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Maybe a good place to start is with the mid-season performance review owner Steve Lester gave me this week. As you can see, there are several items he has prioritized which I have not delivered. The primary one, of course, being to deliver a championship to Denver by 1967. Clearly we are not headed in the right direction for that one. Then again, given that our second place finish in 1965 was probably a bit deceiving, an unrealistic expectation was probably created for both the fan base and ownership. The reality is that as GM my view was a bit more long-term, with the hopes of fielding a team that might at least take the MGL by 1970. Mr. Lester is also not thrilled with our progress at the shortstop position. My take is that Chad Brown is very young but shows great potential and that with a bit more patience this issue will take care of itself. The owner is very happy that we quickly extended veteran third baseman A.J. White, and given White's resurgence this year (in spite of some defensive decline) we are inclined to agree that this was fortuitous, particularly given the reasonable 1-year contract White agreed to. As for the owners desire that we sign a hometown player, well, what can we say. Should a quality Denver-born player come along, great. But it doesn't make much sense, to the baseball operations folks, to sign someone just due to his status as a local. (We do have a few Denver-area players in the minors and it is still possible that one of them might develop into a major league role player in the next few years. Time will tell.)
As you can see, in spite of his disappointment in several areas, on the whole the owner is happy with my leadership. I'm guessing the big bump in attendance, including a great increase in the numbers of season ticket holders, and the consequent growth of revenue, is a huge factor in this. As much as Mr. Lester wants to own a winning team, I suspect he even more wants to own a profitable team. And we have given him that!
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