Billionaire Iltich takes his shot with Tigers

DETROIT — Mike Ilitch sat front and center in the crowded room at Comerica Park — and on this day, that certainly felt appropriate. Prince Fielder was being introduced as the newest Detroit Tiger, but it was Ilitch who had made this upbeat presentation possible.

Jim Leyland understood. The veteran manager’s disbelief summed up the scene perfectly.

“This just doesn’t happen. I’ve never seen anybody that wanted to do more for a city than Mr. Ilitch,” Leyland said. “I can’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.”

With one stunning move, the Tigers turned themselves into one of baseball’s most compelling teams for the 2012 season — and Ilitch was a driving force. Fielder’s nine-year, $214 million contract is the fourth-largest in the game’s history, the type of commitment few thought the Tigers would be interested in, even after they lost designated hitter Victor Martinez to a severe knee injury.

When Detroit emerged as Fielder’s surprising destination, there was only one plausible explanation: Ilitch, the 82-year-old Little Caesars pizza mogul who bought the Tigers two decades ago, is making another all-out attempt to bring a World Series title back to the Motor City.

“I don’t have any concerns” about the signing, Ilitch said when Fielder arrived. “I’m not nervous about it — I know there’s probably something wrong with me there. It’s a green light.”

A Detroit native and the son of Macedonian immigrants, Ilitch opened a small restaurant about a half-century ago with his wife Marian and turned it into one of the nation’s largest pizza chains. Forbes puts his net worth at $2 billion, and his pizza success set him up to become owner of half the major pro teams in Michigan.

Ilitch bought the Detroit Red Wings in 1982 and added the Tigers a decade later. The Red Wings have won four Stanley Cups under his stewardship, but Detroit is without a World Series championship since 1984, eight years before Ilitch purchased his baseball team.

Ilitch has had his share of ups and downs as the Tigers owner. Sparky Anderson resigned after the 1995 season — the accomplished manager had angered Ilitch by refusing to manage replacement players during baseball’s labor dispute in spring training that year.

Detroit lost 109 games in 1996, and the Tigers had the second-lowest payroll in all of baseball to start the following season.

The team eventually moved to Comerica, a downtown ballpark that opened in 2000 after Ilitch spent much of his own money to build it. The Tigers’ fortunes didn’t improve right away. They lost 119 games in 2003, their second season under general manager Dave Dombrowski — but the approach and the outlook soon changed.

“I have been with some owners ... that were very good owners to work under. They really were not what I would consider real die-hard baseball fans. They liked coming to the park, but they were businessmen that owned baseball teams, and the way they operated was ... `Here’s your budget, call me when we’re going to do something — and that’s fine, whatever you do,”’ Dombrowski said. “Mr. I is not like that. He’s a sports man. He’s very interested. He doesn’t like really setting parameters that are just set in stone.”

Fresh off one of the worst seasons in baseball history, Detroit signed a legitimate star in Ivan Rodriguez, a move that set the tone for the years to come and paid dividends when Rodriguez led the Tigers to the 2006 American League pennant in their first season under Leyland.

After the 2007 season, Detroit pulled off another blockbuster, trading for Miguel Cabrera and quickly securing the slugger with a contract extension through 2015.

In 2009, the Tigers welcomed back their 1984 champions, Anderson included, for a 25th anniversary celebration. By then, Detroit was among baseball’s biggest spenders, and although the Tigers lost a one-game playoff at Minnesota for the AL Central that year, they were back in front two seasons later, romping to 95 wins and a division title in 2011.

Martinez was instrumental last year, signing a $50 million, four-year deal and then hitting .330 with 103 RBIs in his first season as a Tiger. When the team found out last month Martinez might miss the 2012 season because of a left knee injury, what began as a quiet offseason for Detroit was suddenly anything but.

“I said, `They’re all going to have pressure on them to be able to match that .320 batting average, a hundred RBIs. They’re going to feel pressure filling that slot. I don’t want to run into that,”’ Ilitch said. “I was telling Dave that I’d feel a lot better if we could just totally solve it.”

What followed was a move straight out of a fantasy league. The Tigers signed Fielder and will move Cabrera from first base to third, hoping for the best on defense while salivating over the prospect of two of the game’s top sluggers hitting side by side in the lineup.

“He wants to win and deliver a championship to the people of Detroit. That’s really his goal and his passion. He comes to every game,” said Ilitch’s son Christopher, the president and CEO of Ilitch Holdings, Inc.

“I think his passion is at an all-time high. He knows that the club is within striking distance of being able to win, and I think all that culminates in our most aggressive posture possible, from a payroll standpoint, to pursue a championship.”

Mike Ilitch compared Fielder’s contract to the long-term deals he gave Red Wings’ Johan Franzen and Henrik Zetterberg. It’s hard to question anything about the way Ilitch’s hockey team is run. The Red Wings are on the verge of their 21st consecutive playoff appearance.

On Thursday, Ilitch was back at Comerica in the same room where Fielder was introduced two weeks earlier. This time Ilitch was there for the NHL’s announcement that the Red Wings would be hosting the 2013 Winter Classic.

“This is getting to be quite the place for really big announcements,” Ilitch said.

Ilitch also expressed interest in buying the Detroit Pistons recently. They were sold instead to investor Tom Gores last year, but Ilitch’s involvement underscored his impressive presence in the city’s entertainment scene. So did the millions he spent refurbishing Fox Theatre, which is across the street from Comerica.

“He’s a Detroiter,” Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said. “He’s proud of Detroit, he’s committed to Detroit and he’s proud and he’s passionate about his sports teams.”

That passion shouldn’t be underestimated — not after Ilitch boldly landed Fielder. When Martinez hurt himself, Dombrowski said he expected to pursue a short-term replacement. The following week, Fielder was on the books for nearly a decade.

At his new first baseman’s news conference, Ilitch briefly introduced his wife, calling for Marian to stand up.

“Trying to brown-nose me after spending all that money,” she cracked.

Money seems to be no object for Ilitch amid this high-risk, high-reward pursuit of a World Series title. Nobody can accuse him of holding back during his team’s window of opportunity.

“He always likes to be kept informed if there’s interesting things that may be available,” Dombrowski said. “He loves to win. He’s very interested. I think we’re very, very fortunate in this community to have somebody like him, and so he’s unlike other people in many cases. He’ll just say: `Let’s go try to do it.”’