The reason the Indians remain in Cleveland is because Dick Jacobs bought the franchise in 1986. That's the real legacy of the Tribe owner from 1986-2001 who died Friday at the age of 83.

But there is so much more.

Jacobs loved to tell stories about growing up in the Goodyear Heights area of Akron. His first job was mowing neighborhood lawns. His next stop was Swenson's, a legendary Akron hamburger joint where car hops still roam. Jacobs once bragged to me that he started as a potato peeler for french fries.

"After a year in the kitchen, I worked my way up to carhop," he said. "You wanted to get to the big cars first. I could spot a Caddy coming two blocks away. I'd get my big foot out there and tell the other (carhops), 'That one is mine.' I figured which cars had the best tippers, and I made sure they were the ones I waited on."

Jacobs always wanted to be the first in line to get the best deal, and he did that with the Indians. When Jacobs and his brother David made their bid to purchase the Indians in 1986, the franchise was owned by a dead man, the estate of Steve O'Neill.

His nephew, Pat O'Neill, was put in charge of finding an owner. We both had attended Benedictine High School, and that gave Pat O'Neill a comfort zone in talking to me about the pressure he felt to find a new owner for the franchise during the nearly two years he was the team's caretaker.

"I gotta find a Cleveland guy," he said. "And it has to be a guy who can get a ballpark built, or the team will move."

Pat O'Neill also knew that a good chunk of the sales price would go to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, and he wanted to secure the best price for that charity. There were out-of-town interests offering more money for the Indians, but Pat O'Neill was convinced that Jacobs could "get it done," as O'Neill told me.

"Dick came in and his words were, 'Is this team for sale? No messing around,' " O'Neill told me. "These are our kind of guys, they will keep the team here."

With Jacobs, business was very, very serious. When Jacobs bought the team, his company owned 40 shopping malls across the country. The former carhop was estimated to be worth $500 million by Forbes Magazine in 1986 and he owned 18 Wendy's hamburger franchises.

When the sale of the Indians was announced at $40 million, it actually amounted to $18 million in cash, $3 million to pay back a loan to the O'Neill estate and another $14 million in loans owned to various banks from deals made by previous Tribe owners.

Then consider that he sold the team to the Larry Dolan family for $323 million after the 1999 season. He also pocketed about $50 million in a public stock sale. Jacobs once told me that he lost about $40 million on the Indians from 1986-93, but financial documents made public after the team sold stock reveal the Indians pocketed about $55 million between 1994-99.

So Dick Jacobs made one the best deals in a lifetime of great deals.

But he also was a good deal for the Indians and their fans.

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Only a Cleveland power broker and dealmaker like Jacobs could have tiptoed through all the self-serving mine fields that are a part of politics in Northeast Ohio. Jacobs knew when to apply just the right amount of pressure that could come from the heavy hand of a man who was part of the downtown redevelopment in the 1990s.

When former Browns owner Art Modell wanted Jacobs and the Indians to help renovate the old Municipal Stadium so both teams could play there (with Modell as landlord), Jacobs told me, "It's hard for two guys to share the same lunchbox."

It took eight years from the time he purchased the team to the formation of the Gateway Corporation, the passage of the sin tax and the construction of what became Jacobs Field.

In the meantime, he hired former Baltimore Orioles general manager Hank Peters to build up the Tribe farm system. He gave Peters the cash to spend on scouts and minor league coaches. He allowed Peters to hire and train young executives such as John Hart, Mark Shapiro and Dan O'Dowd.

Jacobs also withstood the public criticism for all the losing in the late 1980s and early 1990s as his baseball people needed time to build a strong foundation -- while Jacobs maneuvered to turn his field of dreams into a sparkling new stadium at East 9th and Carnegie Avenue.

Jacobs had the wealth to take the financial hit during those first eight years. He had the vision to hire good people and trust them to do their jobs. He had the inner toughness not to be swayed by public or media opinion.

When Major League Baseball expanded from four to six divisions in 1994, Jacobs ignored the advice of some in his marketing department and moved the Indians out of the East -- where they had solid gate attractions with games against the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Instead, his team joined Milwaukee, Kansas City, Chicago and Minnesota as part of the Central Division, where Jacobs believed that the fresh cash coming in from the new ballpark would give his franchise a competitive advantage.

The Indians had not been to a World Series since 1954, but Jacobs had a vision of the Indians winning the new Central Division. He could see it, just as he could picture a shopping mall in a dusty infield, a ballpark in a blighted section of a supposedly depressed city.

He really was the right man at the right time.

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Jacobs also was lucky.

As the Indians moved into a new ballpark in 1994, Cleveland was beginning one of its most prosperous economic periods since World War II. That made Jacobs Field very attractive to corporations to buy suites luxury seats.

Then, the Browns moved after the 1995 season to Baltimore because Jacobs got a new stadium and Modell did not. The Cavaliers were mired in mediocrity with only the hardcore basketball fans paying attention.

The Indians suddenly emerged as the only real sports show in town, with a flashy new ballpark, a payroll in baseball's top 10 and a collection of young stars and solid veterans ready to rule a division without the powerhouses from New York and Boston. They went to the playoffs every year from 1995-99.

Jacobs enjoyed the winning. He told me that he liked to stand in his suite, watching the waves of fans wearing Wahoo red, white and blue pour through the gates, walking around the ballpark, believing they had just entered a baseball Disneyland in downtown Cleveland.

He also made sure his team had a profit margin of at least 8 percent beginning in 1995, as several Tribe insiders told me. He was willing to pay for stars, but not spend wildly. He rarely went to press conferences, but did appreciate the attention that came from having a team that went to the World Series in 1995 and 1997 in a town starved for a winner.

But by the late 1990s, Jacobs knew it was coming to an end. He told friends that the advantage that the Tribe had from the new ballpark (and the revenue it produced) was over. He said the sellout streak that reached 455 also could not last forever. Detroit and so many other teams were building new facilities.

The real money was now cable TV, and the bigger the market, the bigger the cut. Cleveland could never compete with New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles on that economic field.

Jacobs also was convinced that the Indians would not be able to retain young stars such as Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome, and he didn't relish the idea of owning the team when they left via free agency and the Tribe began to slip in the standings.

So he cashed out after the 1999 season, running up the price on the Dolan family to $323 million -- slightly more than even the much larger market Los Angeles Dodgers were sold for in that same period. He squeezed out every last dollar in an auction run by Goldman Sachs to find a new Tribe owner.

A few of Jacobs' critics told me that on his tombstone should read: HE BOUGHT LOW, HE SOLD HIGH. Or another said, "With Dick Jacobs, the bottom line always was the bottom line."

That indeed was part of the man.

But that aspect of his personality is why the Indians were revived under him, why the ballpark was built, and why Tribe fans had more fun during his regime than any time before or since over the last 50 years.

It's why I consider him the best owner in the history of Cleveland sports. It's why we can still go downtown to what remains a very nice ballpark and watch baseball on a summer evening -- and that means a lot to baseball fans all over Northeast Ohio.