One evening before a Twins game, Terry Ryan was sitting at a table in the Target Field commissary surrounded by reporters. The Tigers were in town, and their general manager, Dave Dombrowski, twisted his head nearly 360 degrees when he chanced by.
Although one of baseball’s more-available GMs, Dombrowski was astonished by the sight. Minutes later, Dombrowski, now Red Sox director of baseball operations, asked a reporter, “Does he do that every day?”
Since spring training in 2012, with few exceptions, he did.
It’s been nearly a week since Ryan was fired by the Twins, ending his second stint as the team’s GM after four and a half seasons. By now, we know that everyone who worked with Ryan will miss him. I’m here to suggest that even fans glad to see him go will miss him, too.
Accountability is hard to come by in big-time sports, and no Twin Cities sports executive was more accountable than Ryan, who kept his pregame appointment with reporters up to his last day on the job, even as the Twins shocked an optimistic fan base with the worst start in franchise history.
He started the daily scrum at Fort Myers in the spring of 2012 to address injuries, in part because he didn’t want then-manager Ron Gardenhire saying one thing and the team saying another. Another reason was the Great Bilateral Leg Weakness Controversy of 2011, which never sat well with then-star player Joe Mauer.
The team wanted to be on the same page, and Ryan was the final word on injuries.
Of course, it took about 10 minutes for the scrums to turn to other issues, and Ryan answered any and all queries candidly - occasionally off the record, but mostly on. The point is, when Ryan didn’t answer a question fans wanted answered, it wasn’t his fault, it was ours. Yes, there were off-the-record comments, but over time he became so candid that it was often hard to judge what was for public consumption.
For instance, during my last private sit-down with Ryan, in mid-June, I asked him if he had thought about retiring and letting someone else take a shot.
“I’ve never run from a job in my life,” he said.
That was the money quote in a good column, but at the last minute, I went back to see if that part was on the record. It wasn’t, so I sat on it. It’s unclear whether he had been informed by then - it was June 17 - that he wasn’t coming back.
Ryan knew I wanted to discuss the prospect of dynamiting the organization he ran, as well as two big trades that haven’t panned out. OK, he said, let’s do it. With his team in the tank, there was little he could have said that would have pleased fans.
This is why when things go south for a team, the general manager is generally incommunicado. Wild GM Chuck Fletcher addressed reporters a day after firing Mike Yeo, but for weeks before and after, he was off-limits. The Vikings’ Rick Spielman probably addresses the media four or five times a year. The University of Minnesota’s past two athletics directors, Norwood Teague and interim Beth Goetz, were as available as someone scaling the Eiger.
Ryan, on the other hand, was an adult. The interim GM, longtime Ryan assistant Rob Antony, is made of the same cloth. Can he help reverse course at Target Field? We probably won’t find out.
Twins owner Jim Pohlad and president Dave St. Peter didn’t fire Ryan - midseason, no less - to stay the course. And if you hire from outside the organization, which would be a first for the Twins since Andy MacPhail was hired as vice president for player development in 1984, the winner will be an alpha dog with a “dream staff” folder already on his laptop.
It’s hard to argue that this organization doesn’t need an enema. Besides, fans have spoken. When the Yankees came to town for a four-game series last month, the empty seats were conspicuous. Since the park opened with a division title in 2010, attendance has decreased each season, from a franchise-best 3,223,640 to what could be the team’s first under-2 million total since 2004 (they sit at 1,203,739 through 50 home games).
This is the bottom line, and it seems unlikely Pohlad will entrust the vault to those Ryan leaves behind.
Wins are what matters, and if the new GM and his staff build a winner, all will be forgiven. But with Ryan’s exit, Minnesota loses something important: a sports executive with a conscience who knew that fans, ultimately, are what matters most to his team.
That’s why he’s out, but it’s also why some of you might miss him more than you think.
John Shipley is a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
