Tombstone
Born: 1981 – Re-branded from San Jose Missions
Re-Branded: 1983 (San Jose Bees)
First Game: April 9, 1982 (L 3-2 @ Salinas Spurs)
Last Game: August 29, 1982 (W 4-0 vs. Fresno Giants)
California League Championships: None
Stadium
Ownership & Affiliation
Owner: Peter “Woody” Kern
Major League Affiliation: Montreal Expos
Attendance
Background
The San Jose Expos were a Class A farm club of the Montreal Expos for a single summer in 1982. The Expos were the first pro sports investment for Peter “Woody” Kern, a 34-year old nursing home operator from Ohio. Kern, who passed away in 2014, went on to own minor league baseball and Arena Football League teams all across the United States over the next three decades. He paid $65,000 for the California League’s San Jose Missions club in late 1981, changing the name when the Expos agreed to a Player Development Contract that winter.
Living on the other side of the country, Kern hired 26-year old Harry Stavrenos, AKA “Harry Steve”, as his General Manager and deployed him to San Jose. A fellow Ohioan, Stavrenos had moved around the country accumulating a couple years of front office experience with a pair of chaotic teams, the Miami Amigos and the Macon Peaches.*
The Expos finished 66-74 in the California League in 1982 under field manager Tommy Thompson. Only three members of the team – pitchers Rick Grapenthin and Randy St. Claire and infielder Luis Rivera – ever made it to the Major Leagues.
The team attracted little interest from Bay Area baseball fans or media. At the end of the 1982 season, the Montreal Expos withdrew their support, leaving Kern and Stavrenos facing a grim outlook for the club’s survival. They would find a novel solution.
The Bad News Bees
A column by Montreal Gazette sportswriter Michael Farber (5/6/1982) provided a foreshadowing of Kern’s and Stavrenos’ renegade approach to minor league operations. Kern briefly instituted a modest performance bonus system for the 1982 San Jose Expos. Examples included $15 per win to starting pitchers, split with their relievers if called upon. $1.00 per strikeout to the pitching staff’s strikeout leader during the first half of the season. $5.00 for each home run hit. The most bonuses were small but meaningful for players who earned $600 to $1,100 per month (mostly on the lower end, according to Farber).
Officials from the California League and the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (minor league baseball’s governing body) swiftly put the kibosh on Kern’s incentive payments.
With the Expos gone and no replacement parent club in sight, Kern and Stavrenos got creative again. They changed the name of the team to the San Jose Bees in 1983, a moniker used by San Jose clubs of the past. And they operated as an independent team, signing and paying their own players. Kern also “leased” the Bees to Harry Stavrenos for $25,000 per year in an unusual deal. Stavrenos represented himself as the owner (he wasn’t). He paid all the bills and kept all of the team’s profits (if any). Kern never actually charged Stavrenos the $25,000. Years later, Stavrenos characterized the arrangement to Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci as “totally illegal“.
The Bees are a FWiL story for another day. (Or just click on the link above for Verducci’s fantastic 2016 retrospective for SI.) Kern sold his California League franchise in 1987. The team became a San Francisco Giants farm club under the new owner in 1988 and remain in operation today, 32 seasons on, as the San Jose Giants.
In Memoriam
San Jose Expos owner Woody Kern (Storm ’94 -07′) died on January 7, 2014. Kern was 66 years old. Tampa Bay Times obituary.
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