have a whole farm system. You bring people up slowly or rapidly or whatever they need to bring them up to the big leagues. So sometimes you might have two or three shortstops and it’s not for the big club to find out but it’s for us to find out: Is it better to release this fellow? Is it better to have more patience with him? See, these aren’t machine parts you turn out. But from Day 1 we’ve always told our fans that nobody wants to win more than us. But our job is to produce players for the Boston Red Sox. Winning is secondary. And our fans have accepted that.
How does that relationship work between the PawSox and the Boston Red Sox? How autonomous is this franchise?
We’re all different pockets in the same pair of pants. We’re all independent of each other, but all under one umbrella. As players are developed they call them up. It’s just a case of what they need and what you can produce. If you have a garden and you want to grow it and have a nice harvest, some blossom earlier, some later, some not at all. Of course, they’d love to have us produce 25 excellent players with good pitching, good catching, shortstops and centerfielders and so on. But you just can’t. Every organization is in the same boat.
Is the franchise profitable?
It has to be. Whether it’s major leagues, Triple A, Double A, Single A, Rookie Leagues, a lot of people think players play ball, the fans come in, you sell a few hot dogs and make money. It doesn’t work that way. You have to pay salaries. You have to make money to build stadiums. You have to operate at a profit so you can pay for all these things. People don’t realize the tremendous operating costs. You’re traveling 30 some players, housing them, flying them, and busing them. That costs a lot of money. And just maintaining this plant here. The ground crew is out there working on that field year round. Everybody says ‘God you have a beautiful stadium, that grass is so nice.’ That doesn’t just happen.
You’ve seen a lot of great players come through here. Do you keep in touch with some of them?
Oh, with a lot of them. We get pictures of their new babies and new houses and what have you. And they come back. Carlton Fisk was our first to go to the Hall of Fame. Of course, we’ve got a long list of them coming. Jim Rice got cheated out of it. He deserved it more than anyone in the world. Roger Clemens is a sure Hall of Famer. Wade Boggs is a shoo-in.
What are a few of your fondest memories of McCoy?
Well, of course, the Longest Game (a 32-inning game against Rochester on April 18, 1981). You take about 140 years of baseball, take all the games played, and I don’t know how many millions of games that is, but we own the longest game. And (pitcher Dave) Righetti against The Bird (pitcher Mark Fidrych), and we won the Governors’ Cup in ’84. And then there were just a lot of individual exploits.
The Rhode Island Historical Society recently honored you as someone who has made a mark on the state’s history. As a native Rhode Islander, what did that mean to you?
Well, naturally you feel good and you’re proud. But you have to keep in mind, I’m the representative of an entire staff. No man can do anything by himself. I am surrounded by probably the best staff in baseball. Mike (Tamburro) runs the show. He runs a hell of a ship here. They all do a hell of a job. And I’ve been retreating into the background slowly. I’m an old man – I’m three-and-a-half years away from 80. It’s been a long ride, but this is my third career. So you feel good for everybody on staff, for the whole organization. We preach one thing here: Nobody uses the word ‘I’. It’s always ‘we’.
What’s the most important thing you’d like to preserve about the franchise?
The human factor. You don’t need a bunch of experts to come in and make decisions for you. You don’t need a survey of the food in the concessions. Go sit with the fans. If your peanuts are lousy, they’ll tell ya. You know, it’s a changing world. Now it’s all computers and e-mail and what have you. But I’m a pad-and-a-pencil man. I’ll never change. These young players that come through here, you can’t run them with a computer. They’re human and that’s how we treat them. One of the things we’re proudest of is that all the players that come through here, they look back and say ‘Boy, one of the best places I ever played, in or out of the major leagues, was McCoy Stadium with the PawSox.’
