You already know the Florida Marlins hit the lottery with their first five-year plan. You also know that five-year plans are common to sports. The Cubs and White Sox try them about every three years or so.
Which brings us to the brains of this organization that is so young, it should be burped, carded or at least pulled over for speeding. When the World Series begins here Saturday night, David Dombrowski and the team he generally manages can be found in the fast lane.
“My dream always was to start up a franchise and then go all the way,” he says. “Hopefully, in the same place. It could happen here now, and, yes, it would be quick.”
Dombrowski is 40, a child of the Chicago area, with traces of gray hairs, not all accrued from that grim afternoon in June 1986, when he sat at his desk in Comiskey Park, bearing several titles of a hot young sports executive.
However, his office was chilled suddenly by the appearance of Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, who had moved from the TV booth to a brief and tumultuous reign as boss of the Sox.
“He fired me,” Dombrowski recalls. “When Roland Hemond brought me in as his assistant, I thought I’d be with the Sox forever. But Roland was let go after we had a down season in ’85, and Tony La Russa was gone as manager a few weeks after me.
“I was devastated. I was also naive. Hawk came in and said, `This isn’t working,’ and he was right. It wasn’t. We had, well, just put it as different philosophies. Still, I was crushed. Jerry Reinsdorf, still a friend, was very fair. He promised to pay me until I got another job, and did.”
Dombrowski wiped the tears off his lapel when he discovered what the community of baseball thought. Six offers became eight became 10. He went with the Montreal Expos, who promoted him to GM in 1990. Many of the best players in either league are from there, but no longer there.
“I can’t take credit for that,” Dombrowski says. “Their system for securing talent was already in place. If they could have kept their people–Randy Johnson, Larry Walker, on and on–they would have won a bunch of World Series by now.
“I left there, as I mentioned, because the Marlins gave me a chance to build an expansion team in 1993. I also left for some of the same reasons Jim Leyland left Pittsburgh to manage here. The ability to compete.”
The Marlins have deep pockets. The Expos and Pirates have no pockets. But if money alone were all that mattered, George Steinbrenner would own every trophy in New York that Gene Autry couldn’t buy for his California Angels. In fact, Dombrowski’s opening budget was merely $14 million. Instead of drafting established names like their new partners in Colorado, the Marlins were conservative. Winning immediately was not a priority.
“That was just our belief here,” Dombrowski says. “On paper, Trevor Hoffman, Andres Berumen and Jose Martinez–three of our original expansion selections–didn’t get us to the World Series. But who did we trade to San Diego for Gary Sheffield? Hoffman, Berumen and Martinez.”
So, yes, Wayne Huizenga spent a fortune on these Marlins. More important, though, he invested in Dombrowski, whose only regret is that his mom and dad, Laurie and Ron, are moving this weekend, from Palos Heights to Orland Park.
“But they’ll be in Cleveland Tuesday,” David says. “I’m very fortunate. Still, I know this: When teams like Pittsburgh and Montreal can’t compete, something’s wrong with the system. We have to make it so teams from the small markets can play in a World Series too.”
Maybe, then, there’s hope for a tiny hamlet like Chicago.
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