Bobby Evans ’91 at the 2022 Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill.
On a spring day in Chapel Hill, Bobby Evans ’91 joined scholar host Benny Klein ’25 outside the Morehead-Cain Foundation to share about his life and career as a Major League Baseball executive. Bobby is the former general manager of the San Francisco Giants, a role he served from 2015 to 2018.
Bobby speaks about his grandmother’s pivotal advice as a high schooler, his start in baseball as an intern at UNC–Chapel Hill, the opportunities that led to the general manager role, and the highs and lows of working with the Giants. He also gives his perspective on a people-first approach to team building.
Bobby now serves on the national leadership council for the Positive Coaching Alliance, a nonprofit that provides research-based training materials and resources for coaches, parents, athletes, and leaders to promote positive youth development experiences through sports. The alumnus also collaborates with Because Baseball, a nonprofit founded by Kemp Gouldin ’02 that aims to “build bridges of friendship” in the Middle East using baseball.
[quote text=”It’s very important not to feel the weight of the world on your shoulders alone, because no one person can manage all of that. You put good people around you.” name=”Bobby Evans ” year=”1991″ /]
Music credits
The first and second songs in this episode are by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.
How to listen
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Catalyze is hosted and produced by Sarah O’Carroll for the Morehead-Cain Foundation, home of the first merit scholarship program in the United States and located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on Twitter or Instagram at @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.
Episode Transcription
(Benny)
Welcome to Catalyze. I’m your host, Benny Klein, from the class of ’24. Today’s guest is former San Francisco Giants general manager Bobby Evans from the class of ’91. He stopped by the Foundation last May during his father-son college tour of UNC. Bobby shares stories about his grandmother’s paradigm shifting advice, sneaking into the UNC versus Duke basketball game at Cameron Indoor Stadium to cheer on the Tar Heels, the changing landscape of professional baseball, and his people-first approach to building effective teams. Bobby Evans is a veteran major league baseball executive. Over the course of 25 years, Bobby advanced from being a minor league administrative assistant to serving as the franchise’s senior vice president and general manager. During that time, he helped the team reach seven postseason appearances and three World Series championships. Now Bobby serves on the National Leadership Council for the Positive Coaching Alliance and works with Because Baseball, a nonprofit founded by Kemp Gouldin of the class of ’02. Based in Cairo, Egypt, they aim to build bridges of friendship in the Middle East.
(Benny)
All right, Bobby, thank you so much for talking with me today. I’m really excited to get to chat.
(Bobby)
My pleasure. Good to be with you. Beautiful day in Chapel Hill. Can’t beat it.
(Benny)
Yes, sir. It’s getting hot on campus, but as expected. I’d love to start off, you were born in New York, but you are from Jackson, North Carolina. And what was it like transitioning from New York to Jackson?
(Bobby)
Well, so I was born in New York, but we moved a couple of times. Once, when I was about nine months old, from New York to Walnut Creek, California. And then, when I was about two and a half years old, we moved to Framingham, just 20 minutes west of Boston. So we were in Boston, just outside of Boston, until I was nine years old. So it really created this passion for sports, all the Boston sports. And so the move to North Carolina was actually harder than I expected. I’ve always been one who embraced change, even as a young boy. But when we got to North Carolina, and I realized I couldn’t watch any Celtics games, any Red Sox games, any Bruins games, or Patriot games, and it was just like I felt lost all of a sudden. I think my attachment to New England became even stronger because I was away from all those sports. I was a part of a small town of about 700, I think. Now it’s even smaller.
But in fact, while I’ve been here in Chapel Hill, I went back to Jackson just this weekend, and I met up with a couple of classmates, one in particular, who right after I got there in the third grade, he came up to me, and I teased him about this the other day. “You came up to me,” I told him, I said, “Doug, you walked up to me and said, ‘Hey, Al and I are coming to your house today to play football.’ And I was like, ”Okay.” And Doug was like, the biggest kid in class. And so you weren’t going to argue with Doug, but as a kid, just the embrace of one of your classmates like that. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. But I didn’t really appreciate Jackson initially because I was so stuck on what I was missing from New England. And I went to the Hugh O’Brien Leadership Conference as a sophomore in high school, and at that leadership conference, they began interviewing candidates for the national conference. And so at the national conference, I was told I’d be representing the state of North Carolina, if you get selected. I ended up one of the finalists. They interviewed me. I ended up not getting it. And my dad came to pick me up that day at the end of the conference in Charlotte and take me home. And he had my grandmother, his mom, with him. And she began asking me about the conference, and I told her about the finals and that I was a finalist for the Leadership National Program and some of the questions they asked me and what I answered, and she became very agitated. And she was just like, she doesn’t get angry ever, but riding in the car, she’s getting really upset. And she turned in her seat, and she said, “Do you realize that every question they asked you, you answered with something about Boston, Massachusetts, Red Sox? You understand you now are in North Carolina, but your roots are in North Carolina. You’re from North Carolina. Your mom and dad met in college in North Carolina. You need to take some pride in where you’re from.” And it struck me so significantly that when I went back for my junior year of high school, I was just totally invested in the people. I already loved my friends and our school, but it created a deeper passion for North Carolina, Northampton County, Jackson, and I really invested in leadership. And ultimately, my senior year, I became student body president and invested even more with great people, great friends, and student council members around me.
And in 2014, when we had our third child, I named him Jackson. In many ways, I was honoring two very deep loves for me. One, the town of Jackson, because of all that they mean to me. But then my grandmother, who spoke into my life in a way that made me appreciate and began to love what I already should have loved, but in a deeper way. And so therefore, Jackson represents my love for North Carolina, Jackson, and Northampton County, and my grandmother. So the transition was hard as a boy, but with that wake up call, I figured it out in the end.
(Benny)
And sticking with the theme of transitions, what was it like going from a town of 700 people to being a Morehead-Cain scholar at the University of Chapel Hill with 20,000 people?
(Bobby)
Probably more challenging than the number of people were the number of opportunities. I mean, there was an overflow. When you come on campus here, there is an overflow of opportunities. And when I was a freshman, I was very focused. I was a student, I was going to find a church family, and I was going to be involved in baseball. So it wasn’t very complicated for me when I first got here. Those are my three focuses.
The baseball was very demanding. As I tried out for the team and didn’t make it, I asked to be a student manager, and I was successful at getting that. And the student manager job was just pretty involved, very time consuming. And so between the academics and the investment of time in baseball and a local church, University Baptist on the corner of Columbia Street, that’s where I dedicated my time. But it was after leaving the student manager position my sophomore year and joining club baseball that I found time was on my hands more than ever. And I began really trying to figure out where do I invest, where do I invest my time, because there’s only so many classes and only so many elements of study that you need to do in your your non-classroom time. And so I needed to find a home base of investment of other things. And so that became really the more challenging, because I never had so many opportunities staring at me. And you certainly have opportunities in high school, but in a small town and small county, nothing like I was getting in Chapel Hill.
(Benny)
And I know you, like you said, were playing club baseball for UNC. I’m curious where the deep passion for baseball comes from? And then obviously we know now that your career went in that direction, but I’m curious if you had confidence then that that’s where you’d end up, or were you exploring other career options, or how did you come to that decision?
(Bobby)
Well, as a boy watching all the major sports of the time, football, hockey, basketball, and baseball, baseball just had a unique tug at my heart, and I think some of it was organic. And I had an older brother who collected baseball cards, so I course collected baseball cards. My mom and dad were passionate baseball fans. In fact, when they got married, my dad graduated from the dental school at Carolina, my mom graduated from Meredith, and when they got married, they went to a double header in Washington on their honeymoon. Their passion for baseball was pretty evident.
But as a kid, all I ever dreamed of was playing in the big leagues. I was a big fan of Carlton Fisk. I wanted to be a catcher, and I guess I was probably eight years old when a player from the New England Patriots came to my church and spoke. And it was the first time I’d ever seen my church full, and it’s in Sudbury, Massachusetts, which, Sudbury is where Babe Ruth lived when he played for the Red Sox back in the whatever ’20s or pre-’20s. When I saw my church full, and I saw John Hannah speaking, who was a member of the New England Patriots, it really impacted me. I was like, I could live my dream, play baseball, and make an impact, maybe an impact like John Hannah. And so I prayed at that moment. I prayed, I said, “God, if you put me in the big leagues, I’ll dedicate my career to you like John Hannah.
I’ll make an impact.” And so as a kid, that was just my heart’s dream. And I played baseball growing up, and we moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina. I continued to play baseball and got to high school, play baseball. In fact, yesterday I had an opportunity to have dinner with my high school baseball coach. I drove down to Wilmington, North Carolina, and met him where he was able to drive up and connect. And we just talked about all the great memories of playing under him and with him and his dedication to us. He was our calculus teacher, so it was very important that we got our work done.
But when I got to college, I thought I’d walk on at Carolina. I’ll be honest, I really didn’t understand what Division 1 athletics meant. I just thought, “Yeah, I’m going to Carolina. I’ll walk on.” And I quickly found out two or three whatever workouts into it that I wasn’t going to make it. I remember looking at my name on that list. I can still see myself staring at that and thinking it’s got to be a typo. There’s got to be more opportunity than this. Then I went in and talked to the coach, and he said to me, “Bobby, as we evaluated you, you’re average in every category, and average is good, but we need more above average skills in at least one or two areas.” And I ultimately asked him if I could be a student manager, and he said yes. But as I grew up in the game professionally, I learned that that’s a really nice way of saying you’re not good enough. You’re very average in a lot of areas. So it was very humbling. It was very humbling, but it was a good wake up call. But my dream was still, I still wanted to play in the big leagues, but I thought being a student manager, I could throw batting practice, hit fungos. Maybe I’d get a chance to hit BP. Maybe I’d impress, maybe I’d grow stronger.
So my sophomore year, I went and played summer ball before my sophomore year in Daytona Beach with the Daytona Beach Dodgers in this Central Florida baseball league. And I thought I’ll come back ready to compete. That was my hope.
(Benny)
Yeah, and I know you know better than anyone else just how hard it is to make it, whether that’s Division 1 or to the show itself. It’s impossible, really.
(Bobby)
Well, it’s incredibly difficult. And I think one of the benefits of youth is we don’t always understand how far it takes to get to that level. And I think that’s one of the benefits, is being naïve, but also being willing to work hard. And even as I talk to my 17-year-old son, who’s playing in high school, and he’s trying to be very realistic about his future in baseball, I tell him, “Hey, you never know how you might grow, how you might develop, what opportunities might come. Keep working at it. Keep pushing.” And I always tell kids, “You be the player and let the scouts be the scouts. Don’t try to be your own scout. Let scouts tell you whether you’re good enough. You just focus on working hard at it.”
(Benny)
Absolutely. And if you could give me some favorite Chapel Hill memories, whether that’s in the classroom, socially, or with Carolina sports, you pick.
(Bobby)
Well, one of my favorite memories actually hit the highlight reel this year in Chapel Hill because forgive me for not remembering whether it was 1990. I think it was 1990. Carolina was not doing particularly well, and Duke was ranked, I think, number one in the country. And they’re playing at Cameron Indoor Stadium. So I was like, I want to go see that game. So I had a car on campus. I think I was a junior. And so I drove over to Cameron Indoor, and I saw all these students camped out, and I was like, so I asked them, I was like, “What do you guys do?” And they like, when whatever time comes, 6:00 comes, we all just line up, and we show our ID and go in.“ I was like, ”Okay, great.“ So I take off, come back to campus, do whatever I got to do, keep watching my watch. And I’m like, okay, it’s getting close. So I go back. I go back to Cameron. It’s about to be 6:00. I park my car. I see everybody’s starting to gather up to get in line. I just jump in line.
And when I got to the door, they were checking IDs. I just flashed my Carolina ID. But the guy that was checking IDs got distracted by the person in front of me because they had this big gaudy sign. And they’re like, you can’t bring that in here. And while he was fussing at them, you’re already seated. I was already walking in. And so when I got in, I sat in the student section behind the basket, and I screamed my head off for two halves of basketball in which Carolina just crushed the Blue Devils in a historic win. I went alone. And the guy who sang the national anthem, at one point, well, there was a guy, someone sitting near me said, “Hey, when you’re screaming, you got to scream with more bass in your voice because you’re going to hurt your lungs, because it was pretty exciting. I realized it was the guy who sang the national anthem, so good advice, but it was a historic win, and we got to see some replications of that this year, which was fun, but one of my favorite memories.
(Benny)
It was a blast this year in Chapel Hill for sure. If we could move on to the start of your career. I know you worked in the commissioner’s office. I’m curious what it was like getting that early exposure and how, if at all, it set you up for the rest of your career?
(Bobby)
Being a part of the Morehead-Cain process and being a finalist for an interview. So I ended up as one of nine finalists for this job in the commissioner’s office, and there was obviously really good candidates. Again, I think that being from a small town in North Carolina, I tease people and say that at some level I wonder if they hired me just because they wanted to see if a kid from a small town in North Carolina could make it in New York. Because my interview was very organic, it wasn’t anything dramatic about it. They did ask me a lot about the town of Jackson. They were like, “So do you have a sheriff in town that pulls people over?” And we have no stoplights. We have one yellow blinking light. And I said, “Well, we have Sheriff Willard, who, if you speed through town, he’ll grab you. And in fact, he pulled over Jim Valvano not long ago because he was going to Chowan College, I think, to scout some players.” And so they all laughed, and it was just a very relaxing interview. But part of what made it relaxing is they were asking me about where I was from. So, again, Jackson played a role probably even in that opportunity.
But when I got the opportunity, it was one of those things where it was just pedal to the metal, just try to learn as much as I could. I was in the baseball operations department of the commissioner’s office, where we were trying to prepare for the baseball draft. We were overseeing the transactions of major league and minor league players, and we were looking at the baseball rules and the facility quality of the facilities, the tobacco policy in baseball, at that time. Magic Johnson was diagnosed with HIV or HIV positive, and so we began an education program to help players understand what that meant for the clubhouse and how you needed to be more careful about sharing razors and things like that in a clubhouse. And we had doctors and specialists to try to guide us. But the opportunity just gave me interactions and context with every major league club, and I was able to see kind of which clubs were uniquely good or uniquely struggling or seemed to be led by people with a strong presence or people that were uncertain about how I would fit there.
And so when my boss always encouraged me, at some point, “Bobby, you want to get with a team.” Well, I had worked for the Red Sox, so of course I wanted to work for a team. When opportunities came and went, I interviewed and talked with teams, but one opportunity really stood out, and it was an opportunity with the San Francisco Giants. Just because coming from Chapel Hill, and now living in New York City, which New York City is I think it was one of the things that John Motley Morehead said in his speech. I don’t know if you’ve seen the speech that he gave the 1957 class at Carolina. It’s titled “That’s That.” And in that speech, he talks about how when you graduate, go move to a big city. Work in a big company where you can grow. I was living in New York City, so I didn’t really want to go from New York City to a smaller city. But I just wanted to make sure if I was going to go to a major league city, I wanted to be sure it was a strong major league city and a city with major league history, with baseball history. And for the Giants, it was just a great fit because they had come from New York. San Francisco was such an incredible city. In fact, when I got the job with the Giants, after interviewing and going through their process, people came up to me left and right. San Francisco is my favorite city, my favorite city, my favorite city. And I had spent very little time in San Francisco, and I see why now, after 26 years, why it’s people’s favorite city.
(Benny)
It checks out.
(Bobby)
It does.
(Benny)
And how arduous and grueling was your work in the minor leagues? So I grew up in Durham, went to Durham Bulls games all the time. That was one of our favorite things to do as kids. But I know how tough that system is. You don’t get paid well, you’re on the road. But what was it like in the office side of that, was it as tough as it is on the players?
(Bobby)
Well, I was 25 years old, and I was tasked with replacing a longtime assistant director of player development, and I was also tasked with the fact that the Giants had been just purchased a year earlier. And so there was still a lot of new beginnings for this new ownership in terms of how they wanted to conduct business and how they wanted to manage their player development. And Brian Sabian at the time was my boss. He had expectations coming from the New York Yankees of what he wanted to see. And I had a Jack Hyatt, who was originally with the Giants in the ’60s and had now taken over as the head of player development in the late ’80s being a part. Their experience and expertise were really pillars for me to learn from and places for me to depend on how to manage agents, how to manage player contracts, how to manage, and I’m 25. Tony Siegel was the assistant GM at the time. And so they had very clearly defined expectations and guidelines as to what they needed me to do in terms of really running the operations of the minor league system, travel, and making sure we had a good guy running our equipment and doing our travel and building relationships with the minor league affiliates.
So it was a nonstop job. In fact, I worked so many hours as a single guy, moving to a city, I was just able to just work nonstop. And in the process, I was able to build systems and processes that were maintainable and manageable for a much more normal workload and just take on more and more things. But the strike hit in 1994, and Tony Siegel, our assistant GM, left to go to the Rockies. And when he left to go to the Rockies, a lot of his responsibilities poured into my lap administratively, which really allowed me to set up more systems and more processes that even have impacted our major league operations. So at 25 years old, I’ve got my hands full. And baseball, you could work in baseball for ten or 15 years and never get the responsibility that I got in nine months. And it was, it was incredible education by fire. And I was strong administratively and strong operationally. So I was able to take the lead on a lot of different things, and it grew over time. But I began to learn in that process how to care for our players, how to care for our coaches, how to care for our scouts, how to care for our major league personnel, how to care for our major league players, their families, and in the process, developed systems and processes that would make our organization first rate in terms of our care and treatment of our guys, and make sure that we eliminate distractions for our players so that they can perform the best on the field, and whether that’s a simple thing like getting approval from ownership to give a bonus to a player who had a great season, first half of the season, but didn’t make the All-Star team, but still give them a bonus. Or give a player that made the All-Star team that didn’t have a bonus in this contract, still give them a bonus. Or asking ownership to let me have permission to fly a player’s family to San Francisco when they get called up for the first time so that they can be there, in fact, including flying the scout that signed them there as well for that moment. So a lot of things just to really understand what motivates your people, what keeps people focused on doing their best work. And one of the things that’s very distracting for players is in the minor leagues, the lower level minor leagues baseball, the AAA, you get promoted, you get a phone call, and you’ve got to go back to your hotel room or back to your apartment, pack it up, and get on a flight in no time, because we need you in the lineup right now.
And so that can be very difficult for players. And invariably I’d be calling a player and let him know, and he’d say, “Well, my girlfriend just got here from Idaho, and what am I going to do?” And so I learned quickly that ownership was behind me to allow that player to fly her with them and make it easy for him. Don’t create more costs for them. Help them, reimburse them for the remaining portion of the rent that they had to give up. We just cared about our guys, and we felt like that gave them the best chance of success. But the minor leagues is always tough. We had to help our minor league affiliates understand that if you’re going to save money, never save money on the bus. Make sure you have a quality bus. I can’t afford for our players to get stuck somewhere and be stuck on a bus for hours in the heat, that’s not good for them physically or mentally or performance wise. We need to have travel arrangements that give them the best chance of performance. Go a day early on the road. Don’t always wait until the day of. And we just tried to get our affiliates to invest more in their facilities, their batting cages, their fields. I gave them a list of slam dunks. If you’re a minor league affiliate of the Giants, you’re going to have a field that’s in excellent condition and always available. You’re going to have a batting cage that’s in excellent condition and always available. You’re going to make sure that you take care of our guys on the road. You have hotels that are slam dunks. These are slam dunks. If you’re going to be an affiliate of ours, our guys got to be in the right hotel. They have to have the right bus, and, and we’ve got to make sure that the housing in the community is sufficient for them. And so a lot of our affiliates created family housing, which is at little or no cost to the player, which made things more tenable. And as we see now in the minor leagues, I love the fact that the minor leagues have a voice now, even if it’s just through social media, but just to be able to communicate the nature of the accommodations or situations that they’re facing so that they can get better. We always tried to go above and beyond, but even looking at what we did, it still needed to evolve into more. And I’m thankful to see it’s continuing to evolve into a better situation.
(Benny)
Thank you for listening to Catalyze. I’m your host, Benny Klein. This interview wrapped early so Bobby could regroup with his son, who was touring campus that afternoon. I had the chance of catching up with Bobby later on Zoom, where we continue the conversation about his career with the Giants. That’s up next.
Okay, so I think when we left off, we were talking about your career in the minor leagues and how quickly you kind of moved up the institutional ladder. I’d love to ask, what was it like when you got the call or were first told you were going to be the general manager, and what was the best piece of advice you received when you first stepped into that role?
(Bobby)
I mean, it was a long time in the organization, and I tried to never really focus on anything other than the job at hand. It became tempting at times to get concerned because oftentimes I felt like I had a role that didn’t necessarily match the title. But I didn’t let that worry me too much. I just tried to focus on the job at hand. The goal was never to become any one position. The goal was just to try to be a part of a winning organization and make an impact in the league and ultimately win the best prize of all, which is the World Series. And we got to the World Series four times, and then we won it three times. And during the World Series in 2014, I got wind that there was a possibility that I could be named the general manager for the start the following season. I was certainly excited about that, but I think the greater excitement just came in us winning and just the combination that we had built. We’d built such a great team. Nobody trying to get each other’s job, everybody working so well together. It felt good to get that acknowledgment, particularly from my boss, who was the general manager and then ultimately also our owner or president, team president, as well, and the ownership group as a whole. So it felt very affirming. It was a great moment. The conversation was initially first through our general manager, and then followed by the team president, and then followed by a press conference. So in about 72 hours, it kind of got thrust towards that. We were coming off of winning the World Series, and the team was one we’d worked on all winter, but it didn’t feel immediately any different. I mean, I think we were trying to operate as we always did, collaboratively. Yeah, I felt the weight of the responsibility because I think our general manager, my longtime boss, was trying to back away, but then he would also try to balance being involved. He wasn’t being paid to be uninvolved. He was just backing away a little bit. So it was just a dynamic, and the difference was very challenging, I think, for both of us. But I was excited to get that opportunity. I think, again, there’s only 30 of those jobs, and so I certainly have to be thankful for the opportunity.
(Benny)
Sure. How do you manage the emotions of that responsibility? You have an entire fan base and are in a position that, fairly or unfairly, is often judged based on wins and losses.
(Bobby)
You try to never get too high or too low. I mean, having come off a World Series in 2014, before there’s a parade, you also start working on the next season. So you just can’t get too high. You enjoy the moment and you try to get the most out of it, but you also realize that you’re on the team bus following the parade, and you got some of the players on the bus, and some of those players are free agents, they’re arbitration eligible or trade candidates. And you immediately forget about the parade even, you just start thinking about, okay, what’s the status of this player’s contract? What can we do to keep him? What are we going to do if a trade opens up here? So your mind just starts racing. And as much as you’re attentive to the excitement or the expectations of fans, there’s a lot of internal expectations too. And those internal expectations, you’re with them every day. You’re with them every offseason, every season, every game day. Those expectations are so forefront of your mind. You have a Buster Posey on the team. He expects to be on a team that’s going to win. I mean, you have a Bruce Bochy who’s won 2000 games in the big leagues. I mean, he expects to win. You have a coaching staff that has helped us win three times. You have a scouting staff, a player development system that’s expecting players to come up through the system and get opportunities. There’s scouts that are finding players that expect us to put the money behind signing them. You’ve got, you know, players that have expectations of playing time, of opportunity, of certain roles, of a certain place on the team. There’s so many expectations. The only way, you as an individual can’t manage all those expectations alone. You put core leaders in place to help guide each of those expectations, each of those areas of need and expectation to be as fruitful and as productive and as effective as possible. It’s very important not to feel the weight of the world on your shoulders alone, because no one person can manage all of that. You put good people around you.
Unfortunately, over 20 plus years, Brian and I had brought so many great people to the organization that we felt very supported in our given roles and our responsibilities. As the expectations grow externally from fans or season ticket holders or both, you understand, I mean, you get it. But those expectations are just along with so many others. And you have a lot of expectations of yourself. I mean, you have expectations of what you can do. But the reality is there’s only so many things you can control. So you have to get your rest at night, and you have to put today behind you and look towards tomorrow when things don’t go your way. In a successful season, you’re guaranteed to lose at least 60 games, right?
(Benny)
Exactly.
(Bobby)
So you can’t get too high or too low, but you definitely ride the wave when the team is going well, and you feel the pain of it when it’s going bad. And you never know when you lose three in a row, are you going to lose four in a row, or can you swing back and win three or four more? So you do get on that bumpy ride during the season, but part of the discipline of being in the game for a long time is learning how to not get too caught up in the ups and downs and try to remain steady. Smile at your staff the morning after a loss. You don’t have to play the grumpy role. I’m grumpy today. We lost. Don’t smile. I get that. I mean, maybe after a game in the clubhouse, that’s a given, but back to the office the next day, you got to move on.
(Benny)
My high school coach’s term was “flush it, move on.” You mentioned all the people that it takes to be successful. I’m curious, what are some of the intangibles that you look for in recruiting talent, both with players and staff and in business more generally?
(Bobby)
You need a certain level of expertise. You need a certain level of competence in the role. In this game, experience can play a significant role, too. But really having all of that doesn’t matter if you’re not a good communicator, if you’re not able to communicate internally and work with others, a good team player, you’re looking for leadership. You’re looking for leadership potential. You’re looking for skills that will translate to helping put together a roster and putting together a department, putting together a budget, putting together a plan, a strategy. People that are good at executing that strategy, people that are good at evaluating, not only evaluating talent on the field, but evaluating talent to add to their team, to their department so that there’s a constant flow of talent evaluators, talented talent evaluators, talented front office people, and talented coaches, talented scouts to help develop and find talented players. So those are some of the skills you’re looking for. I mean, it’s not any one thing.
(Benny)
My brother’s, my dad, and I love the movie Moneyball. And could you give me a letter, grade A to F on how well they do in representing the role of general manager? Is there a little part of you that wishes Brad Pitt was playing you in a movie like Moneyball? And part of this game for those 25 years when it seems like the stats era came about? So could you talk a little bit about how that changed your perspective on the game?
(Bobby)
A lot of the scouts had a different impression of what the numbers were saying. Their evaluation of a player might not match exactly what they were, exactly what the numbers were saying. And so that created some frustration at times, but it became part of our journey, part of our decision-making process. And in the early 2000s, we didn’t have an experience exactly like the A’s, in the sense that we were trying to put our team together with the best information available. But our 2002 team, which is very similar to the A’s in the book, Moneyball, also had a very good team. We were probably more offensive in 2002 than we had been in a while. Our pitching was very good. I think in the book it doesn’t give enough credit, probably, to the A’s pitching. Barry Zito and Molder and other guys that were just significant parts of, Tim Hutton. I mean, just parts of that club. But we were all going through it. We were all going through the transition to more information being available, and how do we digest it, and we worked hard to do that. And I think that our success in the long run was because we balanced all of the new information, all the new technology, without discounting the value of the Scouts and their observations and their experience, which I give our scouts a lot of credit in being more open to the information that was coming into the pipeline than maybe other teams or maybe than other teams realized scouts could be open to. And it ultimately worked to our advantage. I think a big part of the reason we won three in five years was because of the collaborative effort of everyone, not discounting anybody’s contribution.
(Benny)
I’d love to move on to the state of the game today. Could you give me your perspective? I know that Don Mattingly, the Marlins manager, recently said, he called baseball unwatchable sometimes because nothing goes on. And I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment, but critics are certainly pretty loud these days on the state of the game. So what’s your take?
(Bobby)
The game has always been one that has had varying views of its entertainment value. And I appreciate everyone’s input. I think the commissioner has a tough job. I think trying to address areas of concern in the game without downplaying the enjoyment or value of the game is very hard. We got corporate sponsors and fans and TV right deals and things like that that would give me the impression that the game is very healthy and very strong. But I understand the need to try to always think differently and try to make sure that you don’t miss out on an opportunity to let the game get better and stronger and more entertaining and more appreciated by its fans. That said, I love the game. Yeah, I see differences in the game all the time, but I think that baseball is trying to address those changes and those differences. I think even this year, we’re seeing that the baseball is not traveling as far. I think that’s reflective somewhat of baseball trying to find a ball that’s made in a way that will have a consistency and not have so much enormous bounce to it or fly to it or win resistance to it, that it’s true for every ballpark and every game. But these kinds of things do challenge the game today. It’s not a secret.
But I think that we got to be careful to not talk down on the game when things are different or things are not the way they need to be or should be. But understand that there is a challenge that the game faces with players are adjusting to the game, front offices are adjusting to the game and finding ways to get an edge. And sometimes those with an edge become a challenge to the way we’re used to watching the game be played. So the shift has become a big talking point. It’s a different way of watching the game. I mean, back when Ted Williams played, I mean, Ted Williams was shifted on, but in that day and time, not everybody else was that was left handed. Nowadays, if you’re left handed and you have a slight pull, you’re going to be shifted on, and it’s probably going to affect your batting average by ten or 20 points in a given season.
(Benny)
Right.
(Bobby)
We just have to be honest with the fact that the game is organic. It is going to need to be dynamically treated. It’s going to have to change. It may not change to everyone’s liking every time it changes, but as long as everybody puts their best efforts together from the commissioner’s office all the way down through the league, we should find ways to get it better and stronger. I understand the three outcomes: a strike out, a walk, or a home run. I get that, too. But I still love watching the game, and I find it exhilarating to see the competition, the level of talent, the quality of the pitching, the approach that hitters are taking that are so different than the approach that was taken five and ten, fifteen years ago. I think it’s dynamic, and for that I love it.
(Benny)
Absolutely. I’m really curious to see will we see bigger bases or a 14-second pitch clock, and will they ban the defensive shifts that you’re talking about? So it’s certainly an interesting time to follow along.
I’d like to pivot now to kind of back to Chapel Hill. I know you were in the area because you were touring your son or bringing him to UNC. What advice are you giving him in the college process? Or what would you tell us, current scholars, future scholars, about going through the process?
(Bobby)
When I think about what you all at Carolina have been through these last couple of years, I’ve got to believe it’s going to create a resilience in you that has a chance to really impact you personally and professionally for the duration of your life and career. It was no easy task for any of us to go through a pandemic, a shutdown of our normal way of life. And the fruit of that for you all will be a resilience and a strength that will be unlike what you might have otherwise. You were asked to endure things that we were never asked to endure as a student. And I think that for that reason, I think you’ll find that you’ll be in a place of strength going forward. No matter what hits you, you’ll know how to battle against it. I think that as you experience your life at Carolina, I think it’s very important to build relationships, build a care for others that maybe unlike even the care that you had for others even in high school, just a greater, deeper care. Get to know people of all ages in and around Chapel Hill. Don’t limit it to just students. Get to know your professors. Get to know the people of Chapel Hill. You’ll work hard and accomplish everything you hope to accomplish academically. But Carolina is more than just the academic environment. There’s also opportunity. There’s opportunity to serve, opportunity to learn and grow in ways inside and outside the classroom that you don’t want to miss. The people that you’re around today will be very different perhaps, than the people that you’ll be around as you enter your career, depending on where you start your career, where you’re located, in a sense, consider yourself planted somewhere for four years and make the most of it. And don’t look at yourself as just there for a short time, because that short time, although it is a short time and it’ll go quickly, there’s a lot that can be accomplished in four years, in your own mind and heart and in your relationship with others.
(Benny)
My class in particular, missing the end of senior year and not having that kind of transition period, but I do agree that I think we’ll be used to challenges and hopefully learn as much as we can here and be ready to take it on in the real world. I’d love to do a lightning round. One or two word answers to these quick questions.
(Bobby)
You got it.
(Benny)
Okay. What’s your go to ballpark meal or snack?
(Bobby)
Well, chicken sandwich. And nothing like our ballpark here in San Francisco. But my favorite of all time is Fenway.
(Benny)
What do you do to release stress?
(Bobby)
I love to spend time with other people to process challenges or issues. That’s a great stress reliever for me. Exercise, playing ball.
(Benny)
Who is one of your favorite role models?
(Bobby)
One of the people that I really admire is Bob Iger. A lot of what he wrote in his book in terms of leadership, I could really relate to and feel like it really impacted my own leadership. But also, Pat Lincioni is another writer who does a lot of good books on organizational leadership. So those are two leaders that I really admire.
(Benny)
Awesome. And last, what’s something you’re most excited for in the future?
(Bobby)
I’m excited to see my children grow and develop in their areas of passion, anxious to see how God will shape their hearts and lives in ways that will honor Him and allow them to make an impact wherever they go. So that’s probably the most exciting thing I look forward to.
(Benny)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. It was a real pleasure getting to know you a little bit better, and I really appreciate it.
(Bobby)
Hey, Ben, thanks a ton. It was great meeting you and spending time with you. And let’s do it again soon.
(Benny)
Yes, sir.
