Dave Dombrowski is the president of baseball operations for the Phillies. (Cheryl Pursell)
PHILADELPHIA — When Dave Dombrowski was hired by the Phillies to be the club’s president of baseball operations in December 2020, he received a note from a fellow Philadelphia front office executive: Eagles vice president and general manager Howie Roseman.
After hearing that Roseman was going to throw out a ceremonial first pitch prior to Tuesday’s game against the Braves, Dombrowski shot Roseman a text: “Throw a strike.” The two planned on meeting up to say hello later that night.
Roseman hooked a pitch to the left-handed batter’s box. He won’t catch any real grief for it.
The loud applause for Roseman from Phillies fans tells you that he has about as high of an approval rating as a Philadelphia front office executive could.
Dombrowski, already a future Hall of Famer, has to win at least one World Series to achieve a similar status, though he is more aware than anyone that success is fleeting. He was fired by the Red Sox in 2019, just one year after winning the World Series.
But that’s part of the business that both Dombrowski and Roseman have dedicated their careers to. Philadelphia fans by nature love to talk about their favorite teams — and the competency of their respective front offices — in relation to one another, but how often do the leaders of these beloved institutions interact with each other?
There is naturally more opportunity for collaboration on the business side, especially now considering that the Phillies and Comcast Spectacor, the owner of the Philadelphia Flyers, are all-in on the redevelopment of the sports complex.
As for the executives who make trades, draft picks and other roster decisions, Dombrowski has not had much interaction with Daryl Morey or anyone else in the 76ers front office. He recently met fellow Western Michigan grad and Flyers president of hockey operations Keith Jones. Dombrowski did get a chance to interact with Roseman during a seminar for local front office personnel hosted by the Eagles a couple years ago.
“You have a chance to talk about culture, but also about what’s important for them to win, how it correlates to what we do,” Dombrowski said. “I find that very interesting myself.”
There is mutual respect between the top two sports executives in the city.
“Highly, highly respect (the Eagles),” Dombrowski said. “They’ve done a great job with everything that they’ve done here. They’ve built a really good franchise, and they’re very successful. It’s a situation where I respect what (Roseman) has done and have enjoyed getting to know him a little bit.”
Dombrowski was hired as an administrative assistant by the White Sox in 1978. He got his first job as a GM with the Expos at age 31 in 1988, won his first World Series with the expansion Florida Marlins 10 years later and has led every team he has taken over since his first stop in Montreal to at least one World Series appearance. At 68, he is the president of baseball operations for a Phillies team with the best winning percentage in the sport.
The version of the sport that Dombrowski broke into is almost unrecognizable. His career began three years after the end of the reserve clause. Pitch counts became an official statistic in 1988, his first year as a GM. He has seen multiple work stoppages, the steroid era and how analytics have taken over the sport.
With Roseman around, it brought up a curious thought: Could a successful front office executive in one sport transition to another? If there is one executive that could do it, it’s Dombrowski, considering his ability to adapt to an ever-changing sport over a nearly 50-year career.
So why does it almost never happen? Dombrowski mentioned current Dodgers president Stan Kasten, the former Atlanta Hawks GM and Atlanta Thrashers president.
“I think it’s harder than it sounds,” Dombrowski said. “One major reason that you become successful in your own sport is that you understand all the nuances, the rules, the regulations, the evaluation processes. You grow up in that regard with that information. Where I think you could provide a lot of the same to another sport is from a leadership capacity, but it would take you a while to learn all the nuances of that particular sport.
“Let’s use an example. We don’t have a salary cap. I’m always intrigued by how other clubs (navigate it) and I read things on it, but you really have to study it.”
Roseman’s ability to manipulate the salary cap is part of what makes him a great football executive. Dombrowski’s ability to communicate with owners and get them to align with his vision is part of what makes him a great baseball executive. All great executives are great leaders, Dombrowski said. But the best are the ones who are the most knowledgeable about the industry they work in.
“You can talk about business, you can talk about sports franchises. You can talk about military operations, government,” Dombrowski said. “Leadership is probably the quality you possess that can be transferred to any walk of life.
“But what makes you a difference maker is your knowledge of that particular area and aspect in which you have to learn.”
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