Only one turned out to be the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, however, and he returns to us this week to revive a bit of the old sensationalism in a tense October setting.
Ned Colletti, if the Dodgers advance to the World Series, could be baseball's executive of the year, and while he might not actually be the best general manager in the game, he's at least the best one who ever ghostwrote a weekly column with Bill Barber.
"Looking back now, that was an amazing time," Colletti said this week. "The Journal was an incredible place and my time in Philadelphia was unforgettable."
It turned out to be a very lucky stopping place for Colletti. He was the hockey writer for the Journal when it folded in December 1981, just as Phillies manager Dallas Green was about to decamp for his new job as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. Green took along Colletti and Bob Ibach, another suddenly unemployed Journal writer, to be his public-relations team. Green could have filled a bus with all the Philly connections he dragged to Chicago; scouts, players, coaches . . . the writers appeared to be just additional passengers.
For Colletti, who grew up in suburban Chicago, it was something more than that, though.
"My dad was dying of cancer in Chicago, and it gave me a chance to come back home and spend his last months with him," Colletti said. "The paper had folded; my wife and I had a newborn son. I had been making $18,000 a year at the paper, and I had a $750-a-month mortgage in Lansdowne, with 18 percent interest. The Cubs offered me $14,000 a year, and I thought about it for a week and thought about my dad, and I took it."
