At this time a year ago, Columbus Crew SC was being prepped for shipment to Austin, as if the team were a vintage toy and the owner figured, what the heck, hock it.

For thousands of Crew fans in central Ohio — and, as the Save the Crew movement built, for soccer supporters throughout North America and overseas — this notion that the Crew was some sort of old, plastic action figure, unloved and easily abandoned, was an affront.

Among their legions was Dr. Peter H. Edwards Jr., 57, who is interspersed with the flesh, blood and soul of the franchise. He has been the Crew’s team doctor from the beginning — well before the club’s first roster was assembled in 1996. He has knitted the broken bones, mended the torn tissue and ministered to the spirit of generations of players. They are all part of his extended family.

Dr. Pete, as he is known among the tailgaters at Mapfre Stadium, is a Columbus guy, born and raised. The Crew is leaving? His family is moving? For him, that was sick.

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I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of body as well as the infirm ...

So goes one of the solemn vows in the Hippocratic Oath, to which doctors have been swearing for more than 2,000 years.

I never wanted to own a sports team.

That’s something Dr. Pete said. He just sort of volunteered.

An elbow in the ribs



Dr. Pete and his family have some money — it ain’t Garth Brooks money, as Johnny Manziel’s father once described their family nest egg — but it got the good doctor thinking. Maybe, just maybe, he could help save the Crew. For Columbus.

At this time a year ago — February or March, accounts differ — Dr. Pete asked for a meeting. The venue was a conference room in an office building Downtown. It was snowing outside.

Dr. Pete had Alex Fischer, the president and CEO of the Columbus Partnership, on one side of him. On the other he had Jim Smith, a Columbus guy who helped get the wildly successful Major League Soccer team in Atlanta off the ground.

They met a contingent of MLS officials led by deputy commissioner Mark Abbott.

Here’s Dr. Pete:

"We said, 'We really think Columbus is a good city and we really think the team should stay here — and it could be successful under the right circumstances.' And (Abbott) said, 'Well, we really don’t have much to talk about unless I’m talking to the principal investor.'

And Jim Smith looked at me and I looked at Jim Smith and Jim Smith said, 'You are looking at the principal investor.' And I’m looking around and thinking, 'Who the hell is he talking about?' And Jim sort of elbows me in the ribs.

"It’s funny now, but it wasn’t so amusing then. I looked at Jim and I was like, 'We can’t afford to do this.' And he said, 'We just keep the ball rolling until we figure it out.'"

The recollections of Smith and Fischer differ slightly and a little less dramatically, but the essential point remains: The league wanted to know — immediately — if there was a Columbus investor who’d take at least a 30 percent stake. And Dr. Pete raised his hand.

“We were beginning to have a breakthrough moment,” Fischer said.

Used to fixing things



Smith, who three years ago returned home to take a job as president and CEO of the alumni association at his alma mater, Ohio State, has known Dr. Pete for a couple of decades. But it took a clumsy fall down a short flight of stairs to unite them in saving the Crew.

“I thought I broke my knee,” Smith said. “I put it off for a week, but I finally called Pete. I saw him and he diagnosed me with turf toe, if you can believe that. I spent six weeks in a boot.”

Smith had regular physical-therapy appointments with Dr. Pete. They talked. Could the Crew be saved? Presumably, music from the “Rocky” movies played in the background.

Such is one definition of “holistic medicine.”

Here is another: “He kept my career alive with all those ankle surgeries,” Frankie Hejduk, who played for the Crew from 2003-10, said of Dr. Pete. Hejduk captained the Crew’s MLS Cup championship team in 2008.

“Going back to my college days, I’ve probably had 25-50 team doctors,” Hejduk said. “There is no one else I trusted more with my body and career. My livelihood. I owe a lot to him. More than that, he’s like family. He is family. My kids grew up with his kids.”

Dr. Pete volunteered to conduct physical evaluations of the first batch of potential Crew players in late 1994 — almost two years before the league’s first chartered team played its first game. From the beginning, he insisted that the Crew’s medical staff be independent of the team’s management and coaching staffs.

“I’ve never seen, and never heard, of him putting the team over the individual,” said Brian McBride, the team’s first draft pick in 1996 — and, like Hejduk and team founder Lamar Hunt, a member of the team’s Circle of Honor.

“You respect the man first,” McBride said. “Then you get to know him, and you understand that this is just an upstanding man. A family man.”

A family affair



J.T. Edwards Steel Co. was a West Side industrial institution for 60 years, until it closed shop in 1991. J.T.’s progeny are Upper Arlington Golden Bears and Ohio State Buckeyes and engineers, builders and businessmen.

One of J.T.’s sons, Peter H. Edwards Sr., got his practical education in the family business. But steel didn’t speak to him, or vice versa. He struck out on his own in the 1950s. His dyslexia didn’t stop him.

The Edwards Companies has many tentacles, but its core business is developing and building apartment complexes, in Columbus and across the country. Think: Brewery District, Tuttle Crossing, University District apartments, etc. This is Dr. Pete’s father.

“He’s 87 going on 88,” Dr. Pete said. “He’s a little bit publicity shy. He keeps on working because he loves to do it. He still has a pride in seeing something you think of in your head and making it successful. He’s still good at it.”

Dr. Pete and his three siblings bought one of their father’s businesses, Installed Building Products Inc. Brother Jeff runs what is now a conglomerate. The company does more than $1 billion worth of business annually. It went public in 2014.

Another of Dr. Pete’s brothers, Mike, is a custom homebuilder in central Ohio. Their sister, Anne, renovates historic homes in England.

“I’m the black sheep,” Dr. Pete said. “My grandma Edwards said, ‘You should go into medicine because we don’t have a doctor in the family.’ That probably started it.”

Dr. Pete helped build Orthopedic One with 50-plus partners. Its home base is a small campus off Henderson Road on the Northwest Side. They have 12 other sites throughout Ohio. They like to say they are the largest physician-controlled orthopedic practice in the state.

“It’s a pretty big business now, but it’s based on good principles: Get the right people that are well-trained, that take good care of people,” Dr. Pete said. “Don’t tell (doctors) they have to see too many patients or use certain implants or go to a certain place. You let them take care of people the best they can and at the end of the day it works out.”

Dr. Pete’s wife, Christine, is also a physician. They met at Ohio State after she left her purse in a lecture hall — accidentally on purpose (still disputed) — and Dr. Pete scooped it up and returned it.

“And the next thing you know we have four kids,” Dr. Pete said.

Enter the Haslams



By midsummer last year, Dr. Pete was ready to approach his father and three siblings about a family investment. The Edwards clan has a long history of quiet philanthropy. This was something else entirely.

Saving the Crew would cost $150 million — to start. Even with partners — a must — it’s still upfront money, serious financing and a daunting debt load.

Dr. Pete told his father, brothers and sister that, with their help, the Crew could be saved. Maybe. And they bought it. Jeff even said that if it turned out to be a donation, it was worth it. For Columbus.

“We’re not public people,” Dr. Pete said. “We don’t want our names to be in the paper. But if that's what it takes at the end of the day, we’ll do it.”

The next step was to find the right partner.

Late last summer, Dr. Pete got together with Dee and Jimmy Haslam, owners of the Cleveland Browns. Fischer, who goes back with the Haslams — fellow Tennesseans — played matchmaker.

The Haslams have Garth Brooks money. They have NFL money, and MLS loves NFL money. But that is not what Dr. Pete sought most.

Community, family, charity — the Haslams talk about these things. They did not want to see Columbus go through the civic convulsions of losing a pro sports franchise, like Cleveland once did with the Browns. And they were digging the Save the Crew movement.

To Dr. Pete, these were kindred spirits.

On Sept. 21, Dr. Pete and Fischer had breakfast with the Haslams. When they were finished, they walked down the Haslams’ driveway, got in the car, looked at each other and giggled.

Fischer: “What I think I said was, ‘You never know when you’re going to fall in love, and when you do, you can fall hard and you can fall quickly.’”

Dr. Pete: “I went, ‘Holy (cow), this might actually work.’ And that was the time when he and I both recognized it. We were like, ‘Oh, my god.’”

On Oct. 12, it leaked that the Edwards and Haslam families had joined forces. The hardy Save the Crew people had a flash-mob party at a microbrewery. They popped magnums of champagne. Dr. Pete wasn’t there. He was in surgery.

On Dec. 6, Dr. Pete and the Haslams revealed plans for a new stadium in a new Arena District neighborhood, to open in 2021. They also outlined a plan to turn the Mapfre Stadium site into a training center and community park. They pledged $645 million for the projects.

On the first day of 2019, Dr. Pete and the Haslams officially took control of Crew SC. They retooled soccer operations, revitalized the front office and set a course to sell a franchise-record number of season tickets.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Dr. Pete said. “I got poked in the side and accidentally raised my hand when Jim Smith told me to raise my hand.”

He just sort of volunteered. Sure.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

marace@dispatch.com

@MichaelArace1