It's Not Easy Being The. . .Big Cheese

Ticket prices up? Revolving door for coaches? Mighty Ducks a civic disgrace?

Tony Tavares took the heat. But now, he vows, you won't have him to kick around any more.

After five years as the stoic face of Disney's professional sports empire, Tavares has kicked himself upstairs. After introducing Pierre Gauthier as the Ducks' president recently, Tavares shuffled to the side of the room and gleefully pointed to him.

"There's a new sheriff in town," Tavares said. "Talk to him."

Tavares runs the Angels and Ducks and is one of only a few executives in the country charged with operating multiple franchises. The Sporting News last year ranked him among the 50 most powerful figures in sports.

As the public face of Disney's teams, Tavares blended the passion of a fan, the authority of an executive and the accessibility of a spokesman. But instead of enlightening fans, his candid comments tended to infuriate and alienate them.

Now, Tavares aspires to transform himself from Orange County's favorite pinata into more of the traditional, private Disney executive who insulates himself with lieutenants--in this case, Gauthier in hockey and Angel General Manager Bill Bavasi in baseball.

As Gauthier shook the last of dozens of hands at his news conference, Tavares quietly vented his frustrations. No longer, he explained, did he feel compelled to cooperate with those he believed would mock him or ignore his answers if they did not fit a predetermined image, most often one that portrayed him as a penny-pinching micro-manager.

"This is one of the only industries where you can do a great job and be painted as being incompetent," Tavares said last spring.

But can Tavares immunize himself from criticism simply by hitting his mute button? The traditional Disney executive does not work in professional sports, in which the bottom line is not corporate profits but scoreboards that illuminate winners and losers. Disney's teams fly no championship banners.

"The nature of most of their businesses is that management is not subject to second-guessing," said Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. "You don't have people booing Goofy as he walks down Main Street.

"It's in their best interest to try to manage negative press, but that's hard to do in professional sports. If the fan base and the media determine you're not trying to win, they can turn on you pretty quickly."