The Mattingly Riddle
I had asked Dayton Moore what guided him through the dark years. It’s easy to forget now but Moore was pretty unpopular. He was into his sixth year as the team’s general manager, and the Royals remained in a death spiral of losing. He talked so often about the “process” that the very word became a lightning rod for howls in Kansas City. Royals owner David Glass never even hinted that Moore’s job was on the line, but that didn’t keep many Kansas City fans from hoping for the end of the Moore experience.
And that question: What was the guiding light that led him through?
“The thing I kept thinking all along was, ‘We’re doing this the right way. We’re doing it with good people. At the end of the day we’re going to win,’” he said.
That’s pretty simple sounding, isn’t it? Build your plan around good people who do things the right way and wait for it to pay off. That sounds almost too obvious. It sounds like what everybody around baseball — heck, all around sports — is doing. Why did it work for the Royals?
Well, it might have been the waiting part.
Read More: The Firing Line