Elliott: 101 most influential Canadians in baseball
From SABR member Bob Elliott at The Whig on January 6, 2014, with mention of SABR members Jacques Doucet, Tom Tippett, Peter Morris, Bill Humber, and Scott Crawford:
The Kansas City Royals were winning Game 6 of the World Series 10-0 on Tuesday., Oct. 28, with only a few outs remaining before a Game 7 the next day.
Some time around the eighth inning, someone told us: “Paul Beeston won’t be back with the Blue Jays in 2015.”
It was too late to make any calls, but the next day, we made a bunch. After all, Beeston’s future was more important than Game 7. Our Ken Fidlin can write a gamer 10 times better than me anyway.
If Beeston left, who would replace him? What was the future of general manager Alex Anthopoulos? Ditto for manager John Gibbons.
All the phone calls resulted in zero franchise-shaking news in the executive suite. It was status quo.
Beeston, whose contract expired at the end of October, would return for 2015 … or so we were told.
Little did we know that Edward Rogers, deputy chairman of Rogers Communications, had been making phone calls on his own.
Phone calls to Baltimore … to Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos inquiring about hiring general manager Dan Duquette. And calls to Chicago … to White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf to ask about hiring Kenny Williams, the White Sox executive vice-president, to become the Jays’ next president. He even made calls to Williams himself.
Both Reinsdorf and Williams confirmed receiving calls at the winter meetings the first week of December in San Diego, two days after ESPN broke the story. Calls to Chicago were made either on Nov. 5 or 6.
So, with that handful of phone calls, seeking a new president while the current president was still in office, Edward Rogers has achieved something his father, the late Ted Rogers, never accomplished.
Edward is our choice as the most influential Canadian in baseball in 2014 on our eighth annual top 101 list of movers and shakers.
Read the full article here: http://www.thewhig.com/2015/01/06/bob-elliotts-top-101-most-influential-canadians-in-baseball
Originally published: January 7, 2015. Last Updated: January 7, 2015.