This is the second time around for Ed Hale, indoor soccer team owner. And this time, he says, things are going to be different.
In fact, even as Hale attempts to recreate the popularity of the 1980s Blast, which played to near capacity at the Baltimore Arena, things are already different.
This time, Hale goes into a Blast season knowing he won't lose money. Already, sponsorship packages totaling more than $1 million have been sold.
This time, Hale has gained influence in the business community and is using his business savvy to make a success of his franchise.
"I'm not a virgin any more when it comes to soccer," says the wealthy transportation and banking executive. "I know what I'm doing. The last time I did this, no one knew who I was until I bought the Blast. I was like the Wizard of Oz always in the 'D background."
Hale owned the Blast from 1989 to 1992. Attendance averaged about 8,000 fans a game, but he still lost money -- about $2.1
million during the four years, he says. His own ership stint ended when the Major Soccer League folded after the 1992 season.
The next season, then-local businessman Bill Stealey secured a franchise in the National Professional Soccer League, naming it the Spirit. When Hale bought the team from Stealey last spring, he promptly restored the Blast name, which he had retained.
When the regular season opens tomorrow night at the Baltimore Arena, the Blast's original red and gold logo will be displayed on the new black and white uniforms, and a giant soccer ball will descend from the ceiling during the player introductions, just as it did in the old days.
Local roots
Hale, who turns 52 next month, is twice divorced and the father of three. He grew up in eastern Baltimore County, and went to Sparrows Point High and Essex Community College.
He served in the Air Force and then came home to work for a local trailer leasing company. Since beginning his trucking business in 1975 with $100,000, he has gone from owning five trucks to being the largest private employer at the Port of Baltimore.
The first time Hale tried his hand at sports team ownership, he didn't know many local business owners. He spent and lost a fortune. Yes, he owned a local company, but his trucking business was conducted with mostly foreign firms.
Yes, he had money: About $10 million in 1988, according to a divorce court judge who ruled Hale had to pay his first wife a still-standing record settlement of more than $6.5 million.
Hale won't disclose his personal net worth, but he holds 1.2 million shares of First Mariner Bank worth $16.8 million and is thought to have other assets worth not less than $30 million.
He is a conglomerate. Besides First Mariner and the Blast, Hale owns Hale Trans, which incorporates Hale Trucking and Hale Marine, a combine of 250 trucks and seven barges. He also has a Peterbilt truck franchise. Altogether, he employs more than 800 persons.
Hale, who runs the financial side of former Gov. William Donald Schaefer's campaign for comptroller, has been involved in political fund raising for nearly two decades. But it is his move into banking, more than anything, that increased his clout.
In 1991, Hale, a small investor, fought and won a five-month proxy fight to gain control of Baltimore Bankcorp.
"People said it was impossible to do and I did it," Hale says. "It's the one accomplishment I'm most proud of."
When Hale gained control, stock was trading at $4.37. When he sold the bank two years later, the price was $20.75.
It had been a strange undertaking for Hale, who long considered most bankers elitists who look down on energetic small businessmen.
Even now, with all the trappings of those he disdains -- an historic house in Timonium (that he soon plans to sell), a new condominium, two planes, including a sea plane that transports him within a half hour to his 186-acre farm near St. Michaels -- Hale hasn't changed his mind.
"A lot of bankers and bank analysts are waiting to see me fall," he says, "and I'm not going to give them the opportunity. Ever. I still remember coming out of Dundalk and how I was treated when I went to banks for loans."
A little more than three years ago, he founded First Mariner, which this week listed its assets as having grown to nearly $460 million among its 22 branches.
John Bowers, executive vice president of the Maryland Bankers Association, acknowledges that some of Hale's competitors look him skeptically.
"His challenge has been to grow his bank and the way you do that is to steal other competitors' accounts and get new ones," Bowers said. "He certainly has done that. No one would characterize him as a shrinking violet."
His title at First Mariner is chairman and chief executive officer, yet Hale continues to consider himself a banking outsider.
"I think he's right, mainly because most bankers spent their life in banking," says Bill Kuethe, president of the Bank of Glen Burnie. "He has to rely on others. I think if you asked him what he is, I think he'd say he's a business magnate, not a banker."
Now a soccer man
The last time Hale owned the Blast, he was also an outsider, relying on others.
Sitting at a small conference table in his Canton office, with a wall of glass windows facing the revived waterfront, Hale looks ,, back.
"I bought the Blast the first time to position myself to get the NFL franchise here," he says of the purchase that cost him $850,000. "I didn't get football. I lost money and I lost games. It was terrible.
"I hate losing even one dollar and to lose $30,000 a game and lose a game to Wichita, awful. But I ended up loving the sport. I enjoyed going to the games, I enjoyed the players I met. Then I got to the point where I enjoyed the nuances of the game, the brilliance of a goal -- even if it was scored against us."
After the league folded and he was without a team, Hale found himself watching other soccer games, even following the now-defunct Washington Warthogs.
And so, this spring, he bought the Spirit.
This time his entry cost much less -- a contrast that is not lost on Hale. In 1989, he had less money to spend when indoor soccer franchises in the Major Soccer League cost up to $1 million. This time, he paid an undisclosed price, thought to be closer to a quarter million dollars, to re-acquire a team when his wealth is growing.
But before buying the Spirit, he did his homework. He found player salaries, once out of control because of union rules and free agency, reasonable, averaging about $35,000 for a nine-month season.
He found he'd need only from 5,000 to 6,000 fans a game to break even, instead of the 8,000 to 9,000 required before. And he believed, with his bank and his standing in the community, he'd have the connections to get the sponsorships he needed to make the team, at the least, a break-even deal.
"You have to have an owner in town with some muscle to leverage support," says former Spirit general manager Drew Forrester. "Ed is the model owner in this town. The Spirit did all right when Mr. Stealey had his business here and had his local business contacts. But when he moved to North Carolina [in 1994], it made a tremendously big difference. I really think the Blast is going to have a great year because of Ed."
No longer begging
When Hale last asked for corporate support from the Baltimore business community through The Greater Baltimore Committee, the response was anemic.
"Asked?" he says now, still irked by the memory. "I begged. The last time, getting any corporate support required begging."
In 1991, corporate support totaled 220 season tickets out of 3,000 sold.
This time, he has approached The Greater Baltimore Alliance, a relatively new group whose directive includes maintaining and strengthening existing businesses. The GBA has agreed to purchase season tickets and encourage its members, through a letter, to support "the Blast just as it does the Orioles and Ravens."
Today, Hale has 38 corporate sponsors and the possibility of 12 to 15 more. In those sponsorship packages, more than 300 season tickets have been bought. And firms that have not bought the packages have bought tickets.
He has adjusted ticket prices. A year ago, Spirit tickets ranged from $11 to $16. The Blast will charge from $7 to $15. Season ticket sales have gone from 666, for last season's Spirit, to a little over 1,000. A crowd of from 9,000 to 11,500 is expected tomorrow.
"I've used some gentle arm twisting," Hale banters when asked how he goes after corporate sales. "It's a thing where I ask, and where they may feel they should. But, at the same time, there are no hard feelings if they don't."
Subway is one sponsor that signed on. In return the Blast will send a player to each of its 75 area franchises this season.
To market the team, Hale has bought and traded ads to the tune of $500,000, or 50 percent more than in the second and third years of his past ownership run. And he has paid to have five games broadcast on HTS.
Hale's dream is to restore the Blast to its glory days -- the days of division and national championships when being at a Blast game was the place to be. He has heard the critics who say the time for indoor soccer in Baltimore has passed, but he has heard critics before.
"I bought the Blast for fun," Hale says. "And I'm having a good time restoring it, especially since I did the due-diligence and know it can work. I think the key is winning.
"I think we have a pretty good team and if we win, that will breed bigger crowds. But only time will tell if I'm right."
Blast opener
Opponent: Harrisburg Heat
Site: Baltimore Arena
When: Tomorrow, 7: 35 p.m.
Radio: WJFK (1300 AM)
Coming tomorrow
A preview of the Blast's season and a team-by-team look at the NPSL.
Pub Date: 10/23/98