COLUMBUS — He bleeds many shades of red, the career politician a lifelong fan of Ohio State football, University of Dayton basketball, and Reds baseball.
For Gov. Mike DeWine, sports are not just the family business — he owns a minor league baseball team in North Carolina — but his great pleasure.
And he looks forward to their return, preferably sooner than later.
But DeWine is not here to puff smoke in our face.
He has no idea if he’ll be able to use his just-renewed Buckeyes season tickets this year.
In an interview with The Blade on Friday afternoon, the governor made no pandering, pie-in-the-sky predictions, telling us he’s unsure of the sports landscape that will emerge as we begin to navigate the impossible gray area between foiling the coronavirus and restoring the rhythms of daily life.
I asked DeWine what he made of the comments last week from Ohio House Majority Leader Bill Seitz (R., Cincinnati), who, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, all but put him and Dr. Amy Acton, the director of the Ohio Department of Health, on the clock when he said: “I’ll tell you one thing, if we roll around to early September, and they say that there will be no pro or college football, at that time there will be an insurrection no matter what Amy Acton says.”
“Well, look, first of all, it's much, much too early,” DeWine said. “The one thing we've found about this virus is there's a lot we don't know about it. We're going to have respect for it.”
So ... do you anticipate your Buckeyes will play in the fall?
“I would certainly think they could figure out how to do a season,” he said, before adding the obvious caveat. “Can we go watch them? I think it's much too early to be making that [decision].”
With that, DeWine flipped the interview, asking: “Now, of course you’ve got ... what percentage of your readership is University of Michigan people?”
I told him I guessed the split is about 65 percent Ohio State, 35 percent Michigan today, but was closer to 50-50 during the Cooper years. He laughed, and, for a moment, we were just a couple of sports fans on our virtual bar stools.
Which, come to think of it, was the original point of this column.
When I reached out to the governor’s office last week, the idea was to put a face on the sports fan who shut down sports.
Remember, it was DeWine who in early March led the way with the country’s most restrictive ban on mass gatherings, booting spectators from the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus — sorry, Governator — then from sporting events.
At the time, the moves struck many of us as an overreach, but DeWine, comfortable in his skin at 73, smartly leaned into the science, displaying the humility to listen to his top medical minds, then acting decisively on their counsel.
If he had governed with his heart — or even his own wallet — perhaps he would have taken the easier political road, waiting like everyone else for his hand to be forced.
To appreciate the full picture of DeWine, go back to his family’s purchase of the Class A Asheville Tourists in 2010.
The team operates under the name DeWine Seeds Silver Dollar Baseball, which set the governor off on a delightful story.
Growing up in Yellow Springs outside of Dayton, where his father, Dick, built a national seed company, he came of age with God, family, and Woody, along with Dayton hoops (“a big rival of Toledo at that time”) and his beloved Reds (“Ted Kluszewski, Gus Bell, Wally Post, Jim Greengrass ... ”).
A few years ago, his wife, Fran, asked him how long he had wanted to be governor. Only about 60 years, DeWine said. His goal before that? “I wanted to play second base for the Cincinnati Reds.”
In those years he dreamed of baseball, his dad often took him to games at old Crosley Field, the double-decked but cozy home of the Reds until 1970.
“Dad always told the story about the 1939 World Series,” DeWine said.
As it went, his dad and a buddy arrived at the ballpark 16 hours before Game 3 against the Yankees, lining up at separate box office windows with the agreement that whoever got to front first would snag two tickets. His dad made it and scored the passes just in time.
“But then he couldn’t find his buddy,” DeWine said. “So at game time, dad went in and climbed up to the top of Crosley Field to try to see his buddy. Finally, he found him, this big, 16-year-old kid walking away. He could tell he was crying.
“He yelled at him. My dad had a silver dollar his dad had given him that he always carried. He put that ticket around the silver dollar somehow and used the silver dollar as a weight and threw it down to the kid. The kid got the ticket and went into the game.”
The story carries on, as does DeWine’s love of the games we play and watch.
The games that, yes, contrary to what some may believe, he wants back as soon as safely possible.
He’s interested in hearing the plans proposed by the pro sports leagues, which could begin — or resume — play without fans this summer. “Let's hope we see some baseball this year,” he said. “And football, too.”
As for the events without monster TV contracts that rely entirely on fans being in attendance — events like the Marathon LPGA Classic presented by Dana or Mud Hens baseball games — that’s a different dilemma. I asked DeWine, whose son, Brian, runs the family ball club in North Carolina, specifically about the return of minor league baseball this season.
“I wouldn't say it's completely out of the picture,” DeWine said. “You could see major league baseball, minor league baseball, or other sports with very significant distancing [of fans]. The whole thing is about keeping people apart. Most people who own a ball club have figured out in their mind or on paper how they would put people in the stands and assure distancing.
“Everybody's trying to figure it out. ... It's all about family groupings. You group one family at one end of the row, you group another family at the other end of the row, maybe you skip a row. It's not great, but could you come up with it? Yeah, you could.”
Would it be worth it financially? There’s the rub.
“Because the revenue stream for minor league baseball is pretty basic,” DeWine said. “It's selling tickets. selling advertising, selling beer, selling food.”
Meantime, he’ll remain hopeful but vigilant, looking forward to the return of the boys of summer while recognizing there is much we simply do not know.
For instance ...
“I don't know if there's much better,” DeWine said, “than being at a minor league baseball game on a July night.”
First Published May 9, 2020, 11:20 p.m.
