“I always thought I’d enjoy (owning a sports franchise) because the professional sports business is part business and part sports,” Kroenke said in a 2002 Columbia Daily Tribune story, “and I love both of them.”
Love is a driver of passions, and love’s root often derives from the past. It’s almost legend by now. Kroenke was bound to love both business and sports because his father, Alvin, did, too.
Enos Stanley Kroenke, born in 1947, is named after St. Louis Cardinals legends Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter. Alvin Kroenke chose the name because he loved the Cardinals. He listened to games with his own father on disjointed KMOX broadcasts during time off from the Kroenke family-owned Mora Lumber Company in Mora, Missouri, a town with a current population of 713 southeast of Kansas City.
As a young child, Stan swept trash outside of Mora Lumber. By 10, he was reviewing the business’s books. Neither task prepared him, though, for the manual labor side of the business — the waking up early as he aged toward high school, the lifting of planks of wood, the unloading of cement.
William Smart, a high school basketball teammate of Kroenke’s at Cole Camp High School just outside of Mora and now Cole Camp’s athletic director, remembered time off from the manual labor, when Kroenke hoisted jump shots toward a basketball hoop behind the house. All that practice eventually led to Cole Camp’s varsity team. All that practice led to a smooth jump shot, too.
Kroenke liked to catch the ball on the left wing, Smart said, and launch jumpers like Larry Bird, only maybe without the magical muscle memory. “He was a good athlete, but he wasn’t all-state or anything,” Smart said.
On days off, he and Kroenke and others lounged at each other’s houses. They sat back at the town’s one theater to watch movies. They devoured items from the fast-food buffet across from Cole Camp High. They did what kids in small towns did.
“(Newspapers) have called and asked to see if I have any stories about controversial things that we did,” Smart said, laughing. “We just didn’t do anything special at the time. Family was a strong part of the community. We enjoyed each other's company. We were ordinary kids.”
As both Smart and Kroenke crept into their late high school years, it became apparent Kroenke was interested in attending MU for business. Smart was headed to Warrensburg, as were a number of other classmates. But Smart makes sure to clarify: That says nothing about the path Kroenke soon traveled.
“He was a normal person,” Smart said. “If you would have asked any of us at that point that he would be where he is today, we would have probably laughed.
“And maybe even Stan, too.”
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