April 5, 2023 • 39 mins
Jeffrey Loria has spent time in the studios of such renowned artists as Roy Lichtenstein, Henry Moore, and Niki de Saint Phalle; commissioned work from Salvador Dalí; and traveled the world in search of exceptional art for his clients’ collections (including Martha’s!). He pursued a second, equally high-powered career following his other great passion: baseball. As the owner of the Marlins Baseball Team, he discovered top players, built a state-of-the art baseball stadium, and experienced the rare highs of winning a World Series. His new book, “From the Front Row: Reflections of a Major League Baseball Owner and Modern Art Dealer” gives readers a front-row seat to the mysterious, high-stakes, and high-profile (and surprisingly similar) worlds of Major League Baseball and Modern Art.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the most important things that I've always believed
in was you have to take risks. I think if
you're not willing to take risks, there's no rewards. Hello everyone,
I'm recording today at Samsung's flagship retail location, Samsung eight
thirty seven with my guest, Jeffrey Loria. I've known Jeffrey
(00:23):
for many years. In fact, I met him eighteen years
ago at the Armory on Park Avenue in New York
City where there was a very large New York art show,
and it's been on for years. It's been on for years,
and I was feeling good that night and I was
walking by one of my favorite sculptures of all time.
(00:46):
Did I ever tell you the story about why I
love that sculpture so much? No? It is Myles Law Riviere,
which was made in about nineteen thirty thirty one one.
And when I was a college student at Barnard College,
I would spend my Tuesday evenings at the Museum of
Modern Art and I would listen to music. They had
(01:08):
a music music at night every Tuesday night in the summertimes,
and I would rest my arm or my head on
the leg of La Riviere, which was a beautiful sculpture
in the pool in the garden of the Museum of
Modern Art on fifty third Street. And I always said
to myself, if I could ever buy a sculpture, I
(01:29):
would buy La Riviere. And then I saw a casting
of it at the Armory, and Jeffrey was the dealer,
and we made a deal, and we made a friendship,
and we made a friendship. And thank you very much
for that, because I have enjoyed her so much. She's
one of the most beautiful, beautiful female sculptures I've ever seen.
And you have one too, I hear in your garden.
(01:50):
I have one at the end of a swimming pool.
She exists to lie down next to a body of water.
And although in law in the Twilries she's on a pedestal, well,
they don't have any water there, that's right, No, no
pond right there. And in my garden she's actually resting
in a beautiful mossy garden surrounded by low shrubs. But
(02:14):
she's beautiful and you look down on her, which is
which is a nice way to look at her. Well.
Sculpture is meant to be seen in many places and
many viewpoints, and so it can be in a garden.
It can be here a pool, It can be up
on a pedestal, high up on a pedestal, but you
try to make eye to eye contact with it. But see,
we're getting off track here talking about one specific sculpture
(02:36):
when I really want to introduce you to Jeffrey Lauria.
I've known him through his two driving passions, baseball and art.
He began as a highly successful dealer in the art
world of the nineteen sixties, and as private collecting grew
into the enormous business that it has become today. In
(02:57):
nineteen eighty nine, Jeffrey began to pursue the penultimate dream
for any true baseball fan to be the owner of
a professional baseball team. So he eventually became the owner
of the Montreal Expos and then later the Miami Marlins.
Jeffrey has just published a book filled with stories and
insights from his two fascinating careers. It's titled From the
(03:21):
Front Row Reflections of a Major League Baseball Owner and
a Modern Art Dealer. Welcome Jeffrey. Each of my podcasts
and I love your book. It is really informative and
it is also a kind of a great, big fat book.
Full of good advice for anybody in business, anybody thinking
(03:41):
about business. When you examine somebody's career, a career like yours,
which has been so phenomenally successful, it's really nice to
know the backstories. And this book is so full of stories.
You have lived in an extremely full life. I feel
very fortunate, Martha, to have been part of two worlds.
The baseball world, which came in the late eighties when
(04:03):
I broughte a minor league team to see if I
like the industry, and then eventually the major league club
in late nineties. And having started in the early sixties
in the art world, I guess I can say I
came of age at the right time. I decided to
put it all together, and when I sold the team
in twenty seventeen, decided that I'd had some great experiences
(04:26):
that I would like to share, and hence the book. Now.
This book is available on Amazon, Amazon and bookstores soon.
Yeah from the Front Row, published by Post Hill Press.
Right L O. R I A. Is the last name
of Jeffrey Lauria. It is a very interesting book and
(04:48):
it has some very interesting illustrations of fabulous pictures. You
did a great job the book is divided in both
the art world and the baseball world. But it seems
they seems so foreign. It's not, but it's not, is it. No,
As you say, the baseball player is so much like
an artist. I Martha, I always felt equally comfortable in
(05:12):
an artist studio as I did on a baseball field
or in a clubhouse. They sort of I mean, I
could be watching a baseball game in Miami and learn
about some work of art. I have to excuse myself
for two minutes. But both worlds came together very well
(05:33):
for me. You know that they both produce a lot
of magic, a lot of drama, and a lot of excitement.
And that's that's what life is about. You had that
intuition of focusing on two giant businesses that are fun.
Art is fun and baseball is really fun. I've been
a baseball fan forever. I don't I don't know if
(05:54):
you know that I babysat for Gil McDougal's kids, Yogi
Bearer's kids. We were all young, young high school girls
in Nutley, New Jersey, and they lived in te Neck,
right across the river from Yankee Stadium. And we would
and we were so trustworthy of these, this gang of
girls from Nutley that we were always invited to babysit
(06:14):
for the baseball players. Gil McDougall was one of my
heroes growing up. I didn't know that, and and I
knew exactly where he lived on. I think Leroy Street
in Teaneck or Tenafly. You are right up there. Oh.
And he was so charming, His wife was so nice,
the kids were great and um and he. I have
(06:35):
signed baseball card from Gil McDougall. I wonder what that's
worth these days. Probably not as much as the Mickey
Mantel card, which I do not have. I gave that
one away. But but I love those I love those guys.
They were really fun. And Yogi berra he actually remember.
He didn't remember that I baby said for his kids,
(06:56):
but his wife did. I've spent lots of time. I'm
in the Yankee box with Yogi Vera and his wife
at Yankee Stadium. I grew I grew up in Yankee Stadium.
You did, so, where did you grow up? Where were
you born? I was born in Manhattan, New York City,
went to public school here in New York, played baseball
at Steves In High School, and started going up to
(07:19):
Yankee Stadium to chase my eventual dream when I was
probably ten years old, when it was easy to get
on a subway. So was it a dream to play
baseball or well, it was both. It was first a
dream to play the game and to play it well,
and then to be around these players. What did you play?
I played second base. I didn't have my growth spurt
(07:40):
until I got to Yale, and so I was an
infielder and going up to Yankee Stadium looking for autographs
at an early age when I was, as I said,
ten or eleven, did you ever catch a fly ball?
There's a funny story with that. Yeah. I never caught
a ball, either fair, foul, or in batting practice. But
one day when I was in Miami with the Marlins,
(08:02):
Barry Bonds came over to me and we started chatting,
and he told me that he had a son who
wanted to go to Yale. What did I think of
the school? Of course, I could say nothing but great things.
And then I said to him, you know, I never
caught a foul ball, even in batting practice or any
other time during the game. The first ending he came
to bat and the first pitch he hit was straight
(08:23):
up and was right over my head. Wow. And I
could see it coming down and giving me a good
shot on the head. So I put myself right under
the eve of the of the dugout and it hit
the eve of the dugout. And Barry was standing at
home play laughing at me. He yelled over you said,
you never caught a foul ball, and you hit from
this one. I said, Barry, there's no way you can
(08:45):
control a bat. They hit it right here at that
moment he was he was joking, of course he was joking.
But did you get the ball? No, somebody else, somebody
else jumped in and took the ball. I'm always amazed
when people catch them, but they're time to get into
the stands. They're not that dangerous. But I sit in
Jane Heller's seats, which are frightening because they now, yeah,
(09:07):
right next to the dugout and right behind home plate,
and it's really frightening because you're worry about getting hit
by something very hard. Well, this week is Opening Day
week for baseball. Are you going to Opening Day at
Yankee Stadium? I am, I'm going to. I'll see you there,
and I'd like to go. It's kind of tradition to go.
And I'm posting a picture on my Instagram of me
(09:29):
and my baseball dress from many years ago. Nicole Miller
made us baseball dresses. So they're white sleeveless dresses with
the red stitching, so it looks like we're it's a
stitch baseball hard ball. But what team are you watching
closely this year? I don't have a particular team. I
do enjoy going to the stadium and I like going
out city field. I like the game, and the game
(09:53):
is what's of interest to me, right, and individual star players, Yeah,
there are a number of players. I mean, there's a
player on the Yankees, John Carlos Stanton, who played for
me in Miami. I have a particular fondness for him.
Oh so, how old is he now? Thirty one? Perhaps, well,
he was even a younger baby when we signed him
to that massive contract that he got. Right, it's pretty
(10:16):
good to be in the in the front row and
watching those games and the excitement. Would you be able
to spot talent in the art world or in baseball
if you didn't have that view from the front row.
I think it's it's something you accumulate over a period
of time. Baseball players and artists are pretty similar. I
mean they both put their talents on the line, and
(10:39):
neither of them is really stifled by criticism, but they
focus on what they're doing. And the baseball players that
I have watched along with my scouts, at the time
I watched them, I had a pretty good idea who
they were, but I didn't make final decisions. I made
encouraging encouragement along the way. When did that start trading players? Yeah,
(11:03):
way before. Babe Ruth. Remember when he was traded from
the Boston Red Sox to the Yankees. That was a
bad trade. That was a bad trade for Boston. Yes,
great trade for New York it was. But most of
the time when we trade players, it's to improve the team.
You have twenty five players on a club and you
(11:23):
want to make sure that they're all contributing, and so
you need to um watch every aspect of it. You know,
you can have great pitching, and if you don't have
good and good infield, the pitchers don't matter. You know,
you need hitters, you need you need all aspects of
the game, and you use the players to trade to
(11:45):
improve your club. Well, when you bought Montreal M what
did you pay for that team at the time? Somewhere
around one hundred and twenty five million dollars. But I
didn't buy the whole team. I bought trolling interest in
the team to operate the team and to again see
if I like the ownership at the major league level,
(12:07):
which I did. I like the whole camaraderie with the
players and with the industry. The industry wonderful people, and
I think that's due in part because they've had great
leadership during the time I was there. Oh, so your
interest was only one hundred and twenty million, My interest
was less than that because I bought a percentage of it.
(12:27):
Of that price, Well, now, valuation was it? Yes, I
guess one hundred and twenty or one hundred and forty million,
I don't remember. Now, Well, how much is the Yankee
team worth now? Probably in excess of four billion. So
what was a TV? Is? TV? Is that? What did it? Well,
it's all a function of revenues, and TV as a
main contributor to those revenues. Because the prices have gone
(12:50):
up skyrocketed for any of the teams. Well, what's the
highest price paid for a baseball team. Ever, I think
at the moment the Dodgers probably hold that record at
two point four billion dollars. And who do you think
is going to win the series this year? What is
what's the prognostication? Well, there are a lot of good
clubs there. I think the Mets have a great opportunity.
I think Houston does again. I think the Braves have
(13:12):
improved themselves and the Dodgers. The Dodgers always have a
great club and they work hard at figuring out what
they need to figure out. Now, did you ever toss
the first pitch? I did it in spring training. Once,
you know, owners, owners are not the most beloved people.
The fans, for the most part, want more. They have
their own think, they have their opinions, and they want
(13:32):
more and they want it now. And that's that's what
makes the game so interesting. Yeah, well it's it's I
think it's that's happening in all sports. I mean, I read,
you know, I read the stories, the headlines in the
sports page. It's just to keep keep up with my grandson.
So I try to be at least a little bit educated.
But there's always disputes, there's always sales, there's always trades,
(13:55):
so you as a baseball player, you did not continue playing,
but you continued your I do have own ownership. At
one day, well, I bought the Marlins when there was
a very complicated three way trade when baseball wanted to
move out of Montreal and hopefully moved down to Washington
one day, so my son David, who was the president
(14:15):
of our team, we orchestrated a three way trade whereby
we moved from Montreal to Miami. The man who owned
the Miami club at the time, the Marlins. The man
who owned the Marlins, wanted to buy the club in Boston.
He insisted that it had to be Boston, although I
(14:36):
pointed out he wanted out of Miami because they were
not going to build a stadium for him. He made
the egregious mistake of saying to the leaders there, if
you don't build a stadium for me, I'll build it myself.
You never say that, And so he needed to move
somewhere else, and he decided that he didn't want to
go to California to buy the Angels, which were for sale.
(14:58):
And the year that he did and go there, they
won the World Series. But the next the next year
he had the opportunity to go to Boston and we
made this three three way trade and I assumed control
of the Marlins and took us a few years to
get a stadium built, which was a main focus, utiful stadium.
I remember going there to see your new stadium. It
(15:19):
was just the most spectacular place. Well it's a It
was a passion of mind because of my art history background,
to build something architecturally that would be spectacular. And who
was the architect um Populous. They were the architects for
most bullparks. And I remember the day we got permission
(15:42):
to go ahead with the stadium. I was in London
and called the called the architect and said, would you
be able to talk now we have permission? Where are you?
He said, I'm in London. He came to the hotel
Claridge's Hotel, where I was staying at the time, and
I made a little sketch on a napkin. He took
(16:02):
the sketch, made a better drawing and that became the stadium.
He asked me at the time if I wanted to
build a retro facility because there was a lot of
Art deco in Miami, and I said no, I think
we need to look forward, and we built a very
contemporary stadium. It's really beautiful building. Yeah, it's beautiful. And
then I remember the new owners took out some of
(16:23):
the art that you would as well. That's a that's
a sad story, but they they We had commissioned the
pop artist Red Grooms to do a big sculpture at
which woods, an interactive sculpture. It jumped into action when
people when players hit home runs and the home team
won the game, fish jumped into the water, water splashed,
(16:46):
birds flew, lights were lit up all and the new
owners just wanted to do their own things, so they
basically took it down and put it out in the weather.
So who knows how long it will last. It was.
It was a cause for some consternation on my part
because I didn't think they had the right to destroy
public art. Yeah, that's true. Bad they did because it
(17:08):
was spectacular. So you bought the Marlins and then you
had big surprises along the way. You found amazing players. Well,
in two thousand and two was a year that I
spent studying the club and looking at what we needed,
(17:32):
and by the time two thousand and three came around,
we had some pretty good pitchers on our club at
the time. I thought we needed an established, well established catcher,
and I had my eyes focused on Pudge Fredriguez, who
was not signed by anybody at the time, and we
got in touch with his agent eventually signed him because
he was the one that could handle pitchers. Runners weren't
(17:54):
going to steal basis and Pudge was a leader and
he did a great job. In the end, my general
manager was not happy because he thought he's washed up.
It's just why the Rangers didn't sign him. But I
took that chance and he played I don't know six
eight more years after US and it was the only
World Championship he ever won. When he won the World Series,
(18:16):
three Yankees and three Yes, Yankee Stadium and Yankee Statum.
How did you feel, I had mismixed emotions. You know,
I grew up a Yankee fan. I used to go
up there all the time. I remember when I was
there with eight years old with my father, sitting in
the stands behind a pole in the old Yankee Stadium,
thinking that I had the best seat in the Yankee Stadium.
(18:39):
And at the end of that game, the Yankees lost
and I went home the I think so it was close. Yeah,
it was close, and the Yankees had an opportunity to
win it. I don't remember if I was there that
year or not. I probably was forty I think it
was nineteen forty eight or nine. I went there with
my father, boy, and I walked out of the stadium
(19:01):
in tears, and my father said, Jeffrey, there'll be another game.
Guess what he was right? Was he alive when you
bought about the team, the Marlins. No, so he didn't
get to see that game. No, and he didn't get
to see me win a championship in the minor leagues either. Wow.
It was just towards the end of his life. You've
learned so many lessons, and you have imparted many of
those lessons in your fabulous book. What made you write
(19:24):
this book now? From the front row? Well, I guess
I felt that I had an opportunity to impart a
lot of relationships that I had, some stories that I
have memories that are very interesting to read. I mean,
I was at the forefront of a lot in the
art world and in the baseball worlds. Let's get into
(19:45):
the art a little bit, because your ability to spot
art you had an innate ability to know what was good,
what appealed to you, and to meet artists and to
develop relationships with artists. Not very many people do that. Well,
You've done it amazingly well. So tell us a little
bit about the beginning. I studied art history at Yale,
(20:08):
and my parents had sent me up there to become
a premed student. And after six months of zoology, biology, botany,
and chemistry, I called him and said, there's no more
premed on the horizon. That I wanted to do something else.
And I was taking in art history course you had
to take. One of the areas of concentration had to
(20:29):
be a history course, and our history seemed interesting. What
period you remember the art history? It was the beginning
art history course I was taking, and it was the
course taught by the eminent art historian Vincent Scully. Oh.
He's fantastic, written many books, many books, and a great
favorite of mine. And we had a wonderful relationship, and
(20:53):
he encouraged me, and he kept encouraging me all the
way till the at the end of his life, when
I then had the opportunity to return the favor and
bring him to spring training and bring him to opening
day because he was living in Miami at that time.
Great and we had a lot of fun. I studied
the art history all through college, and by the time
I was ready, it was your favorite period modern art.
(21:13):
Did you learn Greek and Roman? And yeah, we had
to take those courses. Those courses, I mean, you don't
get to the modern without understanding what some of the
Greek and Romans were doing, because everything builds on itself.
And came time for graduation, my parents came up to
school and showed me an article in a newspaper that Sears,
Roebuck and Company was going into the art business. They
(21:34):
were opening stores all over the country. What year was that,
nineteen sixty two when I graduated. It's major growth of
the company all over the country, and they were looking
to bring in a new clientele, and so the art
was the vehicle for them to do that, so that
they were not just known in all these new cities
where they were building as a place where you can
(21:56):
buy furniture and a refrigerator. Well they were they to me,
Sears Robook. I always loved that company, and I thought
they just missed the boat by They were the first.
They were the first that catalog was I poured over
that Sears catalog, that big fat catalog that, oh I know.
And they were really the first Amazon. And they could
have been the Amazon if they had believed in the Internet.
(22:18):
But by the time, by the time the Internet became
a powerhouse. Arthur Martinez was the CEO of Sears and
he didn't quite get He didn't get quite get. You know,
no stores you buy from the pages of your catalog,
which is online. They didn't get it. And uh and
Jeff Bezos got it really big. And do you remember
all those all that happening. I mean, it was just
(22:40):
I remember, I remember the catalogs. Oh yeah, I even
did the first art catalog. So and so what did
you sell in it? Well, we sold lithographs and etchings.
I remember commissioning Salvador Dolli to do a painting and
three hundred lithographs. But did you pay him? I'm ashamed
to say we paid him twenty five thousand dollars for
a painting, which I felt was worth the twenty five
(23:03):
thou and the three hundred lithographs that we sold for
four hundred dollars a piece. Quickly and Sears hired Vincent Price,
the actor or to be the person whose collection this
was in the store, and my dad suggested I get
in touch with Price, which I did. We eventually met
and I became the youngest buyer in Sear's history. And
(23:26):
it was a great experience because I got to meet
all the artists. It was a time when you could
call them and see them. End of my junior year,
my parents wanted to know what I was doing for
spring vacation. Was I going to fall at Lauderdale? And
I said, no, I'm going to go to England if
you'll buy me an airline ticket. I want to meet
Henry Moore. And I had discovered in my way Henry
(23:47):
Moore at college, so I went to visit with him,
and at the time, I guess I was the youngest
person ever to walk in his studio. And we hit
it off and we became very close. Oh, I love
his sculpture. And did you ever go it was foundry
in Italy. I was everywhere he worked, even the quarries
in Pietra Santa where he worked during the summer and
(24:09):
doing his carvings. You're incredible and then you became dealers
for these artists well, I had my own personal relationships
with them and eventually opened my own business and started
building collections slowly, and I dealt with, you know, collectors.
The Chrysler family had a collection, and Walter christ was
(24:30):
building a museum in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was his
wife's family was from. And Norton Simon, the industrialists who
lived in California. I spent a lot of time seeing him,
and I talk about him in the book in very
interesting people, these these giants. Did you have to educate
them or were they already educated? These great wealth collectors?
(24:53):
Both ways it went. I mean, Norton Simon called me
one night and said, I hear you were a young
deal and you know something about sculpture and pain. I
was probably twenty eight at the time, and we spoke
that night for five hours on the phone, and we
became close, and I helped him buy lots of things
that he as in his museum, including a big Henry
Moore sculpture which I bought in England and brought over
(25:16):
to the United States on a ship. Traveled his luggage
and I tried to encourage him to come and see it.
How many tons was that one? Three? Yeah? They were
very big, those Henry Moors. You have so many stories
(25:39):
in the book. What's something that you wish you had
never sold? One of them is with Norton Simon. I mean,
I had this great Henry Moore sculpture which I brought
over and I thought he might be the perfect line
for it. And Norton didn't respond. You know, three months
(25:59):
for months went by, and he called me one day
on a Friday afternoon, and you had laid out the
money already. Oh, I had bought it. I didn't. I
never bought for anybody specifically. I bought for myself and
realizing that eventually it could be placed. He called me
on a Friday afternoon, said, I'm in New York. I
want to see the sculpture. I said, it's in a warehouse.
They're closed on Saturdays. Find a way. I found a way,
(26:21):
and he bought the sculpture. Wow, and saw it and
loved it. Yeah. Any paintings that you regret the wood
A could have should us well. I had a number
of very important Surrealist paintings in the mid seventies that
that was the time when the Japanese were really pursuing
(26:42):
art and buying art and I had Miro's one of
them his greatest paintings of a dancer listening to music
and a Gothic cathedral, a huge upright painting. And I
had a Tongee Eve Tangee painting that had been purchased
by the collector. I bought it from Pittsburgh, which was
sent by the artist to the Carnegie Exhibition in nineteen
(27:05):
thirty eight, and artists sent their masterpieces to show off
their work. And I eventually bought those pictures and I
had them. I was tempted not to sell them, but
the temptation from the from the buyers encouraged me to
sell them. And you'd love to have them back there.
That's what being a dealer is. Well, you can't keep
(27:25):
everything you know, no matter what business you're in. And
what have you kept for yourself? What's what's in your collection?
Pablo Picasso verst Picasso, I ever bought you kept? I kept? Yeah?
And I have a lot of Henry Moore sculptures. At
one time I had sixty or seventy sculptures of Henry's. Wow,
and a colleague of mine came to my home and
(27:47):
he said to me, what are you doing with all
these sculptures, sell half of them and buy some other artists.
And I thought about it, and I said, that makes
more sense than what I'm doing. I loved Henry's work
and I love collecting them. Well. Gordon Buncheft was a
big Henry Moore fan, yes, and I bought I bought
Gordon Buncheff's little house in East Hampton. Oh, that beautiful
(28:08):
house on Georgia a pond. And when I bought it,
the Museum of Modern Art owned it, and Gordon had
left it to the museum, and in the garden was
a beautiful Henry Moore. There were, oh gosh, there were
about five really important sculptures in the garden, but the
museum was taking them all. And moon Bird was in
(28:28):
the garden, and they left all the frames, all those
very heavy cast iron frames and steel frames and platforms.
They left all of that in the garden for me.
Nothing on them, just the platforms, the plints. So I
got to know what Gordon had liked, because he was
placing those same kinds of sculptures and the buildings he
(28:49):
was building in New York City. He did one Chase
Manhattan Plaza, he did the Lever house and oh yeah,
lots of dubuffet. It was a really interesting experience from
me to buy a house like that. And I always thought, gosh,
he must not like his wife very much because the
kitchen on Georgia Capond had a wall, had no windows.
(29:11):
He had his wife cooking in a kitchen with no
windows facing the view. And the house was just a
basic like a shoe box of travertine left over from
probably the Chase Manhattan Plaza, because that was a travertine
clad building and he built it out of concrete and
travertine and cinder blox. It was beautiful. My daughter sold that,
but it was it was a special place. But I
(29:35):
loved the sculptures in the garden, and I've always loved
sculptures ever ever since I went to that Museum of
Modern Art garden and loved the beautiful sculptures in that garden.
But do you have any Sarah's Sarah? No, I don't
have any Sarah. Yeah. I have Marino Marini and Jacomo
Monzoo and Saysar and Botero and Robert Indiana. I had
(29:59):
dinner with Botero one night. He was interesting, he was
I have a lot of art history background which because
my husband was the publisher of Abram's Art Books books,
all those early books, and Andy was the president of
Abrams and he worked with Harry and uh and he
published all those big books. And remember the Lawrence Gowing
(30:20):
book on the on the Louver. There's there's great big
books that Abrams used to do. So I learned a
lot about art. Unfortunately I didn't buy art like you
were buying art. I wish I had because I could have.
Really I loved so much of it and it was
so and I'm jealous of people like you who have
developed their taste into a business. You have a lot
of ideas for people who in and in your book
(30:42):
you impart those I call him the tenants of business.
So talk about those, because you have a whole list
of things that you advise people in business to do well.
I think I think the most one of the most
important things that I've always believed in was you have
to take risks. Um For me, it was a risk
and a chance that I took when at age nineteen,
(31:03):
got on an airplane went to England knowing nobody to
visit an artist. And I think if you're not willing
to take risks, there's no rewards. Did you read Edith
Wharton's New York Stories? Did you read that one story? Oh,
there's a story I'm going to send to you about
a young man who is the ski on of a
big New York, very wealthy New York family, and he's
(31:24):
given by his father ten thousand dollars to go to
Europe to buy his art collection. And at the time,
ten thousand dollars was like like early early twentieth century,
I think ten thousand dollars was a lot of money.
And he went to England and he then went to
Italy and he came back with a collection that was
(31:46):
probably what you would have bought and if you were
in his position. He brought a man ten Ya. You know,
nobody had ever heard of him. He bought some caravaggios,
nobody masters, nobody had heard of any of these guys.
When he came back, his father looked at the collection
and just owned him. He said, you wasted my money
on that stuff, And he just owned the boy. And
the boy opened a little thinking museum in the village
(32:09):
of New York, in the West Village, and people would
come and pay a few cents to see the art,
and then of course all everything he had bought turned
out to be a priceless masterpiece. So he had the taste.
He didn't have the belief of his father or and
his friends didn't believe what he was up to. But
it's a fabulous story. You have to read it. It's
(32:29):
really right. But but you had that, you had that.
I well, I think I developed that high early age.
Took you took risks, yes, okay, And I never believed
calculated risks. Yes, yeah, because I always tell people to
take a risk, but don't take a chance, and it's
part of taking risks. You have to know that a
(32:49):
fear of failure is never an option. No fear. The
one thing that can be a real detriment in any
business transaction, whether you're buying a player, baseball player or
a great work of artist, hesitation. If you hesitate, you're
going to be lost. They did that a few times.
But I learned quickly that a hesitation is a destriment
that I don't want to live with. And so I've
(33:12):
always believed that you have to do it right or
don't do it at all. That was something that I
learned from my father. Don't get started on something you
can't complete, and if you're going to complete it in
a half baked way, don't do it right. And while
you're doing it, I learned along the way that quality
was always more important than quantity. I always pursued a
(33:34):
single great player rather than four players that build various spots,
because that one player I always felt could add more
to the team than the two or three that we needed.
But we'd find them elsewhere. You got to you have
to pursue the quality. They also have lived by the
credo that you have to surround yourself with good people.
(33:56):
I had great executives, and I in my baseball career.
Towards the last few years after we opened the stadium,
I decided to pursue some really top executives, and it
took me a few years to put them all together,
and we had a really good operating team until the
(34:16):
new ownership came in and fired them all in the
first week. I heard that, well, they didn't even give
them a chance, and they had to pay their salaries
for the lengths of those contracts. That I never quite
understood why you would do that. One of the things
that I have found along the way after I'm doing
this for close to six decades now. Is you have
to expect the unexpected things come your way that you
(34:39):
had no idea we're going to come your way, but
you have to be prepared for it and opportunity as
well as both sides of the coin failure, good things
and bad things, but you have to expect that those
kinds of things are going to happen. I always bought
and traded, whether I was trading pictures, which you could
do at one time, trade work of art, which I did.
(35:01):
I always felt that I wanted to be doing the
deal that I wanted to do, not what others wanted
me to do. In other words, if somebody had something
and they felt that was great, if I wanted to
do it too, then it worked. But if that was
not going to be the case, you're going to end
up making a poor decision that you're going to regret.
You have to have a bit of a thick skin
(35:24):
to work in both those worlds. It's not that I
have it. I developed it along the way and realized
that that's the only way to get to the bottom
line and to the end successfully. You need a lot
of humility too, and that doesn't always come easily to
a lot of people. I don't know if it came
easily or not to me, but it seems to have
(35:44):
worked for me. Those are valuable lessons and valuable, valuable
rules for running a business, and just well, there's there's
one more which I find find very curious, which is
you have to use your eyes. You have to trust
your eye and use your eyes. I was at an
exhibition in London recently with my wife and she she
(36:06):
had me. She had encouraged me to listen to David
Hockney and one of the things he said just really
struck up a note, and I remember it now that
most people don't know how to use their eyes. The
only thing they used their eyes for, said David, was
to see the street in the road in front of them.
But they're not looking up and around them, and that's important.
I'm always looking up. So you and I agree on
(36:28):
this list a lot. I like your lists. And you
know what else, Sometimes the best deals the deals you
don't do, like not buying a particular painting and realizing
later that that picture really wasn't as good as it
could have been, that there are better works. I always
strive for the best, and not having enough information about
that artist meant that I was not striving for the best,
(36:51):
not ready for it. Yeah, not ready for it. And
that was a good deal not to have done what
I didn't do. Things happened to you too in life.
I mean, I love that you say go for it,
and really, if you believe in it, act act quickly.
And in parts of my life, I just I lost
that ability to act quickly. It's just I just hesitated.
(37:11):
And hesitation, as as you said, it's just a killer,
a killer. Hesitating is really bad. So what's next? What
else are you going to do? You have so much
energy and so many good ideas. And do you have
a shop where you sell your art? No, I'm a
private dealer. I'm in the phone book, right, but I
do it privately. And do you have one piece of
(37:34):
art that you would never give up? Yeah? How many
years ago I bought a study for the famous painting
of Mattis called The Dance. And I didn't realize it,
but I was thumbing through the Alfred Barr book. The
Alfred Alfred Barr was the director of MoMA. Oh yes,
and he wrote a book about Matisse, and I was
(37:56):
reading through the book, and on one page in a
postage size reproduction, there's a little work that I bought.
It's so elegant and so much movement, and it's and
it's the embodiment of Matis. So I think I would
never part with that nice and that you can continually
discover things about it right all the time. Yeah, oh great. Well,
(38:20):
you can enjoy more of Jeffrey's stories in his new
book From the front Row, Reflections of a Major League
Baseball Owner and Modern Art Dealer. Be sure to pick
it up wherever you like to get your books, And
Jeffrey that we could talk forever. I think your stories
are fascinating and your life has been an amazing, amazing
journey and which continues every single day. Take care of
(38:43):
your family. They're lovely. I got to meet some of
them at the talk you did the other night at
at Christie's. Yeah, it was a beautiful night. That was
a really a pleasure and a great celebration for this
book and keep going. Thanks, thanks very much.
One of the most important things that I've always believed
in was you have to take risks. I think if
you're not willing to take risks, there's no rewards. Hello everyone,
I'm recording today at Samsung's flagship retail location, Samsung eight
thirty seven with my guest, Jeffrey Loria. I've known Jeffrey
(00:23):
for many years. In fact, I met him eighteen years
ago at the Armory on Park Avenue in New York
City where there was a very large New York art show,
and it's been on for years. It's been on for years,
and I was feeling good that night and I was
walking by one of my favorite sculptures of all time.
(00:46):
Did I ever tell you the story about why I
love that sculpture so much? No? It is Myles Law Riviere,
which was made in about nineteen thirty thirty one one.
And when I was a college student at Barnard College,
I would spend my Tuesday evenings at the Museum of
Modern Art and I would listen to music. They had
(01:08):
a music music at night every Tuesday night in the summertimes,
and I would rest my arm or my head on
the leg of La Riviere, which was a beautiful sculpture
in the pool in the garden of the Museum of
Modern Art on fifty third Street. And I always said
to myself, if I could ever buy a sculpture, I
(01:29):
would buy La Riviere. And then I saw a casting
of it at the Armory, and Jeffrey was the dealer,
and we made a deal, and we made a friendship,
and we made a friendship. And thank you very much
for that, because I have enjoyed her so much. She's
one of the most beautiful, beautiful female sculptures I've ever seen.
And you have one too, I hear in your garden.
(01:50):
I have one at the end of a swimming pool.
She exists to lie down next to a body of water.
And although in law in the Twilries she's on a pedestal, well,
they don't have any water there, that's right, No, no
pond right there. And in my garden she's actually resting
in a beautiful mossy garden surrounded by low shrubs. But
(02:14):
she's beautiful and you look down on her, which is
which is a nice way to look at her. Well.
Sculpture is meant to be seen in many places and
many viewpoints, and so it can be in a garden.
It can be here a pool, It can be up
on a pedestal, high up on a pedestal, but you
try to make eye to eye contact with it. But see,
we're getting off track here talking about one specific sculpture
(02:36):
when I really want to introduce you to Jeffrey Lauria.
I've known him through his two driving passions, baseball and art.
He began as a highly successful dealer in the art
world of the nineteen sixties, and as private collecting grew
into the enormous business that it has become today. In
(02:57):
nineteen eighty nine, Jeffrey began to pursue the penultimate dream
for any true baseball fan to be the owner of
a professional baseball team. So he eventually became the owner
of the Montreal Expos and then later the Miami Marlins.
Jeffrey has just published a book filled with stories and
insights from his two fascinating careers. It's titled From the
(03:21):
Front Row Reflections of a Major League Baseball Owner and
a Modern Art Dealer. Welcome Jeffrey. Each of my podcasts
and I love your book. It is really informative and
it is also a kind of a great, big fat book.
Full of good advice for anybody in business, anybody thinking
(03:41):
about business. When you examine somebody's career, a career like yours,
which has been so phenomenally successful, it's really nice to
know the backstories. And this book is so full of stories.
You have lived in an extremely full life. I feel
very fortunate, Martha, to have been part of two worlds.
The baseball world, which came in the late eighties when
(04:03):
I broughte a minor league team to see if I
like the industry, and then eventually the major league club
in late nineties. And having started in the early sixties
in the art world, I guess I can say I
came of age at the right time. I decided to
put it all together, and when I sold the team
in twenty seventeen, decided that I'd had some great experiences
(04:26):
that I would like to share, and hence the book. Now.
This book is available on Amazon, Amazon and bookstores soon.
Yeah from the Front Row, published by Post Hill Press.
Right L O. R I A. Is the last name
of Jeffrey Lauria. It is a very interesting book and
(04:48):
it has some very interesting illustrations of fabulous pictures. You
did a great job the book is divided in both
the art world and the baseball world. But it seems
they seems so foreign. It's not, but it's not, is it. No,
As you say, the baseball player is so much like
an artist. I Martha, I always felt equally comfortable in
(05:12):
an artist studio as I did on a baseball field
or in a clubhouse. They sort of I mean, I
could be watching a baseball game in Miami and learn
about some work of art. I have to excuse myself
for two minutes. But both worlds came together very well
(05:33):
for me. You know that they both produce a lot
of magic, a lot of drama, and a lot of excitement.
And that's that's what life is about. You had that
intuition of focusing on two giant businesses that are fun.
Art is fun and baseball is really fun. I've been
a baseball fan forever. I don't I don't know if
(05:54):
you know that I babysat for Gil McDougal's kids, Yogi
Bearer's kids. We were all young, young high school girls
in Nutley, New Jersey, and they lived in te Neck,
right across the river from Yankee Stadium. And we would
and we were so trustworthy of these, this gang of
girls from Nutley that we were always invited to babysit
(06:14):
for the baseball players. Gil McDougall was one of my
heroes growing up. I didn't know that, and and I
knew exactly where he lived on. I think Leroy Street
in Teaneck or Tenafly. You are right up there. Oh.
And he was so charming, His wife was so nice,
the kids were great and um and he. I have
(06:35):
signed baseball card from Gil McDougall. I wonder what that's
worth these days. Probably not as much as the Mickey
Mantel card, which I do not have. I gave that
one away. But but I love those I love those guys.
They were really fun. And Yogi berra he actually remember.
He didn't remember that I baby said for his kids,
(06:56):
but his wife did. I've spent lots of time. I'm
in the Yankee box with Yogi Vera and his wife
at Yankee Stadium. I grew I grew up in Yankee Stadium.
You did, so, where did you grow up? Where were
you born? I was born in Manhattan, New York City,
went to public school here in New York, played baseball
at Steves In High School, and started going up to
(07:19):
Yankee Stadium to chase my eventual dream when I was
probably ten years old, when it was easy to get
on a subway. So was it a dream to play
baseball or well, it was both. It was first a
dream to play the game and to play it well,
and then to be around these players. What did you play?
I played second base. I didn't have my growth spurt
(07:40):
until I got to Yale, and so I was an
infielder and going up to Yankee Stadium looking for autographs
at an early age when I was, as I said,
ten or eleven, did you ever catch a fly ball?
There's a funny story with that. Yeah. I never caught
a ball, either fair, foul, or in batting practice. But
one day when I was in Miami with the Marlins,
(08:02):
Barry Bonds came over to me and we started chatting,
and he told me that he had a son who
wanted to go to Yale. What did I think of
the school? Of course, I could say nothing but great things.
And then I said to him, you know, I never
caught a foul ball, even in batting practice or any
other time during the game. The first ending he came
to bat and the first pitch he hit was straight
(08:23):
up and was right over my head. Wow. And I
could see it coming down and giving me a good
shot on the head. So I put myself right under
the eve of the of the dugout and it hit
the eve of the dugout. And Barry was standing at
home play laughing at me. He yelled over you said,
you never caught a foul ball, and you hit from
this one. I said, Barry, there's no way you can
(08:45):
control a bat. They hit it right here at that
moment he was he was joking, of course he was joking.
But did you get the ball? No, somebody else, somebody
else jumped in and took the ball. I'm always amazed
when people catch them, but they're time to get into
the stands. They're not that dangerous. But I sit in
Jane Heller's seats, which are frightening because they now, yeah,
(09:07):
right next to the dugout and right behind home plate,
and it's really frightening because you're worry about getting hit
by something very hard. Well, this week is Opening Day
week for baseball. Are you going to Opening Day at
Yankee Stadium? I am, I'm going to. I'll see you there,
and I'd like to go. It's kind of tradition to go.
And I'm posting a picture on my Instagram of me
(09:29):
and my baseball dress from many years ago. Nicole Miller
made us baseball dresses. So they're white sleeveless dresses with
the red stitching, so it looks like we're it's a
stitch baseball hard ball. But what team are you watching
closely this year? I don't have a particular team. I
do enjoy going to the stadium and I like going
out city field. I like the game, and the game
(09:53):
is what's of interest to me, right, and individual star players, Yeah,
there are a number of players. I mean, there's a
player on the Yankees, John Carlos Stanton, who played for
me in Miami. I have a particular fondness for him.
Oh so, how old is he now? Thirty one? Perhaps, well,
he was even a younger baby when we signed him
to that massive contract that he got. Right, it's pretty
(10:16):
good to be in the in the front row and
watching those games and the excitement. Would you be able
to spot talent in the art world or in baseball
if you didn't have that view from the front row.
I think it's it's something you accumulate over a period
of time. Baseball players and artists are pretty similar. I
mean they both put their talents on the line, and
(10:39):
neither of them is really stifled by criticism, but they
focus on what they're doing. And the baseball players that
I have watched along with my scouts, at the time
I watched them, I had a pretty good idea who
they were, but I didn't make final decisions. I made
encouraging encouragement along the way. When did that start trading players? Yeah,
(11:03):
way before. Babe Ruth. Remember when he was traded from
the Boston Red Sox to the Yankees. That was a
bad trade. That was a bad trade for Boston. Yes,
great trade for New York it was. But most of
the time when we trade players, it's to improve the team.
You have twenty five players on a club and you
(11:23):
want to make sure that they're all contributing, and so
you need to um watch every aspect of it. You know,
you can have great pitching, and if you don't have
good and good infield, the pitchers don't matter. You know,
you need hitters, you need you need all aspects of
the game, and you use the players to trade to
(11:45):
improve your club. Well, when you bought Montreal M what
did you pay for that team at the time? Somewhere
around one hundred and twenty five million dollars. But I
didn't buy the whole team. I bought trolling interest in
the team to operate the team and to again see
if I like the ownership at the major league level,
(12:07):
which I did. I like the whole camaraderie with the
players and with the industry. The industry wonderful people, and
I think that's due in part because they've had great
leadership during the time I was there. Oh, so your
interest was only one hundred and twenty million, My interest
was less than that because I bought a percentage of it.
(12:27):
Of that price, Well, now, valuation was it? Yes, I
guess one hundred and twenty or one hundred and forty million,
I don't remember. Now, Well, how much is the Yankee
team worth now? Probably in excess of four billion. So
what was a TV? Is? TV? Is that? What did it? Well,
it's all a function of revenues, and TV as a
main contributor to those revenues. Because the prices have gone
(12:50):
up skyrocketed for any of the teams. Well, what's the
highest price paid for a baseball team. Ever, I think
at the moment the Dodgers probably hold that record at
two point four billion dollars. And who do you think
is going to win the series this year? What is
what's the prognostication? Well, there are a lot of good
clubs there. I think the Mets have a great opportunity.
I think Houston does again. I think the Braves have
(13:12):
improved themselves and the Dodgers. The Dodgers always have a
great club and they work hard at figuring out what
they need to figure out. Now, did you ever toss
the first pitch? I did it in spring training. Once,
you know, owners, owners are not the most beloved people.
The fans, for the most part, want more. They have
their own think, they have their opinions, and they want
(13:32):
more and they want it now. And that's that's what
makes the game so interesting. Yeah, well it's it's I
think it's that's happening in all sports. I mean, I read,
you know, I read the stories, the headlines in the
sports page. It's just to keep keep up with my grandson.
So I try to be at least a little bit educated.
But there's always disputes, there's always sales, there's always trades,
(13:55):
so you as a baseball player, you did not continue playing,
but you continued your I do have own ownership. At
one day, well, I bought the Marlins when there was
a very complicated three way trade when baseball wanted to
move out of Montreal and hopefully moved down to Washington
one day, so my son David, who was the president
(14:15):
of our team, we orchestrated a three way trade whereby
we moved from Montreal to Miami. The man who owned
the Miami club at the time, the Marlins. The man
who owned the Marlins, wanted to buy the club in Boston.
He insisted that it had to be Boston, although I
(14:36):
pointed out he wanted out of Miami because they were
not going to build a stadium for him. He made
the egregious mistake of saying to the leaders there, if
you don't build a stadium for me, I'll build it myself.
You never say that, And so he needed to move
somewhere else, and he decided that he didn't want to
go to California to buy the Angels, which were for sale.
(14:58):
And the year that he did and go there, they
won the World Series. But the next the next year
he had the opportunity to go to Boston and we
made this three three way trade and I assumed control
of the Marlins and took us a few years to
get a stadium built, which was a main focus, utiful stadium.
I remember going there to see your new stadium. It
(15:19):
was just the most spectacular place. Well it's a It
was a passion of mind because of my art history background,
to build something architecturally that would be spectacular. And who
was the architect um Populous. They were the architects for
most bullparks. And I remember the day we got permission
(15:42):
to go ahead with the stadium. I was in London
and called the called the architect and said, would you
be able to talk now we have permission? Where are you?
He said, I'm in London. He came to the hotel
Claridge's Hotel, where I was staying at the time, and
I made a little sketch on a napkin. He took
(16:02):
the sketch, made a better drawing and that became the stadium.
He asked me at the time if I wanted to
build a retro facility because there was a lot of
Art deco in Miami, and I said no, I think
we need to look forward, and we built a very
contemporary stadium. It's really beautiful building. Yeah, it's beautiful. And
then I remember the new owners took out some of
(16:23):
the art that you would as well. That's a that's
a sad story, but they they We had commissioned the
pop artist Red Grooms to do a big sculpture at
which woods, an interactive sculpture. It jumped into action when
people when players hit home runs and the home team
won the game, fish jumped into the water, water splashed,
(16:46):
birds flew, lights were lit up all and the new
owners just wanted to do their own things, so they
basically took it down and put it out in the weather.
So who knows how long it will last. It was.
It was a cause for some consternation on my part
because I didn't think they had the right to destroy
public art. Yeah, that's true. Bad they did because it
(17:08):
was spectacular. So you bought the Marlins and then you
had big surprises along the way. You found amazing players. Well,
in two thousand and two was a year that I
spent studying the club and looking at what we needed,
(17:32):
and by the time two thousand and three came around,
we had some pretty good pitchers on our club at
the time. I thought we needed an established, well established catcher,
and I had my eyes focused on Pudge Fredriguez, who
was not signed by anybody at the time, and we
got in touch with his agent eventually signed him because
he was the one that could handle pitchers. Runners weren't
(17:54):
going to steal basis and Pudge was a leader and
he did a great job. In the end, my general
manager was not happy because he thought he's washed up.
It's just why the Rangers didn't sign him. But I
took that chance and he played I don't know six
eight more years after US and it was the only
World Championship he ever won. When he won the World Series,
(18:16):
three Yankees and three Yes, Yankee Stadium and Yankee Statum.
How did you feel, I had mismixed emotions. You know,
I grew up a Yankee fan. I used to go
up there all the time. I remember when I was
there with eight years old with my father, sitting in
the stands behind a pole in the old Yankee Stadium,
thinking that I had the best seat in the Yankee Stadium.
(18:39):
And at the end of that game, the Yankees lost
and I went home the I think so it was close. Yeah,
it was close, and the Yankees had an opportunity to
win it. I don't remember if I was there that
year or not. I probably was forty I think it
was nineteen forty eight or nine. I went there with
my father, boy, and I walked out of the stadium
(19:01):
in tears, and my father said, Jeffrey, there'll be another game.
Guess what he was right? Was he alive when you
bought about the team, the Marlins. No, so he didn't
get to see that game. No, and he didn't get
to see me win a championship in the minor leagues either. Wow.
It was just towards the end of his life. You've
learned so many lessons, and you have imparted many of
those lessons in your fabulous book. What made you write
(19:24):
this book now? From the front row? Well, I guess
I felt that I had an opportunity to impart a
lot of relationships that I had, some stories that I
have memories that are very interesting to read. I mean,
I was at the forefront of a lot in the
art world and in the baseball worlds. Let's get into
(19:45):
the art a little bit, because your ability to spot
art you had an innate ability to know what was good,
what appealed to you, and to meet artists and to
develop relationships with artists. Not very many people do that. Well,
You've done it amazingly well. So tell us a little
bit about the beginning. I studied art history at Yale,
(20:08):
and my parents had sent me up there to become
a premed student. And after six months of zoology, biology, botany,
and chemistry, I called him and said, there's no more
premed on the horizon. That I wanted to do something else.
And I was taking in art history course you had
to take. One of the areas of concentration had to
(20:29):
be a history course, and our history seemed interesting. What
period you remember the art history? It was the beginning
art history course I was taking, and it was the
course taught by the eminent art historian Vincent Scully. Oh.
He's fantastic, written many books, many books, and a great
favorite of mine. And we had a wonderful relationship, and
(20:53):
he encouraged me, and he kept encouraging me all the
way till the at the end of his life, when
I then had the opportunity to return the favor and
bring him to spring training and bring him to opening
day because he was living in Miami at that time.
Great and we had a lot of fun. I studied
the art history all through college, and by the time
I was ready, it was your favorite period modern art.
(21:13):
Did you learn Greek and Roman? And yeah, we had
to take those courses. Those courses, I mean, you don't
get to the modern without understanding what some of the
Greek and Romans were doing, because everything builds on itself.
And came time for graduation, my parents came up to
school and showed me an article in a newspaper that Sears,
Roebuck and Company was going into the art business. They
(21:34):
were opening stores all over the country. What year was that,
nineteen sixty two when I graduated. It's major growth of
the company all over the country, and they were looking
to bring in a new clientele, and so the art
was the vehicle for them to do that, so that
they were not just known in all these new cities
where they were building as a place where you can
(21:56):
buy furniture and a refrigerator. Well they were they to me,
Sears Robook. I always loved that company, and I thought
they just missed the boat by They were the first.
They were the first that catalog was I poured over
that Sears catalog, that big fat catalog that, oh I know.
And they were really the first Amazon. And they could
have been the Amazon if they had believed in the Internet.
(22:18):
But by the time, by the time the Internet became
a powerhouse. Arthur Martinez was the CEO of Sears and
he didn't quite get He didn't get quite get. You know,
no stores you buy from the pages of your catalog,
which is online. They didn't get it. And uh and
Jeff Bezos got it really big. And do you remember
all those all that happening. I mean, it was just
(22:40):
I remember, I remember the catalogs. Oh yeah, I even
did the first art catalog. So and so what did
you sell in it? Well, we sold lithographs and etchings.
I remember commissioning Salvador Dolli to do a painting and
three hundred lithographs. But did you pay him? I'm ashamed
to say we paid him twenty five thousand dollars for
a painting, which I felt was worth the twenty five
(23:03):
thou and the three hundred lithographs that we sold for
four hundred dollars a piece. Quickly and Sears hired Vincent Price,
the actor or to be the person whose collection this
was in the store, and my dad suggested I get
in touch with Price, which I did. We eventually met
and I became the youngest buyer in Sear's history. And
(23:26):
it was a great experience because I got to meet
all the artists. It was a time when you could
call them and see them. End of my junior year,
my parents wanted to know what I was doing for
spring vacation. Was I going to fall at Lauderdale? And
I said, no, I'm going to go to England if
you'll buy me an airline ticket. I want to meet
Henry Moore. And I had discovered in my way Henry
(23:47):
Moore at college, so I went to visit with him,
and at the time, I guess I was the youngest
person ever to walk in his studio. And we hit
it off and we became very close. Oh, I love
his sculpture. And did you ever go it was foundry
in Italy. I was everywhere he worked, even the quarries
in Pietra Santa where he worked during the summer and
(24:09):
doing his carvings. You're incredible and then you became dealers
for these artists well, I had my own personal relationships
with them and eventually opened my own business and started
building collections slowly, and I dealt with, you know, collectors.
The Chrysler family had a collection, and Walter christ was
(24:30):
building a museum in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was his
wife's family was from. And Norton Simon, the industrialists who
lived in California. I spent a lot of time seeing him,
and I talk about him in the book in very
interesting people, these these giants. Did you have to educate
them or were they already educated? These great wealth collectors?
(24:53):
Both ways it went. I mean, Norton Simon called me
one night and said, I hear you were a young
deal and you know something about sculpture and pain. I
was probably twenty eight at the time, and we spoke
that night for five hours on the phone, and we
became close, and I helped him buy lots of things
that he as in his museum, including a big Henry
Moore sculpture which I bought in England and brought over
(25:16):
to the United States on a ship. Traveled his luggage
and I tried to encourage him to come and see it.
How many tons was that one? Three? Yeah? They were
very big, those Henry Moors. You have so many stories
(25:39):
in the book. What's something that you wish you had
never sold? One of them is with Norton Simon. I mean,
I had this great Henry Moore sculpture which I brought
over and I thought he might be the perfect line
for it. And Norton didn't respond. You know, three months
(25:59):
for months went by, and he called me one day
on a Friday afternoon, and you had laid out the
money already. Oh, I had bought it. I didn't. I
never bought for anybody specifically. I bought for myself and
realizing that eventually it could be placed. He called me
on a Friday afternoon, said, I'm in New York. I
want to see the sculpture. I said, it's in a warehouse.
They're closed on Saturdays. Find a way. I found a way,
(26:21):
and he bought the sculpture. Wow, and saw it and
loved it. Yeah. Any paintings that you regret the wood
A could have should us well. I had a number
of very important Surrealist paintings in the mid seventies that
that was the time when the Japanese were really pursuing
(26:42):
art and buying art and I had Miro's one of
them his greatest paintings of a dancer listening to music
and a Gothic cathedral, a huge upright painting. And I
had a Tongee Eve Tangee painting that had been purchased
by the collector. I bought it from Pittsburgh, which was
sent by the artist to the Carnegie Exhibition in nineteen
(27:05):
thirty eight, and artists sent their masterpieces to show off
their work. And I eventually bought those pictures and I
had them. I was tempted not to sell them, but
the temptation from the from the buyers encouraged me to
sell them. And you'd love to have them back there.
That's what being a dealer is. Well, you can't keep
(27:25):
everything you know, no matter what business you're in. And
what have you kept for yourself? What's what's in your collection?
Pablo Picasso verst Picasso, I ever bought you kept? I kept? Yeah?
And I have a lot of Henry Moore sculptures. At
one time I had sixty or seventy sculptures of Henry's. Wow,
and a colleague of mine came to my home and
(27:47):
he said to me, what are you doing with all
these sculptures, sell half of them and buy some other artists.
And I thought about it, and I said, that makes
more sense than what I'm doing. I loved Henry's work
and I love collecting them. Well. Gordon Buncheft was a
big Henry Moore fan, yes, and I bought I bought
Gordon Buncheff's little house in East Hampton. Oh, that beautiful
(28:08):
house on Georgia a pond. And when I bought it,
the Museum of Modern Art owned it, and Gordon had
left it to the museum, and in the garden was
a beautiful Henry Moore. There were, oh gosh, there were
about five really important sculptures in the garden, but the
museum was taking them all. And moon Bird was in
(28:28):
the garden, and they left all the frames, all those
very heavy cast iron frames and steel frames and platforms.
They left all of that in the garden for me.
Nothing on them, just the platforms, the plints. So I
got to know what Gordon had liked, because he was
placing those same kinds of sculptures and the buildings he
(28:49):
was building in New York City. He did one Chase
Manhattan Plaza, he did the Lever house and oh yeah,
lots of dubuffet. It was a really interesting experience from
me to buy a house like that. And I always thought, gosh,
he must not like his wife very much because the
kitchen on Georgia Capond had a wall, had no windows.
(29:11):
He had his wife cooking in a kitchen with no
windows facing the view. And the house was just a
basic like a shoe box of travertine left over from
probably the Chase Manhattan Plaza, because that was a travertine
clad building and he built it out of concrete and
travertine and cinder blox. It was beautiful. My daughter sold that,
but it was it was a special place. But I
(29:35):
loved the sculptures in the garden, and I've always loved
sculptures ever ever since I went to that Museum of
Modern Art garden and loved the beautiful sculptures in that garden.
But do you have any Sarah's Sarah? No, I don't
have any Sarah. Yeah. I have Marino Marini and Jacomo
Monzoo and Saysar and Botero and Robert Indiana. I had
(29:59):
dinner with Botero one night. He was interesting, he was
I have a lot of art history background which because
my husband was the publisher of Abram's Art Books books,
all those early books, and Andy was the president of
Abrams and he worked with Harry and uh and he
published all those big books. And remember the Lawrence Gowing
(30:20):
book on the on the Louver. There's there's great big
books that Abrams used to do. So I learned a
lot about art. Unfortunately I didn't buy art like you
were buying art. I wish I had because I could have.
Really I loved so much of it and it was
so and I'm jealous of people like you who have
developed their taste into a business. You have a lot
of ideas for people who in and in your book
(30:42):
you impart those I call him the tenants of business.
So talk about those, because you have a whole list
of things that you advise people in business to do well.
I think I think the most one of the most
important things that I've always believed in was you have
to take risks. Um For me, it was a risk
and a chance that I took when at age nineteen,
(31:03):
got on an airplane went to England knowing nobody to
visit an artist. And I think if you're not willing
to take risks, there's no rewards. Did you read Edith
Wharton's New York Stories? Did you read that one story? Oh,
there's a story I'm going to send to you about
a young man who is the ski on of a
big New York, very wealthy New York family, and he's
(31:24):
given by his father ten thousand dollars to go to
Europe to buy his art collection. And at the time,
ten thousand dollars was like like early early twentieth century,
I think ten thousand dollars was a lot of money.
And he went to England and he then went to
Italy and he came back with a collection that was
(31:46):
probably what you would have bought and if you were
in his position. He brought a man ten Ya. You know,
nobody had ever heard of him. He bought some caravaggios,
nobody masters, nobody had heard of any of these guys.
When he came back, his father looked at the collection
and just owned him. He said, you wasted my money
on that stuff, And he just owned the boy. And
the boy opened a little thinking museum in the village
(32:09):
of New York, in the West Village, and people would
come and pay a few cents to see the art,
and then of course all everything he had bought turned
out to be a priceless masterpiece. So he had the taste.
He didn't have the belief of his father or and
his friends didn't believe what he was up to. But
it's a fabulous story. You have to read it. It's
(32:29):
really right. But but you had that, you had that.
I well, I think I developed that high early age.
Took you took risks, yes, okay, And I never believed
calculated risks. Yes, yeah, because I always tell people to
take a risk, but don't take a chance, and it's
part of taking risks. You have to know that a
(32:49):
fear of failure is never an option. No fear. The
one thing that can be a real detriment in any
business transaction, whether you're buying a player, baseball player or
a great work of artist, hesitation. If you hesitate, you're
going to be lost. They did that a few times.
But I learned quickly that a hesitation is a destriment
that I don't want to live with. And so I've
(33:12):
always believed that you have to do it right or
don't do it at all. That was something that I
learned from my father. Don't get started on something you
can't complete, and if you're going to complete it in
a half baked way, don't do it right. And while
you're doing it, I learned along the way that quality
was always more important than quantity. I always pursued a
(33:34):
single great player rather than four players that build various spots,
because that one player I always felt could add more
to the team than the two or three that we needed.
But we'd find them elsewhere. You got to you have
to pursue the quality. They also have lived by the
credo that you have to surround yourself with good people.
(33:56):
I had great executives, and I in my baseball career.
Towards the last few years after we opened the stadium,
I decided to pursue some really top executives, and it
took me a few years to put them all together,
and we had a really good operating team until the
(34:16):
new ownership came in and fired them all in the
first week. I heard that, well, they didn't even give
them a chance, and they had to pay their salaries
for the lengths of those contracts. That I never quite
understood why you would do that. One of the things
that I have found along the way after I'm doing
this for close to six decades now. Is you have
to expect the unexpected things come your way that you
(34:39):
had no idea we're going to come your way, but
you have to be prepared for it and opportunity as
well as both sides of the coin failure, good things
and bad things, but you have to expect that those
kinds of things are going to happen. I always bought
and traded, whether I was trading pictures, which you could
do at one time, trade work of art, which I did.
(35:01):
I always felt that I wanted to be doing the
deal that I wanted to do, not what others wanted
me to do. In other words, if somebody had something
and they felt that was great, if I wanted to
do it too, then it worked. But if that was
not going to be the case, you're going to end
up making a poor decision that you're going to regret.
You have to have a bit of a thick skin
(35:24):
to work in both those worlds. It's not that I
have it. I developed it along the way and realized
that that's the only way to get to the bottom
line and to the end successfully. You need a lot
of humility too, and that doesn't always come easily to
a lot of people. I don't know if it came
easily or not to me, but it seems to have
(35:44):
worked for me. Those are valuable lessons and valuable, valuable
rules for running a business, and just well, there's there's
one more which I find find very curious, which is
you have to use your eyes. You have to trust
your eye and use your eyes. I was at an
exhibition in London recently with my wife and she she
(36:06):
had me. She had encouraged me to listen to David
Hockney and one of the things he said just really
struck up a note, and I remember it now that
most people don't know how to use their eyes. The
only thing they used their eyes for, said David, was
to see the street in the road in front of them.
But they're not looking up and around them, and that's important.
I'm always looking up. So you and I agree on
(36:28):
this list a lot. I like your lists. And you
know what else, Sometimes the best deals the deals you
don't do, like not buying a particular painting and realizing
later that that picture really wasn't as good as it
could have been, that there are better works. I always
strive for the best, and not having enough information about
that artist meant that I was not striving for the best,
(36:51):
not ready for it. Yeah, not ready for it. And
that was a good deal not to have done what
I didn't do. Things happened to you too in life.
I mean, I love that you say go for it,
and really, if you believe in it, act act quickly.
And in parts of my life, I just I lost
that ability to act quickly. It's just I just hesitated.
(37:11):
And hesitation, as as you said, it's just a killer,
a killer. Hesitating is really bad. So what's next? What
else are you going to do? You have so much
energy and so many good ideas. And do you have
a shop where you sell your art? No, I'm a
private dealer. I'm in the phone book, right, but I
do it privately. And do you have one piece of
(37:34):
art that you would never give up? Yeah? How many
years ago I bought a study for the famous painting
of Mattis called The Dance. And I didn't realize it,
but I was thumbing through the Alfred Barr book. The
Alfred Alfred Barr was the director of MoMA. Oh yes,
and he wrote a book about Matisse, and I was
(37:56):
reading through the book, and on one page in a
postage size reproduction, there's a little work that I bought.
It's so elegant and so much movement, and it's and
it's the embodiment of Matis. So I think I would
never part with that nice and that you can continually
discover things about it right all the time. Yeah, oh great. Well,
(38:20):
you can enjoy more of Jeffrey's stories in his new
book From the front Row, Reflections of a Major League
Baseball Owner and Modern Art Dealer. Be sure to pick
it up wherever you like to get your books, And
Jeffrey that we could talk forever. I think your stories
are fascinating and your life has been an amazing, amazing
journey and which continues every single day. Take care of
(38:43):
your family. They're lovely. I got to meet some of
them at the talk you did the other night at
at Christie's. Yeah, it was a beautiful night. That was
a really a pleasure and a great celebration for this
book and keep going. Thanks, thanks very much.
Host
Martha Stewart
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