'We've Taken the Greed out of Sports'

That doesn't mean the Redbirds are a monastic outfit. The team has a large, fairly compensated staff, including three full-timers who do nothing but keep the stadium grass lush and green. AutoZone Park, four blocks from the Mississippi River, has armrests and cup holders at nearly every seat and has carpeted concourses at the club level. Indeed, the team must be run like a business. After all, it has to wring as much money as it can from its operations in order to pay off $72 million in bonds issued to pay for the complex.

But as a nonprofit, no matter how much cash the team generates, nobody but the community will ever profit. "I'm not an owner,'' Jernigan said. "I'm a founder. This team is a community asset. We've taken the greed out of sports. We've eliminated the greed factor.''

In a city that that has long seen itself as a victim of the old style of sports ownership, Jernigan's new ethic has had a transforming effect. The Redbirds drew more than 850,000 fans this season, shattering the city's all-time attendance record before the season was half over. In a downtown that had withered, and that many suburbanites considered irrelevant, the stadium has sparked a revival. A new apartment complex is going up next to the ballpark. A theater-and-entertainment complex is expected to open a few blocks away. The city even has plans for a new downtown school. "It's become the most important facility in the city," said Steve Cohen, a state senator from Memphis. "It's a great symbol of hope for the future."

In just three years, the Memphis Redbirds Baseball Foundation has brought baseball and softball back to 34 inner-city junior-high and middle schools in Memphis, and has started a summer-league program for underprivileged kids -- providing free lunches as well as batting tips -- at 12 inner-city sites. "This is nothing like it's going to be,'' Jernigan said. "I don't think people have any idea. When we get the bonds paid off, if our models are right, we're going to be churning out $8 to $10 million a year."

(II) It's a New Ball Game

The bylaws of the Memphis Redbirds Baseball Foundation, which owns the team, provide that "approximately 50%" of its elected directors "shall be females and that the ethnic diversity of the Elected Directors shall approximate, as closely as possible, that of the at-large community." The bylaws also provide that one of those directors must be a "senior executive currently employed in not-for-profit community service," and one or two must be "experienced in fund-raising for not-for-profit organizations."

Alphabet of Failures

As a businessman, Dean Jernigan is a lot like he was when he was a shortstop at Messick High in Memphis in the 1960s and in adult leagues around town until his rotator cuff gave out when he was 43. He's relentless, dogged, and successful, if not graceful. He is not at all a glamour player. He will tell you, in fact, that he wound up building self-storage units for those same reasons. In the mid-1980s, casting around for a business in which to make his way, Jernigan chose self storage over economy hotels -- he turned down the chance to own a Hampton Inn franchise -- precisely because storage had so little intrinsic appeal.

Hampton Inns "made perfect sense to me,'' he says. "I knew that they would be a success. I also knew, and this proved to be true, that there would be a lot more competition. There's no sex appeal in self storage. That alone keeps a lot of capital from finding its way into our business. There's no sex appeal -- and that's good."

Jernigan started with one storage facility in 1985. To the high hilarity of some colleagues and friends, he named it "Storage USA." "I had a lot of friends jab me," Jernigan said. "They said, 'You've got a lot of courage, Jernigan. You have one storage facility, and you name it Storage USA?' " Today, Storage USA is a publicly traded company. Last year, it posted $250 million in revenue, $64 million in profit, and nearly $1 billion in market value. It owns, manages, or franchises 521 self-storage facilities in 31 states and Washington, DC. Every facility is connected by satellite. Customers can log on to an automated-reservation system and can reserve space at any Storage USA site in the country. "And now it's amusing to me that my vision wasn't big enough when we named that first storage facility 'Storage USA,' " Jernigan said. "Now it's limiting, because we're looking into taking our company into international opportunities."

That is quintessential Jernigan. He's a blue-collar dreamer. He's an exacting, relentless man who bends the world to fit his conception of how it should be. It was no accident, then, that when the owner of Memphis's longtime Double-A franchise threatened to move the team, someone called Jernigan and asked him to get involved. It was a Wednesday night in 1996. Jernigan says that he and Kristi were already in bed when they got the call. To understand what happened next requires understanding a little bit about Memphis and a little bit about Jernigan too.