Dick Monfort: cattleman's cuts leave Rockies leaner, younger.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: Executive edge

Dick Monfort says running a large, family-owned cattle business in Greeley meant long days, tough decisions and holding out on buyout offers in the late 1970s.

"Our family was faced with an awful cattle market," recalls Monfort, who joined Monfort of Colorado Inc. in 1976 as head of feeder procurement after graduating with a business degree from the University of Northern Colorado. "Plus we were dealing with a strike in Greeley and a tornado had hit our Grand Island (Neb.) plant."

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So when a $20 million buyout offer came in 1979, family members gathered at Christmas willing to entertain the notion of bailing out of an industry rocked regularly by market cycles, cattle-feed crises, employment issues and everything between.

"It was tempting to sell," said Monfort, who nevertheless convinced family members to hold out. He took the company reigns as president in 1987. "It proved to be a good decision. We sold the company to ConAgra that year for more than $350 million."

Today Monfort is applying similar staying power and bottom-line business principles to the Colorado Rockies baseball club where, as vice chairman since 1997, he has had the daunting task of releasing popular players to get payroll down from $68 million to $48 million while bringing in youthful and relatively unknown players for the 2005 season.

"We're trying some common-sense business techniques as we are a mid-market team and decided we had to change direction because we were losing money," said Monfort. "It was time to emphasize a strong balance sheet and run the Rockies like a business."

Gone are the Rockies' marquee players, except first-baseman Todd Helton, who is signed through 2007. In place of proven veterans are kids whom Monfort hopes will grow into stars at Coors Field.

"We'll have a group of young men out there who have as much character as desire to play baseball," said Monfort. "We know that winning has to come at some point, and we can't be playing mediocre baseball. But we think we see enough talent on our roster that...