Suddenly thrust into the awkward position of having to operate a franchise he wanted to shut down, Selig called Minaya. He didn't have many incentives to offer the prospective GM: no long-term contract, no golden parachute. The best he could do was a one-year deal. After all, there was no telling where the team would be in 2003 -- or even if there would be a team. But for a single season in the sun, Omar Minaya could be a major-league general manager -- if he was willing to take the job on those terms. Selig gave him some time to think about it.
Minaya didn't take long to get back to Selig: "I promise you I won't make you look bad for giving me this opportunity."
If Selig sounded incredulous -- "Omar, are you sure you want to do this?" -- it was because of the speed of Minaya's decision and perhaps because he knew things Minaya didn't. But Minaya would learn soon enough.
It turned out that when Loria fled Montreal, he had invoked Napoleon's scorched earth policy, taking pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down. Minaya had no computers, no scouting reports, few employees -- and 72 hours before training camp was scheduled to open in Florida. He was faced with "thirtysomething contracts to do -- and with no one to help me out." The pressure, Minaya remembers, was "unbelievable, especially knowing that CNN, CBS, Fox, and all the other networks would be there with their cameras to watch this fiasco." He mimics a TV reporter: "Oh, let's go see. This is going to be a joke."
But it was now that Minaya's 20 years of training began to pay off. Working out of a small space in the umpires' offices of Major League Baseball's Manhattan headquarters, he began speed-dialing his many contacts, looking for leads and references. In retrospect, the most important call he made was to Tony Siegle.
Minaya remembers that the pressure of his first days was intense -- "especially knowing that all of the networks would be there to watch this fiasco."
At 61, Siegle was a baseball lifer. Starting out as the scoreboard operator at the old Houston Astrodome, he had had the kind of career that makes real estate agents happy, serving as assistant general manager of team after team across the country. But where Minaya was known for player evaluation and development, Siegle was a master of baseball administration. He was the alter Omar, reveling in the haggling and the arcane rules. While Minaya had been bent out of shape by the newspaper story that questioned his management experience, he recognized that there was some truth to it. And unlike business leaders who refuse to admit their weaknesses, he understood what he had to do. "Tony is everything I'm not -- and just what I need," says Minaya. "When Tony said yes to the offer to be my No. 2, I knew I had a big part of my problem solved."
One down, and, oh, about another 100 or so to go. Minaya was grappling with the challenge that every turnaround CEO faces, the art of prioritizing: "I'd go to sleep at midnight, wake up at 4, take care of what had to be done at the moment. I'd just let the phone ring." It got so bad, he says, that his wireless retrieval service couldn't handle the backlog of voice mails. At the end of each day, at 8 or 9 in the evening, Minaya and Siegle would "review what we'd accomplished, decide what we had to accomplish the next day, and prioritize all over again."
Talk to successful business leaders and they will tell you that they owe a lot to mentors they had along the way. Minaya understood this intuitively, so he made time to consult with the rabbis who had helped him throughout his career, especially Arizona Diamondbacks assistant general manager Sandy Johnson, the man who'd first hired Minaya as a scout with the Texas Rangers. Johnson's advice: "Just be yourself. You've been preparing for this job for 20 years now. Nobody's better qualified."
Good or bad, one tough decision that all GMs face -- hiring a field manager -- had already been made for Minaya. "Bud had already hired Frank [Robinson] for the job," says Minaya. "But I was cool with that. I knew Frank. He was old school: tough but fair." A Hall of Fame player, Robinson had been the game's first African American field manager, but in recent years he'd had to content himself with being MLB's "chief disciplinarian," handing out fines and suspensions for infractions of the rules. At 66, Robinson, wanting one last turn on the stage, had asked his boss Selig for the job -- and had not been denied. Many new GMs would have chafed under this scenario -- with a key hiring decision having been made for them. But it's a measure of Minaya's maturity that while Robinson might not have been his first choice, he accepted him and supported him -- a lesson that many nonbaseball GMs might take to heart.
The decision to hire Robinson was made by Bud Selig: "But I was cool with that," says Minaya. "I knew Frank. He's old school: tough but fair."
The opening of the season was Minaya's moment -- the opportunity to assert his leadership, build a culture of success and self-confidence in an organization that had lost hope. Surrounded by his new team, Minaya addressed the troops in the clubhouse. "My theme was: 'Guys, it's a pleasure.' I told them that they were the orphans of baseball. I told them they were gonna hear a lot about how we might be someplace else next year. We might not even be a team next year. But we can't control that. What we can control is what we do on a daily basis. I said, 'I was in New York on 9/11. I was there. I'm not just grateful to be in baseball today. I am grateful to be alive today."
