CIVIC PRIDE.

Byline: Steve Mims The Register-Guard

The 1972 Olympic Track and Field Trials were winding down at Hayward Field when Bob Beban pulled into Eugene to spend the night in a Franklin Boulevard hotel for a break from his drive to Yakima, Wash.

"I remember checking into the hotel and driving downtown and what is now Cafe Zenon was a barbecue place," Beban said. "I remember getting something to go and then driving around Eugene a bit. It's weird, it really is."

It's weird because nearly 10 years after his first stop in Eugene, Beban was back in town for his first day on the job as president and general manager of the Eugene Emeralds.

And it's weird because nearly a quarter of a century has since passed and Beban is still on the job.

"At the beginning in the early 1980s general managers did not stay someplace for five years. They were gone," Beban said. "I figured I'd be in Eugene for a couple of years and then go somewhere like Fresno for three or four years and then go to Rochester or someplace else. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd spend 23 years in Eugene."

Yet the Emeralds are celebrating 50 years of baseball this summer, and Beban has been at his post for nearly half of those seasons.

"Bob has become a senior statesman for the league," Northwest League president Bob Richmond said. "He has been around for 23 years, but it is hard to believe that. Just watching what he has done with this franchise, he took over a good franchise and just took it to the next level. This is a very highly thought-of franchise in baseball and it is because of Bob really. He's done a great job."

For the past 22 of those 23 years in Eugene, Beban has worked for Elmore Sports Group Ltd., which purchased the team prior to the 1983 season.

"When we think of Eugene it is the backbone of our organization," said D.G. Elmore, the managing director of Elmore Sports Group Ltd., which is based in Salt Lake City and owns seven minor-league teams. "Eugene was the second team we acquired, and Bob has been a leader for us. He has so much wisdom and insight. He has been a mentor to a lot of guys, and this team has sort of been a gold standard within the national association. We have always held up Eugene as being an ideal situation."

Beban, 59, found an ideal situation that kept him in Eugene.

"I had some opportunities early to leave, but I loved the community here and the atmosphere around baseball and I loved the Elmores," Beban said. "There is no way I could go to work with someone in Memphis, Tenn., and have the same relationship I have with the Elmores. It is just not possible."

From plate to desk

After eight years as an umpire - including five in the Class AAA Pacific Coast League - Bob Beban took the gear off for the last time in 1981. He was one level short of the major leagues, but his window of opportunity was closing.

"I had not been, as they say, looked at by Major League Baseball to go to the big leagues," Beban said. "The only reason you umpire is to get to the big leagues. I loved it and enjoyed it and I was good at it, but if you couldn't go to the big leagues it was not something I was going to hang around and do."

However, he did plan to hang around the game.

"It becomes part of your identity," he said. "Baseball was a big part of what I did when I umpired and a part of what I wanted to do."

Larry Schmittou hired Beban as the assistant general manager of his AAA team in Salt Lake City in 1981, but soon Schmittou headed an ownership group that purchased the Emeralds the following year. That group also included country music stars Conway Twitty and Jerry Reed.

"Larry made me a nice offer to come to Eugene, and if that did not work out I had a nice offer to stay in Salt Lake," Beban said. "I loaded up my car and came to Eugene."

His first day on the job was April 18, 1982.

"I didn't have a clue what I was doing that first year," Beban said.

Local businessman Cordy Jensen, who was part owner and general manager of the Emeralds in the 1970s, remembered meeting Beban that year.

"I was tending bar and this guy walked in and said, `I'm here to run the Ems,' ' Jensen recalled. "I said, `What's your background?' and he said, `I'm an umpire.' I thought, `Who knows if this is going to work?' '

Following the 1982 season, Schmittou met with Elmore at the baseball winter meetings and began to work out the details of a sale; when the deal was consummated, Elmore retained Beban and put the day-to-day operations in his hands.

"We have an owner that allows all of his clubs autonomy," Beban said. "We operate as though we are running everything as our own and that is very attractive. I call him if I have a question or he'll call me, but we're not in daily contact. If I screw up he'll back me and then I'll hear about it, and that is how I run it with the people who work here."

In Eugene last week, Elmore praised the job Beban has done.

"People ask me a lot of times what makes a good general manager," he said. "There are two things. One is that you can sell like crazy and you really know how to promote and sell and build interest so people come out to the park and so that corporate sponsors like being involved. The second thing is that someone manages people well. Bob does both of those things well.

"Lots of teams have been in cities for 50 years and don't have the following the Emeralds have here."

Changing affiliates

When Beban arrived in 1982 the Ems were affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds, but a change was made after the 1983 season. There were two reasons for the change, one regarding business issues, involving the handling of player wages, and one regarding on-field issues - back then, the Reds' minor-league teams didn't use designated hitters, putting the Ems at a disadvantage.

In 1984, the Kansas City Royals signed a working agreement with Eugene, a relationship that got off to a rocky start when the Ems finished 19-55.

"That was the only year in the 23 I've been here where we lost money," Beban said. "There were a couple of issues. One was that the team was pathetic and the other was the Los Angeles Olympics. I realized Eugene was a track and field city and that it was important for us to be out of town during track and field, but little did I know that gymnastics that year would set sports viewing records that still have not been broken.

"When Mary Lou Retton was doing three flips and a somersault, I was drawing 600 to 800 people."

Things got better in 1985 when the Ems finished 40-34 to win the division title before losing to Everett in the league championship series. The Royals stayed in town for more than a decade.

"We had a wonderful 11 years, it was a tremendous affiliation," Beban said. "We had good teams, good managers, and the reason they left had to do with George Brett owning Spokane and also being a shareholder of the Royals. Kansas City had to move to Spokane or move out of the league, so they moved to Spokane."

Atlanta moved in for the 1995 season, but the Braves changed their organizational philosophy during their time in Eugene, placing less emphasis on drafting college players, and more on prospects just out of high school, with more emphasis on player development than winning.

"How can you argue with 13 pennants, but that doesn't fly in Eugene," Beban said.

The Chicago Cubs arrived in Eugene in 1999 and stayed for only two years, and in 2001 the San Diego Padres became the fifth major-league affiliate for Eugene since Beban arrived, and they are now in their fourth season with the Emeralds. The working agreement expires after this season, but Beban said it is likely to continue.

Selling to the fans

Whatever affiliate has been in Eugene, Beban's philosophy has stayed the same.

"We market to the fans 100 percent," Beban said. "We run a clean, safe environment for people to come watch. We try to run a wholesome operation and never forget it is still a baseball game and you can't allow shenanigans to go on in a minor-league park to affect the game itself."

Beban is not Bill Veeck, the late baseball executive known for outlandish stunts and promotions like signing 3-foot-7 midget Eddie Gaedel and burning disco records after one ballgame; instead, he's relied on more traditional promotions like giveaways for bats, hats, and T-shirts.

However, in Beban's second season he brought back 50-cent beer nights to Civic Stadium, somewhat reluctantly.

"It got to the point where it was out of hand," he said. "I was a nervous wreck every time we had them. They were wild. We sold more single-night tickets to that than you could believe."

The beer nights ended in 1986 as Beban looked to other ways to sell tickets.

He had buyouts with local companies such as Bi-Mart, who would buy 10,000 or so tickets to give out to customers. The Ems also sold discount ticket books over the phone.

In the mid-1980s, Beban began to book pregame barbecues at the park. It is a tradition, often emulated by other teams, that lives on as groups of 35 or more can pay $14 per person for all-you-can-eat-and-drink picnics for an hour before the game.

Whatever the promotions, attendance has more than doubled from the 52,580 fans who attended games at Civic Stadium during Beban's first season.

The Emeralds went over 100,000 in 1985 and reached their largest short-season total of 148,282 in 1996. This year, Eugene ranks second in the league with an average attendance of more than 3,300.

The health of the franchise is ...

"Excellent," Beban said. "It is hard to keep up nowadays because expenses go up and revenue doesn't always seem to keep up so you are always looking at ways to keep ahead of the curve, either cutting expenses or charging more to fans. Charging more is something I never wanted to do in the minors because you try to have affordable family entertainment."

The cost of a general admission ticket was $3.75 when Beban arrived in 1982 and 23 years later those tickets now cost $5.

Family and friends

Baseball has been the family business for Bob Beban and his wife, Eileen, who met in Eugene and were married in 1985. Eileen Beban arrived in Eugene in 1977, five years before she met Bob.

"The very day I arrived in Eugene a man gave me two tickets to an Ems game and I said, `What's an Ems game?' ' she said. "So I went to the game that night and it was fabulous."

Her love of Civic Stadium grew after she met and married Beban, and Eileen Beban has now been the director of business operations for the Emeralds since 1986.

Both Bob and Eileen had a son from a previous marriage, and Bryan Beban and Chris Mazziotti were regulars at the ballpark who worked an assortment of jobs.

Chris ran the scoreboard at Civic Stadium and did cash pickups for a number of years at the ballpark. He is now a PGA Tour caddy for Brandt Jobe.

Bryan has spent more than half of his life around Civic Stadium as a scoreboard operator, picnic host, public address announcer, and salesman. He is currently the assistant general manager and director of media relations.

When opportunities arose for Bob Beban to pack up the family and leave, he never did.

"At the end of the year I got so pumped up about the next year," he said. "I came real close a couple times to leaving. I was offered the job as general manager in Memphis in about 1987 and I talked to everyone there, but it was not for me. The Elmores asked me if I was interested in going to Colorado Springs and I thought about that but it was not much of a promotion.

"We've got a nice home here, our family liked the schools and it is a wonderful city. I'm here for the same reason everyone else is. It is just a great place to live."

Beban was named The Sporting News short-season executive of the year in 1988 and won the Bob Frietas Award for outstanding operations in short-season baseball in 1989. The Emeralds won the John H. Johnson Presidents Trophy for outstanding operations in minor-league baseball in 2001. Beban has been named Northwest League executive of the year four times.

Yet for all Beban has accomplished in Eugene, the Emeralds have not won a championship during his tenure. Eugene has won four division titles but lost in the championship series each time.

"I'd like to win once," he said. "All of my friends have got rings and I've got nothing."

Beban has missed only two home games in 23 seasons with the Emeralds, but he is just as likely to be seen chatting with fans during a game as he is rooting from his front-row seat.

"I'd love to win and I do root, but I am not a jump up and scream type of person, I don't think it is appropriate," Beban said. "But I do really care about the team and the players and I try to keep up with them after they leave Eugene."

He just never decided to follow any of them out of town.

CAPTION(S):

Emeralds general manager Bob Beban (right) chats with San Diego Padres farm team manager Tye Waller during a game at Civic Stadium. Wayne Eastburn / The Register-Guard Former Oregon quarterback Chris Miller (right) stops to greet Bob Beban during a recent Emeralds game at Civic Stadium. The Register-Guard Beban poses at the plate in 1983, but he used to work behind the plate.