Last baseball man
November 6, 2005
Ten years since he became general manager of the Padres without even applying for the job, Kevin Towers now finds himself in another role he did not expect.
Towers is an elder statesmen among GMs, which is like saying Peter Pan is heading the AARP.
The boyish former pitcher with the graying hair is now a bridge between eras, no small feat in an industry where GMs increasingly either blow up (Theo Epstein) or get blown out (Paul DePodesta) before they can last even half a decade.
When Larry Lucchino tabbed him for the job in 1995, Towers, just two years a scouting director, improbably was thrust into a foreign world of wheeling and dealing, but at least his colleagues were of the same species.
Baseball men, they were called. A vague term, it seemingly applied to anyone who spat both tobacco juice and salty words, brokered deals between tee shots and whiskey shots, and gabbed about his days as a pro ballplayer or scout.
Tomorrow, when nearly 30 GMs convene in Palm Springs, Towers, 44, will try to fathom the new breed of GM. Whiz kids, they are called. Many are Ivy League-educated. Few were ever paid to play baseball. They talk of "metrics," "regression to the mean," and "variance of expected outcomes."
Towers, who is nothing if not versatile, will seek out these brainy young chaps. That is, if he can find them.
"When you go to the GM meetings now, you don't find many GMs at the hotel bar, because they're not old enough to drink," Towers joked. "It's different than when I first started."
Back in the day, Towers recalled that he and "Sweet" Lou Piniella, then the manager of the Seattle Mariners, sketched out a trade on a cocktail napkin. The details are still a tad hazy to the San Diego GM, but he said it's possible those bar scribblings later brought him left-handed pitcher Sterling Hitchcock, who would make the Braves appear hung over in becoming Most Valuable Player of the 1998 National League Championship Series.
Nowadays, Towers finds himself behind only two GMs for longest run with the same NL club: John Schuerholz of the Braves and Walt Jocketty of the Cardinals.
He didn't expect to become an Old Guard GM so soon, because he didn't foresee so many departures.
Consider the rival Dodgers. They are searching for their sixth GM in 10 years.
"Because of the economics of the game and the pressures that are put on GMs nowadays, it's a very volatile position," Towers said. "You have a lot more turnover because expectations are higher."
As part of the new world order, GMs are becoming the news, not merely the makers of it. Their comings and goings, from one job to the next, rate headlines in the biggest media outlets.
Towers recently visited the circus ring for the first time.
Three weeks ago he spent four hours in the desert interviewing with the rival Arizona Diamondbacks for their vacant GM job.
Strange bedfellows, those two.
Towers not long ago described manager Bob Brenly's Diamondbacks as arrogant. Two summers ago he all but accused then-Diamondbacks GM Joe Garagiola Jr. of handing the NL West to the Dodgers by trading them Steve Finley instead of dealing him to the Padres. "They treated us like a leper colony," Towers said.
So it was strange brew for Towers as he awaited word on whether he would succeed Garagiola.
Even before he lost out on the job to former Red Sox assistant GM Josh Byrnes, a Harvard-trained 35-year-old who reportedly attacked the interview with a 20-page breakdown of how he could improve the franchise, Towers mused on how sad it would have been to part with his Padres chums.
"I really starting feeling a little bit rotten," he said. "When Arizona decided to go with Josh, it's almost like there was a sense of relief. My wife's from San Diego. I've been with the Padres for more than 20 years. There are so many people with this organization that mean lot to me.
"But I brought it on myself. I was interested when Arizona asked for permission to interview me. It's a West Coast team. It's in the same division, and I like Phoenix. It was kind of flattering that someone called and maybe recognized that I had some ability."
This week, the Dodgers also came calling. Their mercurial owner, Frank McCourt, had fired his Harvard-educated GM, DePodesta, just two years after giving him a five-year contract. At the same time, the Red Sox made it known they were interested in Towers as a candidate to replace his former protege Epstein, an alum of Yale and the USD law school who unexpectedly left the job after reported disagreements with Lucchino.
Even after Towers made it known he wasn't leaving, a Red Sox intermediary continued to lobby him early Friday, but Towers didn't budge.
"I'm very comfortable here," he said. "I really did some soul-searching and came to the realization this is where I want to be. I'm a big believer in fate. This is where I need to be. With all the speculation, it just got out of control."
When Lucchino stunned him by giving him the job at the 1995 GM meeting as the two walked the grounds of a grand old hotel in Phoenix, Towers inherited the keys to a car that was faster than commonly thought.
The Padres' player talent included future Hall of Fame candidates Tony Gwynn and Trevor Hoffman, future NL MVP Ken Caminiti and future All-Stars such as Finley, Andy Ashby and Brad Ausmus.
The Padres also were free to spend and had little dead money on the books. Hungry for a new ballpark, Padres ownership would more than double the payroll within five years. Within four years, improvements by Towers helped the club win the franchise's second and third division titles, reach its second World Series and gain public approval to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a downtown baseball palace that became Petco Park.
When 1999 arrived, the Padres' GM job was less attractive, partly because Lucchino/Towers had spent unwisely, investing nearly $40 million in a cluster of past-their-prime players that included Randy Myers, Chris Gomez, Wally Joyner, Dan Miceli and Carlos Hernandez. Partly, too, because their farm system was spotty and would be further ill-treated by a disastrous draft that June.
Expanding the picture, Towers was headed down a bumpy toll road because the club's rivals became far more formidable from 1999-2003. The Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Rockies and Giants ramped up their spending while Padres Chairman John Moores reduced or leveled the Padres' spending.
Towers, working for an array of presidents after Lucchino left in July 2001, wasn't able to work an Oakland-like miracle. Sometimes the Padres were outsmarted. Almost always, they were outspent.
"We had to pick our spots on where to allocate the dollars," Towers said. "There were years we couldn't go for it, and we had to put the money that was available into our farm system."
Call this the third era of Towers, one that began with the club's move into Petco Park in 2003.
Towers said he's never had it better. He said his boss, Sandy Alderson, who holds two Ivy League degrees and is former GM of the brainy Athletics, has helped him improve his planning and budget skills.
Petco Park, which has allowed the Padres to become an upper mid-revenue club, is giving Towers more spending power. For the first time, he said he's able to aggressively fund both the major league payroll and talent searches in the amateur draft and international markets.
Further, the NL West has become more pliable, so much so that the Padres in September became the first team in a nonstrike year to clinch a division title without a winning record at the time.
"I thought this year would be the best chance we would have of winning our division since we did it in 1998, and we did," Towers said. "We want to do better than 82-80. We want to go past the first round of the playoffs.
"But we have a chance to win our division every year, and I couldn't have always said that. I think we have a very good chance of repeating, but there's a lot of work to do."
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/
Ten years since he became general manager of the Padres without even applying for the job, Kevin Towers now finds himself in another role he did not expect.
Towers is an elder statesmen among GMs, which is like saying Peter Pan is heading the AARP.
The boyish former pitcher with the graying hair is now a bridge between eras, no small feat in an industry where GMs increasingly either blow up (Theo Epstein) or get blown out (Paul DePodesta) before they can last even half a decade.
When Larry Lucchino tabbed him for the job in 1995, Towers, just two years a scouting director, improbably was thrust into a foreign world of wheeling and dealing, but at least his colleagues were of the same species.
Baseball men, they were called. A vague term, it seemingly applied to anyone who spat both tobacco juice and salty words, brokered deals between tee shots and whiskey shots, and gabbed about his days as a pro ballplayer or scout.
Tomorrow, when nearly 30 GMs convene in Palm Springs, Towers, 44, will try to fathom the new breed of GM. Whiz kids, they are called. Many are Ivy League-educated. Few were ever paid to play baseball. They talk of "metrics," "regression to the mean," and "variance of expected outcomes."
Towers, who is nothing if not versatile, will seek out these brainy young chaps. That is, if he can find them.
"When you go to the GM meetings now, you don't find many GMs at the hotel bar, because they're not old enough to drink," Towers joked. "It's different than when I first started."
Back in the day, Towers recalled that he and "Sweet" Lou Piniella, then the manager of the Seattle Mariners, sketched out a trade on a cocktail napkin. The details are still a tad hazy to the San Diego GM, but he said it's possible those bar scribblings later brought him left-handed pitcher Sterling Hitchcock, who would make the Braves appear hung over in becoming Most Valuable Player of the 1998 National League Championship Series.
Nowadays, Towers finds himself behind only two GMs for longest run with the same NL club: John Schuerholz of the Braves and Walt Jocketty of the Cardinals.
He didn't expect to become an Old Guard GM so soon, because he didn't foresee so many departures.
Consider the rival Dodgers. They are searching for their sixth GM in 10 years.
"Because of the economics of the game and the pressures that are put on GMs nowadays, it's a very volatile position," Towers said. "You have a lot more turnover because expectations are higher."
As part of the new world order, GMs are becoming the news, not merely the makers of it. Their comings and goings, from one job to the next, rate headlines in the biggest media outlets.
Towers recently visited the circus ring for the first time.
Three weeks ago he spent four hours in the desert interviewing with the rival Arizona Diamondbacks for their vacant GM job.
Strange bedfellows, those two.
Towers not long ago described manager Bob Brenly's Diamondbacks as arrogant. Two summers ago he all but accused then-Diamondbacks GM Joe Garagiola Jr. of handing the NL West to the Dodgers by trading them Steve Finley instead of dealing him to the Padres. "They treated us like a leper colony," Towers said.
So it was strange brew for Towers as he awaited word on whether he would succeed Garagiola.
Even before he lost out on the job to former Red Sox assistant GM Josh Byrnes, a Harvard-trained 35-year-old who reportedly attacked the interview with a 20-page breakdown of how he could improve the franchise, Towers mused on how sad it would have been to part with his Padres chums.
"I really starting feeling a little bit rotten," he said. "When Arizona decided to go with Josh, it's almost like there was a sense of relief. My wife's from San Diego. I've been with the Padres for more than 20 years. There are so many people with this organization that mean lot to me.
"But I brought it on myself. I was interested when Arizona asked for permission to interview me. It's a West Coast team. It's in the same division, and I like Phoenix. It was kind of flattering that someone called and maybe recognized that I had some ability."
This week, the Dodgers also came calling. Their mercurial owner, Frank McCourt, had fired his Harvard-educated GM, DePodesta, just two years after giving him a five-year contract. At the same time, the Red Sox made it known they were interested in Towers as a candidate to replace his former protege Epstein, an alum of Yale and the USD law school who unexpectedly left the job after reported disagreements with Lucchino.
Even after Towers made it known he wasn't leaving, a Red Sox intermediary continued to lobby him early Friday, but Towers didn't budge.
"I'm very comfortable here," he said. "I really did some soul-searching and came to the realization this is where I want to be. I'm a big believer in fate. This is where I need to be. With all the speculation, it just got out of control."
When Lucchino stunned him by giving him the job at the 1995 GM meeting as the two walked the grounds of a grand old hotel in Phoenix, Towers inherited the keys to a car that was faster than commonly thought.
The Padres' player talent included future Hall of Fame candidates Tony Gwynn and Trevor Hoffman, future NL MVP Ken Caminiti and future All-Stars such as Finley, Andy Ashby and Brad Ausmus.
The Padres also were free to spend and had little dead money on the books. Hungry for a new ballpark, Padres ownership would more than double the payroll within five years. Within four years, improvements by Towers helped the club win the franchise's second and third division titles, reach its second World Series and gain public approval to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a downtown baseball palace that became Petco Park.
When 1999 arrived, the Padres' GM job was less attractive, partly because Lucchino/Towers had spent unwisely, investing nearly $40 million in a cluster of past-their-prime players that included Randy Myers, Chris Gomez, Wally Joyner, Dan Miceli and Carlos Hernandez. Partly, too, because their farm system was spotty and would be further ill-treated by a disastrous draft that June.
Expanding the picture, Towers was headed down a bumpy toll road because the club's rivals became far more formidable from 1999-2003. The Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Rockies and Giants ramped up their spending while Padres Chairman John Moores reduced or leveled the Padres' spending.
Towers, working for an array of presidents after Lucchino left in July 2001, wasn't able to work an Oakland-like miracle. Sometimes the Padres were outsmarted. Almost always, they were outspent.
"We had to pick our spots on where to allocate the dollars," Towers said. "There were years we couldn't go for it, and we had to put the money that was available into our farm system."
Call this the third era of Towers, one that began with the club's move into Petco Park in 2003.
Towers said he's never had it better. He said his boss, Sandy Alderson, who holds two Ivy League degrees and is former GM of the brainy Athletics, has helped him improve his planning and budget skills.
Petco Park, which has allowed the Padres to become an upper mid-revenue club, is giving Towers more spending power. For the first time, he said he's able to aggressively fund both the major league payroll and talent searches in the amateur draft and international markets.
Further, the NL West has become more pliable, so much so that the Padres in September became the first team in a nonstrike year to clinch a division title without a winning record at the time.
"I thought this year would be the best chance we would have of winning our division since we did it in 1998, and we did," Towers said. "We want to do better than 82-80. We want to go past the first round of the playoffs.
"But we have a chance to win our division every year, and I couldn't have always said that. I think we have a very good chance of repeating, but there's a lot of work to do."
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/
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