Managing the Impossible

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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 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."

Minaya is intensely aware of the history of the game and of his own place in it. His big office at Stade Olympique is adorned with posters of Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente. "The world is watching me," says Minaya. "I'm the first Latin American general manager. I still get e-mails, phone calls from other minorities. They identify with me. Baseball is like that. It magnifies everything. It makes us bigger than we are. But it also allows us to set the tone, set the standard, to go forward. To make progress for society."

Lovers of baseball have always seen the game as something larger than itself, a metaphor for life. Minaya is part of that tradition, and, like a socially conscious CEO, he believes he has a responsibility beyond the nine innings. And he acts on it. He serves on the board of a nonprofit foundation started by one of his best friends, Dave Valle, a catcher who was best man at Minaya's wedding. The foundation provides start-up money (often as little as $200 or $300) to mostly female entrepreneurs in the Dominican Republic, a "micro-lending" initiative that is now seven years old and has proven a resounding success. What Minaya is particularly proud of is the default rate: 2%.

Though he was born in the Dominican Republic, he grew up in New York. His father worked on the docks, his mother in a factory. The young Omar attended PS 19 in Queens and played Little League for the Corona Red Wings in the shadows of Shea Stadium -- though he was never a Met fan. Most of all, he "was a fan of the great Latin players, Roberto Clemente, Juan Marichal, the Alous."

When Minaya wasn't playing ball, he was riding the subway: "We'd just ride the 7 train back and forth, from Flushing to Times Square and back." It was, strange to say, "a way of opening my mind to other worlds. You grow up in New York open-minded to begin with. But this way, I could see how diverse the world was. And if I wanted to have goals, how far I could travel." Not for nothing does Minaya think of himself as "a product of the 7 train." (That's the same 7 train, of course, that relief pitcher John Rocker once famously pronounced the home of "felons," "single moms," "freaks with purple hair," and "queers with AIDS.")

An All-America catcher in high school, the tall but slight Minaya was signed by the Oakland A's to a minor-league contract. Early in his career he was a highly unusual position player: an outfielder-catcher. But soon it became clear that he wasn't brawny enough to be a major-league catcher, nor gifted enough to play the outfield at the highest levels. "Honestly," says Minaya, "it became clear I wasn't a good hitter."

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