John Sherman is witnessing his first baseball as new Royals owner: ‘How cool is that?’
John Sherman made sure to sit with his back toward the baseball game, and that’s not because he doesn’t care. It’s because he might care a little too much. If he could see the game, even a sliver, that’s all he’d see. He’d brick these questions.
He’d miss a chance to talk to Royals fans, is the point, and he knows they want to hear from him.
“Just tell me — are we still winning?” he asked at one point.
Sherman’s new life is on the other side of those windows. The team his ownership group officially bought in November is playing a spring training game. Sherman remains on the board of directors of Crestwood Equity Partners, which purchased the energy company he started, but in his words he’s “shedding” his former business life. He hopes to be completely out soon.
He’s a baseball man now.
“This is my core business, and how cool is that?” he said. “There’s nothing better than that.”
Sherman is a different kind of owner. How many in his new peer group own pictures of themselves in their team’s T-shirts 35 years before they bought the franchise? Sherman does, and the club put them in its annual Super Bowl ad.
Before news broke connecting Sherman and the purchase, he had what some would call the ideal life. He was a self-made billionaire without much fame. He could do anything he wanted with relative anonymity.
Sherman’s life is changed now forever. He is the lead investor and face of a 17-man ownership group of one of Kansas City’s most beloved institutions. Some of the other 16 can retain some level of privacy. Sherman will be the one held publicly accountable for the results.
That’s a word he uses often, by the way: accountable. That’s his role.
“My job is to be supportive and we’ll all hold each other accountable,” he said.
He won’t provide a specific expectation for winning, only that “we need to make sure we’re showing progress,” which he expects to depend largely on the pitching ... and could that sound any more like a Royals fan?
It’s a rare situation. The Royals are not new to Sherman. He’s been a season ticket-holder for years. But Sherman is new to the Royals. The people who now work for him are only getting to know him, even as he’s followed their careers from a distance.
He’s their boss now, but at least at the moment he’s doing more listening than dictating, more supporting than directing. He’s not shy, and after four years as a sort of owner-in-waiting with the Cleveland Indians he’s more than qualified for the gig.
“I want to be a good teammate,” he said. “A teammate where we hold each other accountable. In my business career I’ve always been a big proponent of accountability and having a sense of urgency. I’m seeing that goes up a step here.
“Windows close fast. In business they close fast, and I think they close faster in baseball.”
The Royals have lost 207 games the last two seasons, but the timing of Sherman’s purchase is sound.
That urgency he mentioned is apparent all over the complex. Players and coaches have pride, and that pride has been stepped on. Reputations are at stake. Jobs, too. That can be a productive mix, and the presence of a new manager and new owner only add to the need for production.
Notably, the Royals have a handshake deal on a new television contract that is expected to boost annual revenues by $20 million or more.
A baseball owner’s effectiveness is often distilled publicly to a team’s big-league payroll, and if fans are hoping that Sherman’s group will spend in ways that David Glass didn’t, they will almost certainly be disappointed. Twenty million dollars up doesn’t mean a $20 million player signed this offseason, and at this point in the big-league club’s development, that would be bad business anyway.
“We should be looking at this business on a multi-year basis, right?” Sherman said. “We could think about perhaps looking at some of our current guys and getting them extended as a way to invest and make sure they’re here when we’ve got young guys coming up to make us stronger...
“(The TV contract) gives us more flexibility. It gives us more flexibility to invest when we’re ready. I would expect us to be moving up (in payroll) certainly from where we are now. Certainly if we have a competitive team and we’re ready this ownership group will do all we can to make sure this team is competitive.”
On that point — making the team competitive — Sherman projects both optimism and confidence. The team is “more advanced probably than I thought we were” in terms of talent, analytics, player development, performance science and other areas.
He doesn’t have a lot to go on quite yet and he must know that by definition of his job everyone he meets is making his or her best impression possible. But there are clues he looks for. The other day, all 68 players in big-league camp met with more than 40 coaches, executives, scouts, trainers, doctors ... basically all the players with all the people hired to help the players achieve.
Sherman knows enough about the Royals to know the last time they won they did it largely on culture, on guys buying in and staying on task. Sherman looked around that room when manager Mike Matheny spoke and noticed that every eye was locked in.
Afterward, some who’ve been in those rooms for decades told Sherman it doesn’t always happen like that.
“It’s the culture we have,” he said. “And the type of culture I’d like to see.”
The other day, Sherman’s wife texted him: “When are you coming home. Or are you coming home?”
By the time you read this, Sherman will be back in Kansas City. But the point remains. This is a new life for him now, and the opportunity is so rare he says “it’s hard for me to explain” what it means.
This is work, and even now there are periodic reminders that it isn’t all sunshine and home runs. His new team has averaged more than 30 games out of first place the last three seasons, after all. He’s been told to not read the comments on this column or anything else written about his team. These are his new professional hazards and they’ll intensify if the wins don’t come.
For now, that’s why he works. That’s why he talks about urgency, about accountability. That’s why the new TV contract is so important. The Royals are going to need all of that and more — smart decisions, cutting-edge science, hard work, luck — to make another climb from the bottom of the sport to the top.
The journey from here will be unlike anything in Sherman’s already extraordinary life. That’s obvious already. He’s been thanked back home more times than he can count. At dinner, around town, anywhere. He took his kids to the Super Bowl and must’ve posed for a dozen pictures.
Yes, this is different than being a businessman.
“I even signed my first ball,” he said, before laughing and making himself the punch line.
“Someone showed me the sweet spot. My wife kind of rolled her eyes.”