John Middleton steps up for Phillies ownership

WE ALL KNOW the perception. The Phillies ownership group has treated its team as it would a cherished old toy on the shelf of the study, appreciated from afar, dealt with lightly at times, indifferently others.

Well, yesterday, John Middleton took the toy down, slapped in new batteries, ran it around the room a couple hundred times. He banged it up a little, too, revved it up, announced to a fandom that would have no better success identifying him or the other two majority owners of its baseball team than it would the man inside the Phanatic costume that, from here on, they will be handling the precious toy a lot more than their parents were ever willing to.

"When you make a decision of that magnitude, the ownership group has to come forward and be sure people understand that they are the ones who made the decision,'' Middleton said yesterday during a news conference announcing Andy MacPhail as the new Phillies president. "Jim, Pete and I had conversations. Jim Pete, and I deliberated privately. Jim, Pete and I reached out to different people. This is not a decision that we delegated, much less abdicated. We own this decision. And that's an important part of the accountability that we think we have to the fan base. Because we own this. And we intend to win.''

"Jim, Pete and I" are James Buck, Peter Buck and the 60-year-old Middleton, who sold his father's cigar company for $2.9 billion in 2007 and has spent a significant portion of his time and money since helping those less fortunate than himself.

For a while, the baseball team that he owns 48 percent of did not fit into that category, winning division titles from 2007-11. As Middleton said yesterday, while explaining how he and the Bucks allowed the Phillies to dip this low: "If we can go out and get maybe one or two players to keep us there and get us maybe two or three World Series titles, they could be talking about those teams as one of the greatest teams in the history of the National League. So I think that was the objective of what we were doing. No one is more disappointed than me that we only won one World Series title in those five years.''

And so, a new approach, with a well-traveled and well-respected helmsman. MacPhail will spend the next three months being brought up to speed by outgoing president Pat Gillick who, at 77, appeared as worn out on the podium yesterday as the other two appeared energized.

Make no mistake: Middleton didn't just attend this function. He opened it up with a long statement, answered questions thoroughly and respectfully, was glib, irreverent, funny.

In short, he was its star.

But he also made it clear he would be no George Steinbrenner going forward, no Ed Snider - unless you are among the dozen or so people who believe the Flyers chairman when he says he never influences decisions made by his employees.

"It's important that Andy be the face of the team for team-related issues,'' he said. "I don't think I should be announcing signings or announcing trades. I think my role will continue to be a more public role when it deals with more ownership issues.''

Such as infrastructure. And spending. Middleton touted a proprietary, state-of-the art sabermetrics system the Phillies will employ by September of this season. He promised to equip his new president with all the resources he requests in building up the farm system.

To that end, both MacPhail and Gillick preached patience, staying the course, even as the next few seasons promise to be rough.

"We tend to think of improvement as being linear,'' MacPhail said on the podium. "You win 72 games, the next year you win 76, the next year it might be 82. I don't think that's the way our game operates anymore. I think there are teams that will be hovering around 60 wins and the next thing you know they're in the 90-win category. Tampa did it in '07-08. Baltimore did it. They both also found themselves in postseasons. The improvement in your team's performance can come overnight.''

Middleton was asked about that later, amid a crowd of reporters, standing at ease. That's fine for now, he said, but part of the reason he is asserting himself, he said, is to make sure the sins of the fathers - and mothers - are not the sins of the sons. And so while MacPhail conjured up the recent turnarounds of Baltimore, Houston and Kansas City as examples, there seemed to be a slight disconnect with his newest boss.

He's been those franchises before, he said.

He'd rather his team run like the Cardinals.

"The way I've run my businesses, I look at my competitors,'' Middleton said. "If my competitors are doing something better than I am, I want to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, and then I want to figure out how I can do it at least as well, if not better. So I think there are organizations that have done a better job of transitioning between eras, and we need to look at that and we need to find out what they're doing that we're not doing.''

I don't know. That doesn't sound like an owner who won't be involved in baseball decisions. That sounds like a guy who wants to play with his old toy - or even swap it for a new one.

"You don't want us making baseball decisions, trust me," he said. "But I think we need to be sure that we're asking as many hard questions to the people involved in that process and getting information and sifting through that information and ultimately making a decision. We need to be comfortable that they are crossing all their t's and dotting all their i's. And that's not going to change.''

Email: donnels@phillynews.com

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

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