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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, May 01, 2008
He may have bled Dodger blue, but he was still a front-office Giant:
“I’ve had to take the abuse for that over the years, but that’s fine,” Bavasi told The Times in 2005. “Stay around long enough and there’s going to be abuse.”
Although his reputation as a dynamic baseball executive became somewhat tarnished during his time with the Padres and Angels, Bavasi will be remembered best for building championship Dodgers teams while staying within the budget of parsimonious owner Walter O’Malley.
AndrewJ
Posted: May 01, 2008 at 08:25 PM | 17 comment(s)
Related News: Business, LA Angels, LA Dodgers, San Diego
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Perhaps he's overshadowed by Walter O'Malley, though it took the latter until this year to finally get elected.
In general, general managers are woefully underrepresented in the Hall of Fame. Unless they happened to have doubled as owners, their chances of making haven't been very strong.
Bob Howsam should be in, and I'm beginning to think that Bavasi should be too, though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
I find that interesting, given that they generally are much more important in determining a team's success than anybody else -- more than any player or manager. I don't quite understand why so few baseball fans/writers seem to realize this.
Should Walter O'Malley really be described as "parsimonius"? I'm sure he loved money but pretty much every owner in his time would squeeze a nickel until the buffalo defecated. Except for Phil Wrigley in Chicago and Tom Yawkey in Boston and those guys did win a whole lot. Branch Rickey loved money, would he be labelled "parsimonius"?
Good question. He did a thoroughly brilliant job with the Dodgers, running an organization that was top-to-bottom excellent, for nearly 20 years.
Howsam's a pretty good call, too. I'm sure if I put some thought to it there might be a few others who've been overlooked.
And Rickey wasn't cheap except when it came to salaries. O'Malley bought out Rickey because he thought Rickey wasted too much money.
Harol Parrott's book "The Lords of Baseball" supports Rickey against Jimmy Powers of the "Daily News". Powers would call him El Cheapo and accuse him of not wanting to win the 1946 pennant by getting rid of Billy Herman and not promoting Jackie Robinson from Montreal. Rickey wanted to meet Powers and get across his side of the story but Powers refused. Hard to tell who was right:. Was Powers right for not wanting to be compromised or was he a jerk who wasn't interested in getting all viewpoints to decide the truth (like Mike Lupica or Bill Moyers).
One of the many interesting "what ifs" in baseball is if Rickey had gained control of the Dodgers instead of O'Malley. It may not have changed that much..both were shrewd operators. Rickey had mixed feelings about the Move West.
Today's fan likely does not comprehend the difference between then and now--"parsimonius" is the most convenient shorthand for a very long explanation.
I know that he had no success in...California
Two division titles isn't shabby. And they probably should've beaten Harveys Wallbangers Harvey's Wallbangers after going up 2-0.
I would guess that because success strongly corresponds with money, folks are unwilling to credit the GM.
Harry Dalton.
Objectively, he may have a good case, but it's not something I can get worked up about. His Dodger teams were before my time, and I'll never be able to forget him saying he could replace Nolan Ryan with a pair of 8-8 pitchers.
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