Even though the Rockies’ new spring training complex is just five minutes from his home in Arizona, Cary Teraji didn’t attend any games.
“When I saw that tickets were going for about $30 (actually $25 for infield boxes), I jumped out of my seat. I used to get ’em for free.”
Teraji was one of the team’s original owners.
“The Rockies sure have come a long way from the beginning,” Teraji said in a telephone interview from Scottsdale, Ariz.
Teraji was there before the beginning.
The 20th anniversary of Major League Baseball’s official announcement that Denver had been awarded an expansion franchise is July 5.
The Rockies will be playing the Braves in Atlanta that day, so tens of thousands of baseball fanatics won’t be dancing in downtown Denver, as they were on July 5, 1991.
Teraji and dozens of others responsible for the birth of the Rockies won’t be honored in a celebration.
He has been dismissed in Rox history, but the 60-year-old Teraji, a Denver native, was an ever-present fun character for 15 years off to the side in his Rockies leather jacket, holding 6 percent of the general partnership until quietly being nudged out.
“Nobody paid much attention to me,” Teraji said.
His investment was a reported $1 million — “that’s about right” — but he is “not allowed to say” what he received for his stock. “I made some money” from Dick and Charlie Monfort and Jerry McMorris (whose 47 percent also was purchased soon by the brothers).
Teraji, who founded a computer software company, didn’t know, to start with, that he was involved.
In 1985, Denver real estate developer John Dikeou bought the Triple-A Bears, changed the name to the Zephyrs and declared his intention to lure major-league baseball to Denver.
“I knew John,” Teraji said. “When I went to the Orange Bowl to see the CU Buffs play (Jan. 1, 1991), he asked me to sit with him. During the game, he told me Major League Baseball had demanded that he have a group of owners. Without me knowing, he already added my name to the list. I thought, ‘Why not?’ “
Two months before baseball would vote on two new franchises (from candidates Miami; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Orlando, Fla.; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Washington), Dikeou dropped out, and the Denver Baseball Partnership and Gov. Roy Romer scrambled to find other investors. Most were from outside Colorado.
In the continuing turmoil, the general partnership (which owned 28.5 percent) featured four men from Youngstown, Ohio — Mickey Monus and his father, Nathan, and John M. Antonucci and his father, John R. — and one from Denver — Teraji. The limited partnership included Charlie Monfort, McMorris and Oren Benton.
“The ownership deal was weird. People were coming and going. We had to make it happen before the owners’ meeting. Hard to believe it succeeded.”
It almost didn’t.
I was at the owners meeting at a Santa Monica, Calif., hotel on June 13, 1991, when baseball’s joint ownership committee approved Denver and Miami ($95 million fee each). But American League owners balked and delayed the vote when commissioner Fay Vincent ruled that National League teams would receive $12.8 million, American League teams only $3 million.
Ultimately, on July 5, NL president Bill White flew into Denver with the formal announcement that the Rockies would join baseball in 1993.
However, before the Rockies’ first game, Mickey Monus was indicted on 129 counts of fraud in connection with the Phar-Mor drugstore chain he started. The Monuses and, later, the Antonuccis sold their interest, and Charlie Monfort and McMorris took on more ownership and command of the franchise’s decisions.
Benton, who controlled 75 percent of the world’s uranium market, filed for bankruptcy in 1995 and was forced to sell his $20 million of Rockies stock. Four years later, the trucking company owned by McMorris filed for bankruptcy, and he would, in time, get out. Dick Monfort bought in and joined his brother as majority owners today.
Teraji sold before the Rockies’ World Series run in 2007 but says he is not bitter. “My 11-year-old son and I are Rockies fans, and I have a lot of my memorabilia and my memories.
“At least, I can always say I helped bring baseball to Denver.”
He plans to buy an $8 outfield lawn ticket next spring.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
