GM search says a lot about Orioles, reborn Duquette
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| Dan Duquette, back in baseball after nine years, says the time away will help. (AP) |
The Orioles hired Dan Doo -- who?
Weeks and weeks of searching, scrounging, stubbing their beaks and requesting permission to speak with employees from other clubs led to ... this?
There is only one thing to say to a man who has been out of the game for nine years, a man whom the Orioles long ago could have plucked from the unemployment market and saved themselves several birdbaths worth of trouble, a man who patiently waited for a third chance he surely had grown to think may never come.
Good luck.
It is the baseball equivalent to Newt Gingrich's sudden and unexpected reemergence. Dan Duquette, back in the game. How long has he been away? Let's just say one of the previous two clubs he ran as GM no longer exists. The other, he took charge of just as Gingrich's "Contract with America" was being unveiled back in 1994.
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How in the name of Wild Bill Hagy did we get from there to here?
Short answer: Duquette got smarter, the Orioles got dumber and sometimes the years help straighten out the bad hops.
It took some time, but while Duquette was in exile, history vindicated him. Once fitted for a dunce cap for allowing the great Roger Clemens to leave Boston because he believed the Rocket was in the "twilight of his career", the phrase that has haunted The Duke for a decade came through the rinse cycle unexpectedly fluffy and clean.
The stain is on Clemens. Turns out, Duquette was another discarded victim of the steroid era. He probably was right about Clemens all along. It wasn't until Clemens began juicing more than a Minute Maid factory that his late-career "re-emergence" produced four more Cy Young awards.
I don't know that Duquette would ever admit it publicly, but Clemens probably had more to do with Duquette's long journey through the baseball wilderness than anything else. As the Rocket re-launched, Duquette looked small-minded for running him out of Boston, and out-of-touch for failing to identify that a guy still had so many dominant years left.
From this perspective alone, I'm happy to see Duquette get another crack at this GM thing.
There was a time when the man was as sharp as they came. This is a guy who twice acquired Pedro Martinez, in Montreal in 1994 and in Boston four years later. This is a guy whose moves helped set the foundation for Boston to win two World Series.
Yes, Boy Wonder Theo Epstein made the final moves and got the credit. But Pedro, Manny Ramirez, Johnny Damon and several other key pieces already were in place in Boston, courtesy of Duquette, when the new regime took control.
Before that, the Expos were a last-place dumping ground when Duquette arrived in 1991. By the time he left following the '93 season, they were a 94-68 powerhouse primed to win in 1994 ... until the season-ending strike wrecked that summer.
"This is right up my alley, frankly," an orange-tie-wearing Duquette said Tuesday as the Orioles introduced him. "Turning around a ballclub, building farm and scouting systems. This is what I love to do."
The fact that Pedro is too old for Duquette to acquire a third time, is only one problem The Duke inherits as he goes to work in a place where baseball long ago yielded to crab cakes as the No. 1 local attraction.
From Earl Weaver to Brooks Robinson to the "Oriole Way", Baltimore once was a model franchise ... in the same way that Rome once had an empire. To find that time, you must dig through an awful lot of history. They have not celebrated a winning summer in Baltimore since 1997.
Toting a yellow legal pad with him to the podium, Duquette name-checked Weaver, Robinson, Boog Powell, Mike Cuellar, Pat Dobson, Eddie Murray and Doug DeCinces within the first 10 minutes of his introductory news conference. There was no mention of Sidney Ponson, Sammy Sosa or Brian Roberts.
The Orioles have been between a rock and hard place for the past 14 years, and that is exactly where Duquette will start. On one side, impossible-to-work-with owner Peter Angelos. On the other, baseball savant and control freak Buck Showalter. Surrounding them: The beastly AL East, with Superpowers New York and Boston, a Tampa Bay club rich in young talent and a Toronto franchise on the rise under whip-smart young GM Alex Anthopoulos.
This was not a job many people in the industry wanted. When you've got folks turning down a lead GM job to remain as an assistant elsewhere in the division -- hello, Tony LaCava in Toronto -- there's one giveaway.
How strange is the Orioles' situation? The manager, Showalter, sat in on GM interviews and helped make the choice. In Baltimore under Angelos, if not formally, Showalter will out-rank Duquette. Or at least reside as his equal.
That is not your normal chain-of-command. But Baltimore long ago missed the "Normal" exit and is careening down the freeway toward "Hopelessly Lost."
The Orioles did not do themselves proud. The search process was embarrassing. The way they treated De Jon Watson, a Dodgers assistant GM, was shameful.
Since the Red Sox fired him in 2002, Duquette has run a baseball academy in Massachusetts. He started a baseball league in Israel in 2007. All that will be far easier than turning around the Orioles, especially if pitchers Brian Matusz and Co. don't reverse their backsliding ways of 2011.
There was a time when Duquette was a proven commodity. But his Red Sox also were the epitome of arrogance and paranoia. If his exile humbled him in some areas and taught him a few things in others, it will be to his benefit.
But nine years away from a big league front office is a long time. Have Duquette's instincts dulled? Have his reflexes slowed?
"My focus is going to be sharper and better from my time away," Duquette maintained, adding that "looking at running a ballclub from not being in the seat of a GM" will be a valuable.
Tellingly, there is an extraordinarily long list the other way, of those who looked at running the O's from a distance ... but wanted absolutely no part of their GM seat.
