Here is the latest on the amazing efforts, and time constraints, of some Cal grads and others to save the baseball program:
"Ryan Gorcey
BearTerritory.net Publisher
After a productive meeting between the leadership of Save Cal Baseball and the University of California administration two weeks ago, the group now has a new deadline and a firm figure with which to work.
"The meeting was positive," said SCB's Doug Nickle in a phone conversation last week. "Not all the due diligence was being done in terms of using the greatest resource that this University has, and that's the alumni, to help solve problems. We were very excited by the fact that not only is the University willing to sit down and work with us, but proactively offering the full resources of their development department at our disposal."
The supporters of saving the Cal baseball program are now shooting to raise the balance of the University's $10 million figure by March 31. That money will be required to start an endowment to run the program in perpetuity.
"It's got to be a good, combined, donation number up front with endowment numbers, as well," said Nickle. "We're pretty much together now, and of course, that's all we've ever wanted from the beginning. We are working together and we are on the path to reinstatement, in my opinion."
A big help to that effort will be the Cal Baseball Classic (sponsored by Safeway) held this coming weekend at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Proceeds from the four-day event will go towards the baseball program itself.
"We are a group clearly focused on the long-term health of the University, and this is not just about bringing baseball back and saying, 'Haha, we got baseball back;' we're actually concerned overall about the health of the University, and that's where we've seen an increase in people donating to our cause - people who are more focused on the academics and University programs than just sports - these are people who were awakened to the idea that, if you take away certain sports, you undermine the overall experience at Cal, and in a holistic sense, it's very important to keep people together, because all these pieces of the puzzle fit together to form the overall experience at the University of California, Berkeley."
There were donations to the effort during the first, four-month-long leg of the drive to preserve the five sports originally cut, that were essentially in two parts: a donation for reinstatement, and then a pledge to continue donating to the endowment fund, annually, something that will have to be repeated over the next several weeks.
"That was, I think, probably, one of the misunderstandings, initially, because if the University had taken that into account, they would have seen that there is a long-term sustainable plan, because these donors are going to keep coming back," Nickle said. "Instead, they looked at it as a lump-sum number, instead of seeing what they could make over X number of years."
The reinstatement of the program will require such a business plan which reflects sustainable sources of donations over a seven-to-10 year period, which was outlined by the University. The involvement of the development office at the University is a start, but improvements need to be made, according to SCB supporters and program insiders, in providing advertising dollars for the barren outfield walls at Evans Diamond. If this new spirit of cooperation holds out, that may in fact be possible.
"It's going to be contingent on a lot of things, including a good business plan for baseball," said Nickle, who admitted that the program has suffered as much from a seeming lack of institutional support just as much as it has from a schism in supporters of the program which has made fundraising heretofore nearly impossible because of mutual mistrust and resentment. "It's going to be, how can baseball run itself in almost a privatized way so that it does not need to leach funding from the University, which is certainly a little cash-strapped at this point. It's just a really nice combination of what would happen in the private sector. If a business is a good business, but is running inefficiently, or there are external pressures to that business's success, it's incumbent upon that business to run through and lean out and run itself in a much more expeditious fashion, and still operate in a profitable way."
Nickle said that the two factions within alumni of the program and other program supporters will have to either "kiss and make up" or at the very least, "pull in the same direction."
"I think everyone was awoken to the idea that baseball was not guaranteed just because it's baseball," Nickle said. "When the rubber meets the road, people need to make a decision of what's the true focus of their intention: is it ego-based? Or is it the honest, full-on appreciation of what this program has meant to all of us, and should mean to generations henceforth? I think it's the dawn of a new day, so to speak, and all sides recognize what we could lose if we took our eye off the ball."
The infighting, Nickle said, contributed to a refusal -- or at least a willful ignorance -- of the state that the program was in, from the standpoint of donors.
"I'm sure that contributed to it, but it was just that general comfort zone that people feel, with baseball being America's pastime, how could you cut baseball?" Nickle said. "It felt like it was untouchable, and we learned back in October of 2010 that it was absolutely touchable, and, just like everything else that we hold near and dear, it's incumbent upon us to keep things in order if we want to continue these traditions. I think what this has taught everybody is not to leave this in the hands of the state, not to leave this in the hands of anybody else. Take control of what you can control, and work for those things that you love."
Pledges to the cause will be tax-deductible and will only be accepted upon reinstatement of the program by the University.
"We seem to have turned over a new leaf here," Nickle said. "We are working in conjunction with the University, as opposed to against them. We're doing this of our own accord, for the university. The onus is on the University to prove that they're trustworthy, and they're going to have to do some repair work, but the fact that they are now listening to the donors is the first step."
At the time of reinstatement, donors will be notified and the Cal Baseball Foundation will ask that they activate their pledges either by credit card or check at that time.
"Reinstating for next year is the singular goal," Nickle said. "That is the singular goal, and the only acceptable outcome at this point, and we're both working in that direction ... The Pac-10 has said the sooner, the better, but they are willing to be patient because they know that the Pac-10 is a stronger conference with Cal baseball. We're giving ourselves a little bit of a deadline."
The NCAA and the conference have told the University that the baseball program can come back, however they gave the deadline of March 31 because the 2012 Pac-12 baseball schedules need to be created by that point.
"As alumni, we are interested in giving this school a competitive program, which means giving the existing players a home where they belong, right now, and that's at Cal," Nickle said.
Going by the University's numbers, the program will need to bridge a gap between the alleged $4.5 million and the $10 million number.
When the baseball and men's gymnastics programs were cut for the second time, Univeristy spokesman Dan Mogulof acknowledged that not all donors were called to verify their pledges.
"We know the donor community," Mogulof said. "The people who have the capacity for significant contributions and their history are well known to us. And we were in contact with far more people than just a single individual. As we got toward the deadline, we saw that they had raised only half of what was necessary to reinstate all five teams."
Now under this new spirit of cooperation, Nickle believes that, despite discrepancies between his numbers and the University's, that they will get this done.
"This is an unprecedented situation, so knowing your donors in a normal cycle is one thing. Knowing you donors when programs are cut is a whole 'nother issue," Nickle said. "Programs being cut sets a whole new emphasis for donation. But, even if you just go by the University's numbers, we were sitting on an additional $4.5 million that was in the bank. We know it was bigger than that, but if we at least agree that it was at least $4.5 million, that's still a pretty sizable number. More importantly, now, it's a great starter, a great seed package to this gap that we have to bridge, which is obviously between $5 million and $10 million up front with the balance of that $10 million to start some sort of endowment program."
For those following their program, they had a very tough week in San Diego, losing 3 of 4, as their bats went pretty silent.
This week they co-host a tournament at AT&T Park, home of the Giants. The tournament has received next to nothing in terms of publicity, despite some wonderful match ups, including having Rice participate and 3 games per day.
