Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sports fans, pause to thank Huizenga
H. Wayne Huizenga once was asked the difference between having the billions of dollars he accumulated in life and not having $1,500 to pay for a used truck, which is how he started. “You have more options,” he said. Huizenga took the option of publicly founding Fortune 500 businesses and privately investing in youth educations. He took the option of collecting sports teams the way kids do bubble gum cards and elevating South Florida’s presence as a major-league region. And he took the option of never forgetting how it all started.
“The fun is going up the mountain, not reaching the top,’’ he once said.
Say goodbye to Mr. H., as his employees always called him,
mostly with fondness and forever with respect. He finally came up against the road with no option, no matter how rich or smart or influential you are. He died Thursday at age 80.
Take a moment to thank him, too. It says something that a man with not enough money to buy a used truck rose to build three corporate empires — Waste Management, Blockbuster Entertainment and AutoNation.
It says something more that a man who never played beyond center for Pine Crest High School’s football team is remembered as the greatest sports name in South Florida.
No one did more for South Florida sports than Mr. H. Not Joe Robbie, who brought the Dolphins here. Not Don Shula, who brought the first winner. Not Pat Riley, who is this generation’s Shula.
Huizenga brought pro baseball and hockey to South Florida in a span of months. He bought the Dolphins from the Robbies. For a few hours, he even controlled the Miami Heat, until Micky Arison stepped in and activated a clause to keep it in his family. Huizenga shrugged.
“I go to enough games,” he said later.
To understand Huizenga’s sports accomplishments, don’t look at wins and losses. Listen to a scene from the 1986 movie “Running Scared,” when Gregory Hines tells Billy Crystal they could retire in Miami.
“Miami?” Crystal responds. “They don’t even have baseball. Baseball is the watershed of civilization.”
Huizenga changed that. South Florida enjoyed all four pro sports, thanks to him. Baseball became Huizenga’s momentarily highest and eternally lowest sports moment. He won the World Series.
He then turned the franchise into a chop shop, selling off players because the Marlins weren’t a good business, and for better and worse, he was all about business. He knew what that fire sale meant to his legacy.
Years later, he looked over a table full of business awards in his office.
“Those will be my legacy in business, and nothing I do from here can probably change that,” he said. “In sports, it will be the fire sale of the ’97 Marlins. That’s just how it is.”
He never quit being the businessman. He cried tears of relief when the Dolphins won their lone game in 2007, then called prospective buyer Steve Ross the next morning.
“The price just went up $40 million,’’ he said.
His Panthers went to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1996. Those ’97 Marlins won the World Series. Only his Dolphins never won. Not really. They were his favorite, too, as he had season tickets to Dolphins games since their 1966 expansion season.
He tried everything. Worked with coach Don Shula. Hired coach Jimmy Johnson. Flew to Baton Rouge, La., to close the deal for Nick Saban when everyone considered him the next great NFL coach.
Wayne and his wife, Marti, ate dinner after the 2006 season at the home of Saban and his wife, Teri. The meal was odd fare for such big names — boiled hot dogs and beans. “Beany-weenies,” the Sabans called it.
It was served under a dangling light bulb, as the chandelier had been removed. Saban told Huizenga he was returning as Dolphins coach. The next day, Marti called Wayne after seeing a moving van at the Sabans.
“Are you sure we still have a coach?” she asked.
They had not known those “beany-weenies” would be the last meal served by the Sabans at that home.
He never said a bad word about Saban, though. Maybe because leaders take the high road. Maybe because he’d had to make tough personal decisions on his road to the top himself. The only thing he was better at than building companies — he took three to the New York Stock Exchange — was selling them at the perfect time.
“My business decisions were great,” he said. “My sports decisions?”
He waggled his palm back and forth. “Ehhhhh.”
Owners get into sports for various reasons. For some, it’s ego. For some, it’s a higher civic platform. For some, it’s fantasy sports. For Huizenga, it was part business and part something else.
“I want to make this a better place,’’ he said.
Only once in all the years around him did I hear him waver on the decision to get into sports. Life is about options, remember, and he sat in his office on Las Olas Boulevard after he sold the last of his teams, the Dolphins, and wondered if he did right.
“Maybe I should have just put all my money into kids’ educations,’’ he said. “I probably would have done better that way.”
He talked to all his friends as the years went on about “QTL” — Quality Time Life. He encouraged them to enjoy it. The hope is he got plenty, too. No one did more for South Florida sports than Mr. H.