Retreat Sidelines Man Who Made Champions of 49ers

SAN FRANCISCO — For two decades, shopping mall magnate Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. has thrilled and shocked, inspired and enraged San Franciscans as the flamboyant owner of the Super Bowl-champion 49ers.

The diminutive DeBartolo grabbed headlines and stayed there after he became the National Football League’s youngest owner in 1977, paying $17 million at the age of 30 for one of its worst teams.

San Franciscans paid little attention to DeBartolo’s other enterprises--the gambling casinos and real estate ventures that kept money flowing to the 49ers--his lavishing of pay and perks on players, his occasional run-ins with other NFL owners and tangles with the law.

So both the city and the team were stunned last week when DeBartolo announced that he was stepping down as owner of the 49ers to defend himself against an expected federal indictment. He turned over control of the team to his younger sister.

Two Louisiana newspapers reported that DeBartolo was targeted by a grand jury probing Louisiana’s awarding of the state’s 15th riverboat gambling license to DeBartolo Entertainment and a partner firm. The newspapers said the FBI is focusing on DeBartolo’s alleged payment of $400,000 to former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards--in $100 bills--just weeks before DeBartolo’s company won the license.

Edwards has confirmed the inquiry and told reporters that he and DeBartolo are innocent of any wrongdoing. DeBartolo’s only comment has been a written statement in which he asserted his innocence. But his resignation and reports that the indictment may come later this week have trained an unwelcome spotlight on DeBartolo’s business ventures.

“It is unfortunate to me, as an Italian American, that Eddie resigned before he is even indicted,” said former San Francisco County and City Supervisor Angela Alioto, a friend of DeBartolo. “Italian Americans notoriously get this bad rap.”

Alioto attributed DeBartolo’s abrupt resignation to his desire to distance the team from scandal.

“His love of the 49ers is why he did it,” she said. “He has always worried about protecting this team and his individual players.”

DeBartolo’s legal problems have raised questions about the future of the 49ers, a team that for years has attracted some of the league’s best free agents on the basis of DeBartolo’s reputation for taking care of players. It also has cast new doubt on the team’s plans to build a $525-million stadium and mall complex to replace 3Com Park in San Francisco. DeBartolo was deeply involved in the campaign to secure public backing for the project and in negotiations with the city on planning details.

Everyone from armchair psychologists to sports economists have speculated about the impact of DeBartolo’s departure, and about what drove the multimillionaire into risky dealings in Louisiana with the oft-indicted but never-convicted Edwards, target of several FBI probes over the years.

“I think Eddie got involved in Louisiana because he didn’t have anyone to stop him,” said David Newhouse, a sports columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle who covered the 49ers during DeBartolo’s first decade as owner. “Money and a lack of mentorship sometimes makes you do foolish things.”

Newhouse and other DeBartolo observers said the 51-year-old multimillionaire has appeared rudderless since his father, Edward DeBartolo Sr., died at the age of 85 in 1994. They cite a string of costly, failed attempts to expand his gambling enterprises in California, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

“You have to ask: When is enough enough?” Newhouse said. “What does Eddie need? He owns the country’s largest shopping mall empire. He won five Super Bowls in five tries. His life is of an unprecedented nature. He’s on top of the world. Why would he take a chance like this?”

DeBartolo’s father founded the Youngstown, Ohio-based DeBartolo Corp., now the Simon DeBartolo Corp., after returning to the Midwest from World War II and striking on the idea of building shopping malls to serve newly emerging suburbs. The elder DeBartolo was a taciturn workaholic, known for being in the office seven days a week and being a stern taskmaster to his only son.

“He was tough. He was very honest. Nobody worked as hard,” said Anthony Cafaro, owner of another Youngstown-based shopping mall empire and lifelong friend of the DeBartolos.

Since the 1960s, the DeBartolo family also has owned racetracks and riverboat gambling enterprises. The elder DeBartolo told interviewers he believed it was his ownership of gambling enterprises that prompted Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to block the family from buying the Chicago White Sox in 1980.

Both DeBartolo Jr. and his younger sister, Denise Marie DeBartolo York, worked their way up in the family business. DeBartolo York, who has always stayed out of the limelight and still lives in Youngstown, assumed chairmanship of the 49ers last week.

In 1977, DeBartolo Sr. funded his son’s purchase of a 90% share of the 49ers, then left management of the team to his son. After a rocky start, DeBartolo Jr. hired Bill Walsh as head coach and set out to build the NFL’s strongest football team. The 49ers won their first Super Bowl in 1980.

“His father was an incredibly dominating business figure, extremely successful,” said sports agent Leigh Steinberg, who represents quarterback Steve Young and eight other 49ers. “The 49ers were Eddie’s franchise to run, and he did an amazing job of it.”

For years, DeBartolo followed the team in his private jet, attending every away game. He once infuriated other NFL owners by treating his team and staff and their spouses to a Hawaiian holiday after a Super Bowl win. Before the NFL imposed its salary cap, owners complained that DeBartolo was buying his Super Bowl titles by paying exorbitant salaries.

DeBartolo flew players to away games a day early with first-class seating and put them up in top hotels. They never shared rooms.

Stories abound of DeBartolo footing medical bills for players’ relatives, and sending flowers and fruit baskets to their wives and girlfriends at Christmas.

“For many of the years that I played pro football, the reality was nowhere near the dream that I had growing up,” said linebacker Gary Plummer, who joined the 49ers as a free agent in 1994. “Being in the 49ers organization, I realized that dreams come true.”

In 1990, the league imposed a $500,000 fine--its largest ever--on DeBartolo for transferring the team from private ownership to family corporate ownership. (Corporate ownership has since become legal.)

In recent years, DeBartolo has ceded more control of the team to its president Carmen Policy, and turned his attention to his other business holdings. Only veteran and former players maintain close personal relations with DeBartolo, and he often misses road games.

In 1996, DeBartolo expanded his gambling holdings through a San Mateo-based corporation, Edward DeBartolo Entertainment. The firm has pursued gambling ventures in Ohio, Oklahoma, California and Louisiana.

Despite his resignation, DeBartolo hasn’t distanced himself from the team.

On Wednesday, he traveled to the 49ers’ training camp in Santa Clara to bid an emotional locker room farewell to the players.

His resignation came just two days after the 49ers suffered a crushing defeat by the Kansas City chiefs. Players--most of whom have never met DeBartolo’s sister--said they could not believe DeBartolo was walking away.

“There’s been an amazing amount of good times,” said veteran tight end Brent Jones. “When you have a friend going through a tight situation like this, you need to stick with him. . . . I’m standing right behind him.”

On Saturday, DeBartolo showed up at the elaborate Christmas party he throws annually for 49ers players, staff and their families.

And on Sunday, DeBartolo was in his luxury box at 3Com Park to watch the 49ers defeat the Minnesota Vikings. After the 28-17 victory, the team presented DeBartolo with the game ball in the locker room, chanting “Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!” as he entered.

“It just felt good to do something for someone who has done so much for us,” said Plummer. “Mr. D. told us that game ball meant as much to him as all the Super Bowl victories.”

DeBartolo has always had a more intimate relationship with his players than with San Francisco. From the beginning, the marriage between the politically conservative Italian American from the Midwest and this most cosmopolitan and liberal of American cities has been complex and sometimes uncomfortable.

DeBartolo arrived as an outsider who always seemed more at ease surrounded by his buddies from Youngstown or his players than hobnobbing with San Francisco’s elite. He didn’t move to the San Francisco area until a year ago, when he purchased a $3-million mansion in tony Atherton, south of the city.

“I covered his first press conference after he bought the team. He was this little guy with a Fabian haircut,” Newhouse said of the 5-foot-7 owner. “There was more hair than body. He impressed nobody.”

Local newspapers referred to him as the “twerp,” a rich kid whose father bought him a football team, before the 49ers began racking up Super Bowl victories.

In the early years, DeBartolo wept and stormed when the 49ers lost, kissed the players and threw elaborate victory parties when they won.

DeBartolo “did not take losing lightly,” said Steinberg, who has dealt with DeBartolo for 20 years. “He’s an emotional person and he had a very tough time with losing. Eddie insisted and the standard in San Francisco became an imperative to win the Super Bowl every single year.”

Former 49er head coach Walsh, who guided the team through its first four Super Bowl victories, often clashed with DeBartolo.

“It was expected and demanded that we win every game,” Walsh said. “Those were tough times and I went through those. The chemistry was always a little bit volatile in those times.”

Last year, DeBartolo shocked the city when he let go popular coach George Seifert, who had the best win-loss record of any coach in the league, but had failed to reach the Super Bowl for two years.

DeBartolo’s obsessive pursuit of the Super Bowl for the last two decades made no economic sense, said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College in Massachusetts. In the NFL, extensive profit-sharing among teams means you don’t have to win to make money, Zimbalist said. DeBartolo, he said, seemed to be searching for something else.

“He was seeking to develop a successful franchise, run it in an upstanding way, develop for himself a strong and clean reputation in San Francisco,” Zimbalist said. “With his own history and his father’s history, he was looking for some kind of improvement in his public image.”

That public image took its first serious hit in 1992, when a Redwood City cocktail waitress filed a lawsuit alleging that DeBartolo punched her and sexually assaulted her at a post-game party in his Menlo Park condominium. No criminal charges were filed and the lawsuit was settled out of court.

But the allegations shook DeBartolo’s public persona as a devoted father of three, married to Cynthia, his high school sweetheart. Then, last January, DeBartolo allegedly punched a 64-year-old Green Bay Packer fan after a game. Misdemeanor charges were filed, but later dismissed.

This spring, DeBartolo angered fans when he threatened to move the 49ers out of San Francisco if voters declined to approve $100 million worth of municipal bonds to help finance the stadium and mall project at Candlestick Point. DeBartolo campaigned hard for the ballot measures, which passed by less than 1% of the vote.

Doug Comstock, one of the leaders of the anti-stadium campaign, recalled his one and only meeting with DeBartolo as the anti-stadium campaign office.

“DeBartolo and his people were handing out fliers in the neighborhood,” he said. “DeBartolo stuck his head in and yelled at me: ‘We’re gonna beat the s--- out of you!’ I was intimidated.”

A day after DeBartolo resigned, stadium opponents filed a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in the June election. They named San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a stadium proponent, and DeBartolo as defendants.

DeBartolo’s supporters say they doubt either the lawsuit or his legal problems in Louisiana will take him down.

“In the back of my mind, he hasn’t really left,” Plummer said. “We know that Eddie D. is gonna be there in spirit no matter what happens. And after he clears his name, he’s going to be right back in it.”