15

Expansion

After decades of stability the 1950s and 1960s saw a flurry of long-standing teams moving to new cities and baseball expanding three times, adding two AL teams in 1961, two NL teams in 1962, and two in each league in 1969. Each of these eight new clubs was initially stocked with largely unwanted or unvalued players from other teams and then patiently built piece by piece by the team’s management.

The 1969 expansion was precipitated when Charlie Finley moved the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland in October 1967. Facing legal pressure, the American League responded by awarding franchises to Kansas City and, eventually, Seattle. Unlike later expansions in the 1990s, baseball chose the cities first and then searched for ownership groups.

A leading candidate to own the new Kansas City franchise was Ewing Kauffman, a wealthy Kansas City entrepreneur who had made his fortune as the founder and chairman of Marion Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company. As he contemplated his bid, Kauffman traveled to Anaheim to meet with California Angels owner Gene Autry and team president Bob Reynolds, who had been through the process with their 1961 expansion team. While on the trip Kauffman was greatly impressed by Angels executive Cedric Tallis. As Kauffman finalized his bid for his team, he invited Tallis to join his group as its general manager. Kauffman not only thought Tallis a smart baseball man, but also considered him as someone who could be a champion and overseer for the new stadium complex under consideration in Kansas City.

As we have seen, many of the most successful teams of the 1960s operated with a dominant general manager atop the organization, and Kauffman recognized the merit of this model. Additionally, Tallis felt comfortable dealing with the press and enjoyed the limelight, key attributes for someone who would be an important face of the team. Years later when Tallis was working in the Yankees’ front office, owner George Steinbrenner was looking for him. When told that Tallis was giving an interview, Steinbrenner joked, “Hell, we’ll never get him out of there. You know how Cedric loves those TV cameras.”1

With the January 11, 1968, announcement awarding the team to Kauffman, the fifty-three-year-old Tallis had a four-year contract and a new Major League team to build. “Outside of finances, he will run the club,”2 Kauffman told reporters. Marvin Milkes, Tallis’s colleague with the Angels, was soon named the new general manager for the Seattle club.

A highly competitive, enthusiastic, and generous self-made millionaire, Kauffman had formulated his first drug—“There was nothing original in it”—from “pouring over medical journals,” and concocting a pill for chronic fatigue.3 At least as importantly, he developed new ways to motivate his sales force, including profit sharing and sophisticated recognition programs. With a restless and creative mind, Kauffman read up to twenty books a week as an eleven-year-old while laid up with rheumatic fever and learned to quickly perform complicated mathematical calculations in his head.

“Kauffman did not dabble in day-to-day team management,” wrote his biographer. “He had decided early in his involvement with baseball that he would either have to trust the executives he hired or fire them. That had been his policy at Marion Laboratories where he understood the pharmaceutical business.”4 But Kauffman was an attentive and demanding boss who built his company as much on his sales and management skills as on the products themselves. “His cardinal rule of business is: ‘Produce or get out,’” wrote Allan Demaree in Fortune. “Sometimes if a salesman fails to increase the volume of business in his territory, says Kauffman, ‘we call him in and say, “Before we leave this room one of three things is going to happen. Either you’re going to get fired, or you’re going to quit, or you’re going to change.”’ The first time a salesman hears this pitch it constitutes a warning; the second time he’s canned.”5

At the ballpark he could be similarly engaged, sitting behind the dugout at home games and dissecting his manager’s decisions. “I’d have taken out the kid [Hedlund] and brought in Moe [Drabowsky] a little sooner than Joe [Gordon] did,” Kauffman remarked after one game in 1969. After learning that Drabowsky was not “completely warmed up,” Kauffman backpedaled, “That’s why he’s the manager and I’m the owner.”6 But he remained attentive and unafraid to demand explanations from his senior management.

In early 1948, after seven years in the army, thirty-three-year-old captain Cedric Tallis decided it was time to look for a life beyond military service. A native of Penacook, New Hampshire, Tallis had spent two years coaching basketball at Fort Benning, Georgia, where his squad had won the Southeastern Amateur Athletic Union championship. Switching to baseball, Tallis got a job as general manager at Thomasville in the Class D Georgia-Alabama League, the lowest rung in organized baseball and a perfect place to learn the baseball business from the ground up. At this time a Minor League GM was responsible for just about everything: finding players, managing the business affairs, and once for Tallis helping to contain a pack of unruly fans trying to attack the umpire while waiting for the police.7

Tallis spent several years running Minor League teams, interrupted by a two-year army recall during the Korean War. In 1953 he was overseeing a Single-A Detroit farm club in Montgomery, Alabama, two notches below the Major Leagues. His first year there was a disaster on and off the field. The club finished last, and Tallis was forced to sell off several players, including former Major Leaguers Kirby Higbe and Grady Wilson. The team improved and in 1955 made it to the Southern League finals. While in Montgomery Tallis formed a long-term bond with his manager Charlie Metro.8

After the 1955 season owner Brick Laws moved the financially stressed Oakland Oaks, his Pacific Coast League club, to Vancouver. Laws selected Tallis to run his team, and Tallis signed a working agreement with the Baltimore Orioles. After one year in Vancouver, and a last-place finish, Laws decided to sell, and Tallis spearheaded a group of local businessmen to finance the $150,000 purchase price and an additional $125,000 in operating funds. He brought in Metro to manage, and the team jumped to second place and led the league in attendance.9

Despite its Baltimore affiliation, in those days a Minor League club like Vancouver still needed to find many of its own players. Tallis organized a six-day tryout camp for seventeen- to nineteen-year-olds. The Mounties accepted forty-two candidates for the clinic, where youngsters received instruction from several former Major Leaguers, including outfielder Earl Averill and pitcher Earl Johnson.10

When the Orioles terminated their agreement with Vancouver after the 1959 season, Tallis moved to the Seattle Rainiers, another PCL team, who affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds. Tallis brought in a new manager, and the team improved from seventh to fourth. When the Boston Red Sox purchased the Rainiers after the 1960 season, Tallis again moved on. Now forty-six and with more than a decade as a Minor League general manager, he was ready for a Major League challenge.11 He had hopes of landing the GM job in Cincinnati, where Gabe Paul had just resigned. “I would be honored to have the opportunity to appear before Powel Crosley, Jr. and the Cincinnati club’s board of directors,” Tallis told the press.12 There were several candidates ahead of Tallis, however. The Reds chose Bill DeWitt and went on to win the 1961 pennant.

Determined to get into the Major Leagues, Tallis accepted a job as an assistant to general manager Fred Haney with the expansion Los Angeles Angels. Marvin Milkes, a onetime Sporting News Minor League Executive of the Year, was named as the administrative assistant to both Haney and Tallis. Over the next few years Tallis’s role evolved into that of business manager, while Milkes shifted over to the assistant GM job.13

Tallis was an avid golfer and often used the game to deal with stress or uncomfortable situations. To avoid an unpleasant conversation with an office visitor, he was known to pull out a putter and talk about his grip or practice his putting. Alternatively, a difficult day could lead him to grab a club, head down to the field, and drive golf balls into the bleachers.14

“Tallis was a gentle bear of a man,” one of his subordinates later said.

He was kind, personable, compassionate and fun-loving. He could be stubborn when he made up his mind and it would take a great deal of tactful persuasion to change. However, he was always willing to listen to your point of view, argument or opinions. He loved life and truly loved having a good time. He had a marvelous sense of humor, which made it fun to work for him. He was not afraid to delegate responsibility or authority, nor was he afraid to stand his ground on any issue he felt strongly about—no matter what the pressures brought to bear upon him. I admired his guts and also his compassion in dealing with subordinates.15

Tallis worked for the Angels for six years, successfully overseeing the club’s 1966 move to Anaheim and its new stadium. In early 1968 he answered the call from Ewing Kauffman.

Longtime baseball GM Gabe Paul believed that Tallis “was probably the best in baseball when it came to details and trivia.”16 In Kansas City Tallis did not just sit on his hands waiting for the October 1968 expansion draft, which would get him his first players. He brought in two trusted lieutenants: Charlie Metro, recently the chief scout for Cincinnati general manager Bob Howsam, as director of scouting, and Lou Gorman, from the well-respected Orioles organization, as director of Minor League operations. Taking a page from the Orioles and the Dodgers before them, Tallis, Metro, and Gorman put together the Kansas City Royals Instructional Manual to highlight how each defensive play should be executed. Gorman, with his Oriole background, advocated consistent instruction throughout the Royals’ organization.17

Metro was the quintessential baseball scout, a great judge of talent and an active, enthusiastic instructor. He also had strong opinions and many time-honored biases on what makes a ballplayer. During one workout Metro pointed at a player and told Gorman, “Release that player.”

“Charles, he hasn’t even thrown a baseball yet,” Gorman responded.

“He has a bad face,” said Metro.

“Charlie, let’s take a look at his physical skills first, you can’t judge a player solely on his looks,” Gorman concluded.18

But Metro also boasted a creative mind. He claimed to have invented the batting tee using rubber tubing when he played for the Heisley Coal Company team in the 1940s.19 He gave players true-false tests to make sure they knew the rules. While a manager he installed a pitching machine and batting cage at his home park so that his pinch hitters could warm up before batting and carried both right- and left-handed batting-practice pitchers.20

Tallis let Gorman bring along an assistant from Baltimore named John Schuerholz, just two years removed from teaching junior high school. Schuerholz would go on to become one of baseball’s greatest general managers, first in Kansas City and later in Atlanta. One of Schuerholz’s early duties in KC was to determine how other organizations assessed the amateur draft. “Get as much information as you can,” Metro advised the young assistant, “but don’t give them anything.”21

Two other future general managers also joined the Royals. Syd Thrift, an original thinker who later ran the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles, started as a scout. Herk Robinson, also from the Baltimore organization, became Metro’s assistant. Years later Robinson led the Royals front office for a decade.

Like George Weiss earlier in New York, Tallis hired strong, intelligent baseball men with different outlooks, men who did not necessarily like or even respect each other. Tallis felt secure enough in his position to search out the best staff and deal with their quirks and disagreements. Traditionalist Metro, free-thinking Thrift, and nice-guy Gorman could not have been more different, and Metro did not really respect either associate, but in sum they brought a broad and deep perspective to the task of building the team. As Schuerholz remembered, the disparate group worked very well together.22 Tallis utilized and amalgamated their skills and judgments masterfully.

To manage the Royals Tallis hired Joe Gordon, who had previously led three Major League teams, though none since 1961. “My main aim,” Tallis had said, “is to pick a man who can motivate young players.” Tallis gave Gordon free rein to pick the coaching staff, subject only to his final approval.23

Shortly after being awarded their franchise, the Royals petitioned the other owners to be allowed to participate in the June 1968 amateur baseball draft, a request that was not part of the original expansion arrangement. When the owners relented (although the four new teams were not allowed to select until the middle of the fourth round), the Royals drafted two future quality Major Leaguers, Paul Splittorff and Dane Iorg; none of the other expansion teams landed any with a significant big-league career. Tallis established two Minor League working relationships to place his draftees and Minor League free agents.24

On October 15, 1968, the Royals and Seattle Pilots had their chance to draft players from the other American League ball clubs. (The NL held a separate draft for their new teams.) The ten AL teams could each protect fifteen players, after which Kansas City and Seattle would draft ten players—five each—one from each AL team. The clubs could then protect three more players, and the Royals and Pilots could pick another ten players. In all there were six rounds, with the American League teams allowed to protect another three after each round, so that each expansion team in the end had drafted thirty players.

Tallis and Milkes both had ringside seats for the Angels’ expansion draft in 1960, making the fact that they learned diametrically opposed lessons all the more fascinating. Milkes concentrated on veterans with name recognition, while Tallis focused almost exclusively on young players. As researcher Steve Treder has pointed out, the first ten picks for the Pilots averaged 27.6 years old, 1,920 Major League at bats, and 247 Major League innings. The Royals, on the other hand, averaged 24.2 years old, 332 Major League at bats, and 164 Major League innings.25 Tallis’s first two selections were pitcher Roger Nelson (24) from the Orioles and third baseman Joe Foy (25) from the Red Sox.

Around the twentieth pick the Royals changed their strategy to also look for older players with trade value, realizing that many of the better younger players had been protected by that point in the draft. (Their most famous draftee, veteran relief pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm, was traded to the Angels for two young players a few days later.) For the day Kansas City selected a number of players who still had meaningful Major League seasons in front of them; measured by WAR, they ended up with nearly 50 percent more future talent than the Pilots. Kauffman was a driving owner, and Tallis and staff had made a great start.

Despite the relatively successful draft, Metro later lamented that it could have been better. “When Lou Gorman came over to the Royals, I asked him about this young guy Palmer [future Hall of Famer Jim, just 23 but having missed nearly two full years due to injury]. Some of my friends had told me he had a great arm,” Metro wrote. “Lou said, ‘Oh, he’s got sore arm . . . he can’t pitch.’” Metro also blamed Gorman for missing on Bobby Grich, a future great second baseman. “Aw, he can’t play shortstop. He’s too fat, too big,” Gorman told him. “I can’t say too much for old Louie,” Metro concluded. “He talked a lot but didn’t do much. He didn’t know a ballplayer from a hole in the ground.”26 By the time Metro wrote this he had seemingly become bitter toward many in baseball, and the accuracy of his recollections should be taken with some skepticism. Moreover, Gorman was a key contributor to this very successful front office, remembered by Schuerholz as a man of “remarkable ability,”27 and would go on to a couple of stints as a general manager in his own right. But at the very least, Metro’s comments give some sense of the tension, some of it productive, within the Royals’ organization.

Metro also blamed Thrift for missing on future star infielder Toby Harrah. “[He] did a terrible job of covering the Washington Senators organization,” Metro huffed, and “we blew a chance to get Harrah.” The traditionalist Metro clearly did not like Thrift. “We signed [Thrift] to a contract and three days later he was dissatisfied, and we had to give him another contract,” Metro complained. “He cried—not my type of guy.”28

Though Ewing Kauffman allowed his baseball men to build his team, he was unafraid of thinking outside the box with his own ideas. He kept on his desk a copy of Earnshaw Cook’s Percentage Baseball, the first serious statistical look at the game written by an outsider. Though many of Cook’s specific conclusions have since been shown to be in error, the book convinced Kauffman that analytical thinking could offer a competitive advantage. Kauffman also introduced one of baseball’s first computer systems, which by the end of the 1971 season contained statistics such as “the nature of every pitch thrown by a Royal . . . what happened to every ball hit . . . [and] even the humidity.” One writer who witnessed Tallis and his staff reviewing some of this information exclaimed, “I felt I had walked in on a conclave of madmen. Here were six or seven grown men around a table piled high with computer cards, mulling over every pitch thrown and every ball hit in what is supposed to be a game.” This information was fed to the manager so that it could be applied. Thirty years before Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball, Kauffman believed that statistical analysis could provide a competitive advantage when added to traditional evaluation methods.29

Kauffman also had ideas on how the team should find talent. He had publicly stated that he wanted a pennant within five years, a wildly aggressive prediction given the development of the four expansion franchises in the early 1960s. To accomplish this goal Kauffman realized that the usual methods of finding players would not be sufficient: the amateur draft offered all teams equal access to top prospects, Latin and Caribbean countries were being scouted, and Japan was not yet considered a source for Major League players.30

Kauffman was said to spend two hours a night smoking his pipe and thinking, and after consultations with his baseball executives, one night this led to an inspiration. He would create a Baseball Academy, operating separately from the traditional farm system, where great athletes with little baseball background could learn the game, thus tapping into a potentially new pool of baseball talent. Kauffman planned to apply a scientific approach: figure out which raw skills best translated into baseball success and then how to best develop and hone those skills to create ballplayers. Most baseball men thought the Baseball Academy a waste of time, money, and coaching resources. “Of all the people in baseball,” Kauffman said, “only Bob Howsam of the Cincinnati Reds thought the Academy was a good idea. He offered to share expenses and share results. Of course, I wanted all the results to myself and I turned him down, which was probably a mistake.”31

Kauffman purchased a 121-acre site in Sarasota, Florida. The complex cost roughly $1.5 million and required a further $500,000 to $600,000 or so in annual operating expenses. Kauffman named Thrift, then a senior Royals scout, to run the academy.32 Thrift and his staff held the first tryout camp in early June 1970; over the summer the Royals held 126 tryout camps throughout the country, evaluating more than 7,000 potential ballplayers between sixteen and twenty-one years old, most with little previous baseball experience.33

To identify prospects Kauffman enlisted Dr. Raymond Reilly, a young research psychologist, to measure the physical skills of 150 players. Reilly established four in particular that correlated to baseball success: foot speed, which was thought to be the best indicator of muscle twitch and required superior body control; eyesight; fast reflex actions; and body balance. From the research Thrift also came to believe in the importance of a player’s throwing arm.34

From the tryout pool Thrift and his staff selected 42 recruits. These young men spent ten months at the academy engaged in intense training, playing roughly 150 games, and taking general studies in the morning at a nearby junior college. Kauffman and Thrift insisted on an open-minded, scientific approach to training as well as scouting. Players spent extra time in batting practice against both live pitching and machines, pitching machines were used for fielding practice, new techniques were used to teach speed on the base paths and how to lead off a base, stopwatches were used at a time before they became ubiquitous throughout sports, players exercised in water—to increase resistance—when coming back from injury, videotape replays were introduced, body-building sessions were used selectively long before they became popular, and players were coached on improving their mental approach to the game.35

In mid-June 1971 the academy faced its first public test, when they placed a team in the seven-team, rookie-level Gulf Coast League, pitting the recruits against drafted ballplayers in other organizations. The players more than validated their nine months of training: the team won the pennant with a record of 40-13 and led the league in both scoring and ERA. Next to the two American League pennants the Royals later won, this 1971 pennant was Kauffman’s greatest thrill in baseball. The team stole 103 bases, while no other team had more than 55. Even more astonishingly, their 16 caught stealing was tied for the second fewest in the league. This emphasis on speed and its application would carry over to the Major League club and was a key component of the team’s success in the latter half of the 1970s.36

Yet the academy had detractors within the organization, as Tallis, Gorman, and Metro begrudged the huge allocation of resources to something outside of their development system, and Metro in particular believed many of the nontraditional teaching methods silly. What Thrift described as teaching a forty-five-degree bunting angle, Metro ridiculed as, “One guy had the batters holding the bat straight up and down for bunting. I thought, ‘the first time a guy foul tips a bunt attempt inside and it hits him between the eyes, that’ll be the end of that.’” Gorman, however, was more sympathetic to the training: “The Academy staff developed some excellent methods of instruction and solid theories in teaching certain skills at all levels of the game. The players in the Academy program were all fundamentally sound and well drilled.”37

In tandem Tallis and his staff had also built a first-rate scouting and development system and wanted to integrate the academy into their organization, including rotating players from the farm system through the academy and revising some of the instruction. Tallis recognized the value of keeping an open mind to new training techniques, including “purchasing a new stop action camera to help our hitters and pitchers. This camera can stop any action without blurring or fuzzy lines. It’s expensive, but we feel it will be of considerable help to both our pitchers and hitters.”38 Accordingly, the Royals began sending some of their Minor Leaguers to the academy.

Unfortunately, a true integration was not really possible given the different philosophies and the animosity between many of the academy staff, particularly Thrift, who wanted to run the academy as an independent enterprise, and the more traditional front office. The academy’s second class, which participated in the 1972 Gulf Coast League season, consisted of twenty-six young men between seventeen and nineteen years old, reduced due to the difficulty of finding qualified prospects and so that the academy could also accommodate the traditional Minor Leaguers. Thrift became so frustrated with the meddling from the front office that he resigned. Kauffman appointed Gorman the new director, reporting directly to him on academy matters.39

By 1973, although the academy had produced several prospects, it had become clear that Kauffman’s brainchild needed to be revamped. For that season’s class Gorman’s staff uncovered only fourteen athletes meeting their admission criteria. The Royals’ original thesis—that great young athletes with little baseball background could be molded into Major League Baseball players—had not proven out. Despite all its creative ideas and intense testing, the academy could not create ballplayers from raw, unskilled athletes. The top prospect in the academy, infielder Frank White, had baseball experience. He also fitted into the academy model because of his tremendous speed. White had been extensively scouted and passed over because most scouts believed he would never learn to hit adequately.40 As White later said, “I was lucky because I came into the Academy knowing the basic fundamentals of the game.”41

The other significant problem with the academy was the huge cost. By 1973 the school cost about $700,000 per year to operate, a massive outlay for the time. In 1974, the closest year for which we have data, the cost of running a Major League farm system was about $900,000. Assuming that the Royals pulled in close to the league average in revenue ($6.25 million), the academy absorbed about 11 percent of their total proceeds. In Kansas City’s smaller market, this percentage was probably even greater.42

The academy had its successes, just not enough: White developed into a longtime star for the Royals; U. L. Washington—the only raw athlete turned into a quality regular—anchored shortstop for several years; Ron Washington played ten seasons, mostly as a reserve, and later led the Texas Rangers to two American League pennants as manager; and several other academy signees appeared in the Major Leagues, though none as contributing regulars. But the cost of the academy became prohibitive and the demands for integration with the regular farm system dilutive of some of the more experimental ideas.43

The Baseball Academy challenged many standard assumptions of scouting and instruction. First, the academy was predicated on the idea that there was untapped Major League–caliber baseball talent inside of young athletes who had little exposure to the game. Second, the academy theorized that these athletes could be identified not only by watching them play baseball, but by observing and testing their skills. Much like today’s NFL Scouting Combine, specific physical and mental traits could be measured and used to project future success in baseball. Finally, a more scientific approach could be brought to instruction and training, to improve how prospects were developed into Major League players.

The academy did not succeed in turning athletes into baseball players, suggesting that traditional scouting was already finding most—though not all—of the potential Major Leaguers. However, Kauffman’s philosophy of always looking for new sources of talent is one of the foundations of successful organizations. Of the academy’s innovations in scouting and player development, some were transferred to the Royals’ farm system, and many others were carried by the academy’s coaches and trainers as they migrated to other teams. Like most successful organizations, Kauffman’s Royals showed a sincere willingness to experiment with new ideas and methods. As a result they found a few valuable players and learned useful player development and scouting lessons.

Just prior to the 1969 season Tallis made the first in a series of deals that would ultimately build a contending club. The Royals had drafted outfielder Steve Whitaker from the Yankees, only to discover that he was beset with off-field problems. “He had a good year [in 1967], but the Yankees exposed him to the draft,” Metro wrote. “We took him and we found out why.”44 Tallis sent him to the Pilots for Lou Piniella, who would go on to win the AL Rookie of the Year Award that season.

Joe Gordon proved to be a fine manager for a young expansion team, as he liked working with young players. He spent considerable time salvaging the confidence in the batter’s box of third baseman Paul Schaal, a player he had recommended the Royals draft from the Angels, despite a near-career-ending beaning in 1968. Gordon’s work paid off with Schaal and others, and the young 1969 team played surprisingly well.

“I will be an angry man if we don’t finish third,” Milkes, Tallis’s counterpart in Seattle, boasted in August. “If Kansas City finishes ahead of us, it would be the worst disgrace I could think of.” In fact, the Royals finished fourth, five games ahead of the last place and “disgraced” Pilots, and Tallis knew that his team also had a brighter future. “We’re trying to do as well as we can this year,” Tallis said, “but we’re also looking ahead to 1970, and I’m not going to worry about who is ahead of us or behind us.”45 The 1969 Royals were led by their young league-average pitching, especially the rotation of Wally Bunker, Roger Nelson, Dick Drago, and Bill Butler, none older than twenty-five.

Though Gordon was credited with much of the team’s progress, after the season he decided that the stress of the job was too much for him and chose to resign. Tallis named Metro manager for 1970 and reassigned Gordon, at the latter’s request, to the Kansas City Minor League system.46

In December 1969 Tallis made one of his most famous deals, securing twenty-two-year-old outfielder Amos Otis from the Mets for third baseman Joe Foy. Foy had played well in his one season with the Royals, but Otis would become Kansas City’s first star, holding down center field for the next fourteen seasons. “The Mets wanted a third baseman and they were trying to get Ken McMullen from Washington,” Tallis later related. “Washington wanted two starting pitchers and the Mets didn’t want to give that much. When they saw they couldn’t make the McMullen deal, they turned to Foy.”47

“[Foy] wasn’t taking good care of himself,” Metro later wrote. “He was smoking marijuana, and he was just losing control.” Metro remembered watching Otis in spring training—when the Mets were trying to make him into a third baseman—and thinking that the Royals should keep him in mind as a future acquisition target.

If the trade was not yet good enough, Tallis also got the Mets to include starting pitcher Bob Johnson. “We insisted on getting Johnson in the deal and they didn’t want to give him up. We met with some of the Mets officials one night trying to get the thing wrapped up. Johnny Murphy was the general manager then. I told him we had to have Johnson if we were going to make the deal. He said they couldn’t give up Johnson. About 45 seconds went by without a word being said, I was really sweating. Finally he said okay, they’d put Johnson in.” Tallis also thought he might be able to get the Mets to include Jon Matlack, soon to develop into one of the league’s top hurlers, but backed off at the last moment for fear they were “pushing [their] luck.”48 Johnson had one good year with the Royals and proved a valuable asset the next winter.

In June 1970 Tallis sent a Minor Leaguer to the Cardinals for thirty-one-year-old second baseman Cookie Rojas. Tallis did not generally look for older players, but second base had been a gaping hole on the club, and Rojas seemed a reasonable stopgap. In fact, Rojas rejuvenated his career, playing in four All-Star Games for the Royals.

Unfortunately, new manager Metro proved to be a disaster. He ran spring training like boot camp, and the players, only half-jokingly, referred to it as “Stalag 17.” With the Royals at 19-33 in early June, Tallis fired Metro, promoting another longtime friend, pitching coach Bob Lemon. Metro was bitter over his firing and in later years blamed his poor performance (“to the extent I did a lousy job”) on a bleeding ulcer that he kept to himself.49 Metro returned to coaching and scouting, but he never got another shot as manager.

After the 1970 season Tallis and his staff recognized that the team needed to improve at shortstop and decided that one of their targets should be Freddy Patek, an undersized, underappreciated player backing up Gene Alley in Pittsburgh. Tallis, Gorman, and Metro met with a Pittsburgh contingent of GM Joe Brown, farm director Pete Peterson, manager Danny Murtaugh, and two scouts. As the multiplayer trade was being negotiated, Metro suggested that Kansas City should also get pitcher Bruce Dal Canton. As Gorman recalled, Brown looked to his manager, who shrugged and replied, “Bob Johnson is the pitcher we want.” For Johnson, displaced shortstop Jackie Hernandez, and a Minor Leaguer, Tallis landed Patek, Dal Canton, and a decent catcher in Jackie May.50 Patek held down shortstop for nine years in Kansas City, teaming with Rojas as one of the league’s top double-play combinations.

The 1971 Royals astonished everyone by finishing second with a record of 85-76, although sixteen games behind the powerful Oakland A’s. For his efforts, Tallis was named Executive of the Year by the Sporting News. Kauffman believed the team was on the verge of the playoffs, but the club had overachieved in 1971, and the talent was not really ready to capture a division title, even in the weaker West Division. Kauffman, however, now felt that the Royals should be in contention annually. This sentiment placed Tallis in the difficult position of knowing he needed more talent to win, but also trying to fill specific holes to give him the best chance to win each particular season. A brilliant trader, Tallis walked this thin line remarkably well.

One of the stars of the Royals’ 1970 club, first baseman Bob Oliver, fell from twenty-seven home runs and ninety-nine RBI to just eight and fifty-two in 1971. Accordingly, Tallis looked for a power-hitting first baseman that winter. He initially targeted Boston’s George Scott, but the Red Sox asked for Dick Drago, a hurler Tallis was unwilling to surrender. His scouts liked Houston’s young first baseman John Mayberry, who had struggled in a few trials, so Tallis explored that option at the winter meetings. Dealing from strength, Kansas City sent two young pitchers to Houston for Mayberry, who broke through in 1972 with twenty-five home runs and one hundred RBI and had several more fine seasons for the Royals.

The 1972 season was marred by a players strike that began during spring training and lingered into the season, canceling a week’s worth of games. As the players’ union had never taken such an action before, the events stunned many longtime baseball people, including Lemon. “We asked the players to get on a bus, and they refused,” Tallis said, recounting the start of the strike. “Then Lemon and I went into our office and Bob began to cry. He could not believe what was happening to his game.”51

The Royals backslid in 1972 to 76-78, though the fall to fourth place likely overstated their regression. They were a young team that experienced a few off years and were still well ahead of the other three 1969 expansion teams. Nonetheless, the impatient Kauffman, disappointed that the club’s 1971 improvement had not been sustained, decided to fire Lemon. In August Lemon had benched Otis and Patek for not hustling, an incident that Kauffman later said was mishandled.52

Tallis disagreed, feeling that Lemon had done a fine job managing the club for three years. In the October 3 press conference, Kauffman made the announcement, while Tallis, when asked, indicated his disapproval. As justification, Kauffman mentioned the August benching and also suggested that he wanted to hire someone younger. This last comment exposed Kauffman to age-discrimination laws, causing him to have to pay Lemon an extra year’s salary. Kauffman’s impatience and unrealistic expectations were laid bare. “Starting in 1974,” Kauffman bragged, “we expect to win it [the American League Championship] five out of ten years.”53

Kauffman further exasperated Tallis by hiring Jack McKeon, the manager at Triple-A Omaha, with whom Tallis had quarreled in the past. In particular, McKeon was a vocal advocate of the Baseball Academy and hence a favorite of Kauffman’s. McKeon recalled:

When Mr. Kauffman asked me if we had any prospects in the Academy, I mentioned Frank White, Ron Washington, and a few others because Sid and I had talked about those guys. Sid knew talent and was my right-hand man. Kauffman told Tallis about this, and Tallis called me into his office. In front of Lou Gorman, Tallis said, “Jack, don’t you ever lie to Mr. Kauffman again. You told him there were prospects in the Academy.”

Now I was really steamed and I told Tallis and Gorman there were prospects there. Gorman said his scouts didn’t think so. I told them maybe they could find someone who would tell them what they wanted to hear, but this was the way I saw it.54

The presence of the academy had created bickering fiefdoms from the beginning, but Kauffman’s hiring of McKeon, knowing the feelings of Tallis—in theory the person in charge of running the baseball team—drove a further wedge in the organization. McKeon would go on to a successful career in baseball as both a manager and a general manager, but in 1972 he owed his allegiance to Ewing Kauffman alone. The impatient Kauffman had journeyed a long way from the putatively hands-off owner of 1969.

At the winter meetings in November, Tallis targeted Reds outfielder–third baseman Hal McRae, a player the Royals scouts felt could hit but lacked a viable defensive position. Reds GM Bob Howsam was reluctant to give up on McRae, despite his defensive liabilities. After some negotiation Tallis offered Roger Nelson, their first pick in the 1968 expansion draft who finished 1972 at 11-6 with a 2.08 ERA. The Royals’ brain trust was not really sold on Nelson’s ability to stay healthy. “He had a concave chest,” Metro recalled. “Those guys always come up with sore arms and shoulders.” To sweeten the pot Tallis also proposed outfielder Richie Scheinblum, coming off an All-Star season in which he had hit .300, though he was already twenty-nine and 1972 was his first season as a big-league regular. Tallis asked for Wayne Simpson, a young pitcher with a history of arm problems, to help balance the expanded trade.55

Tallis thought he had a deal, but in the end Howsam demurred. As Howsam and his staff were leaving, Tallis sarcastically remarked, “Thanks for the visit.” At that point one of Howsam’s entourage asked his general manager, “Could we caucus a minute and ask the Kansas City people to wait?” Howsam agreed and returned a little later. “I’ve been persuaded to change my position.” In Kansas City McRae struggled for a year as a platoon right fielder, before turning into one of the league’s best designated hitters for twelve years. There is no record of what happened to the staff member who coaxed Howsam into one of the few bad trades of his career.56

The Royals opened the 1973 season strong, sitting at 30-23 on June 3, but after four straight losses McKeon vented his frustration to the press. He felt the team was close but that Tallis had failed to land several key pieces that had been available earlier in the season. Veterans Deron Johnson and Jim Ray Hart had been traded from NL teams to the AL in this first year of the designated hitter, and McKeon felt the Royals could have used either. McKeon also wondered why the club had not bid on veteran hurler Sam McDowell, who had been sold to the Yankees. McKeon’s actions were unusual. Here was a first-year manager publicly berating one of the game’s most respected GMs, less than two years removed from an Executive of the Year award. “I’ve been mad for two or three days. Every time you look up, some team or other has picked up another guy and we’re standing still. The scouts keep saying these guys are through,” McKeon complained regarding the two veteran designated hitters. “What have [Hart and Johnson] played, a month each in this league? They both have had six or seven home runs.”

Tallis was in an awkward situation. His rebellious manager had been imposed by the owner, limiting his disciplinary options and the chance of creating a harmonious relationship. Instead, Tallis gave a surprisingly blunt and honest public explanation:

It would have been possible for us to get Hart last year, but there was no designated hitter rule then. He had a bad record with his knee and all. Even now he can’t move well. We sent a scout out to see him and did not get a favorable report. He was not offered to us this year. We double checked Johnson and decided he was too much of a gamble. We were not aware that McDowell was available. I’m not sure whether McDowell was offered to anyone other than the Yankees. Sam and Gabe Paul have a very good relationship. We tried to get [Pat] Dobson, but we couldn’t get waivers on one of our players. In the case of Mike Kekich, we felt he had been to the well once too often and had been found wanting. If Jack wants to gamble, we have two players, Lou Piniella and [Hal] McRae, who are not hitting well now, but who have hit in the past and are good gambles.

In this, Tallis was correct. Both Piniella and McRae, who was hardly playing, proved to have much more to offer than Hart or Johnson.

“After losing a game a manager may say things that he will regret later. I hope this is what happened in Jack’s case,” Tallis added, trying to defuse the matter. He then gave his views of the state of the team:

We spent five years developing a farm system and bringing our club along and we’re going to proceed in what we think is a proper manner. Any number of things could happen to turn our situation around. I’ve always said that we have to have a healthy infield if we’re going to win and right now our infield isn’t healthy. The type of trade you make ahead of the trading deadline is one in which you get a player with a big salary who isn’t producing or one that a club wants to let go for some other reason. You don’t make big trades ahead of the trading deadline. You make them in the winter.57

The team’s solid finish validated Tallis’s approach. The Royals finished the season 88-74, six games behind the eventual world champion A’s. The club had great years from Mayberry (26 homers, 100 RBI. .294 batting average) and Otis (26, 93, .300) and excellent starting pitching from Paul Splittorff and Steve Busby. The club opened Royals Stadium, whose spacious outfield and artificial playing surface placed a premium on speed, something that players like Otis, Patek, and Rojas—all Tallis additions—had brought to the club.

The club also began to feature some of the talent they had selected in the annual June draft. Both Splittorff (1968) and Busby (1971) were draftees, as was George Brett (1971), a twenty-year-old third baseman from El Segundo, California, who debuted in August. Brett joined the lineup in 1974 and soon became the face of the franchise. To mine Southern California Metro had hired scout Rosie Gilhousen, who boasted a network of bird-dog scouts.58

After the 1973 season Tallis was typically active in the trade market, though he did not find any stars. In one of his few unfavorable deals, Tallis sent Piniella and Ken Wright to the Yankees for Lindy McDaniel, a thirty-seven-year-old relief ace who had pitched 160 innings in 1973, his most since 1957. Piniella appeared washed up after a poor season at twenty-nine, and the team had a surplus of good outfielders. Piniella, however, went on to several productive years with the Yankees, while McDaniel provided little to the Royals.

Despite the Royals’ strong second-place finish in 1973, Kauffman became frustrated with his mounting financial losses. Between the financial drain of the academy and the Royals’ top-notch Minor League system, the team reportedly lost hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Notwithstanding a strong season on the field, the opening of their new stadium, and a near doubling of attendance, Kauffman lost roughly nine hundred thousand dollars in 1973. The strain of these losses triggered a rift between Tallis and the Royals’ vice president on the business side, Charles Truitt, leading to further divisions in an already inharmonious front office.59

Late in the 1973 season Truitt retired, and Kauffman hired Joe Burke to replace him. This was an ominous hire for Tallis—Burke had spent years in the front office of the Washington Senators and, after the club’s move to Texas, two years as the club’s GM. “With Mr. Burke directing the business operations and Mr. Tallis directing the baseball operations, plus having Lou Gorman to direct our Minor League and scouting operations,” Kauffman told the press, “I believe we have the best men possible for each area of responsibility.”60

By the middle of the 1974 season, as the Royals hovered near .500, “Kauffman’s irritation with the costs of owning a baseball team was beginning to show.”61 He had sunk somewhere around twenty million dollars into the club and had yet to turn a profit in any season. Although Kauffman was a very rich man, he was beginning to feel a financial pinch, particularly because Marion Laboratories’ stock was sinking amid the deepening recession. Moreover, he was becoming disenchanted with the dysfunction—much of it of his own making—in the front office.

In mid-June Tallis felt compelled to offer a defense of the team he had assembled, placing the blame for the team’s struggles on the players’ lack of effort and, by implication, McKeon’s handling of them: “I’m not entirely satisfied that every effort is being extended by all of our players. Some of them seem to be letting down a little here and there. Players like [Cookie] Rojas and some others have given everything they have, that’s not true of everybody.”62

Kauffman apparently disagreed and soon promoted Joe Burke to general manager, giving him full control over both the baseball and the business sides, demoting Tallis to an unidentified position and firing him shortly thereafter. In another cost-saving move, after the season Kauffman directed Burke to join the newly formed Major League Scouting Bureau, enabling the Royals to lay off twenty full-time and fifty part-time scouts.63

Kauffman never publicly identified why he fired Tallis, but it seems clear that his frustration had been building for some time. He knew that he was going to have to abandon his beloved academy for financial reasons and surely resented Tallis for never fully embracing it. When he fired Lemon and imposed McKeon as manager—an early sign of his growing irritation—Tallis, rightly or wrongly, would not publicly buy in to the decision. The continuing friction between Tallis and McKeon led to a situation where Kauffman had to choose one or the other. With Joe Burke already on board, Kauffman had an executive ready to step into the position. In a further attempt to foster harmony and stability, Burke gave McKeon a two-year contract extension.

McKeon, however, never received Burke’s harmony memo. With only days left in the 1974 season, McKeon dismissed hitting coach Charlie Lau, beloved by many of his players, including Patek, McRae, and star rookie George Brett, who reportedly cried in the dugout when he heard the news. Even star pitcher Steve Busby ripped his manager: “We’ll never win a pennant if this is the type of thinking the organization is going to continue to show.” McKeon was unhappy with the players’ loyalty to Lau, whose somewhat unconventional approach to hitting differed from his own. Nevertheless, making the move before the end of season was an arrogant power play that was bound to fail.64

And in fact it did. A team that Kauffman and Burke expected to contend in 1975 was 50-46 in late July, eleven games back. Moreover, McKeon appeared to have lost the respect of his players, exemplified most notably in May when Busby had threatened to leave the team. In late July Burke fired McKeon and hired Whitey Herzog. Herzog had managed for Burke in Texas and at the time was the third base coach for the California Angels. Herzog got the players on his side right away by reinstating Lau, who had remained in the Royals’ Minor League system after his release. The team went 41-25 for Herzog down the stretch.

After four seasons of pursuing the A’s, in 1976 Kauffman’s team finally broke through with a 90-72 record and won the division title. In a tightly contested American League Championship Series (ALCS), the Royals fell in the fifth and deciding game when the Yankees’ Chris Chambliss led off the bottom of the ninth inning with a game-ending home run off Mark Littell.

For the team’s success the Sporting News named Burke Executive of the Year, edging Paul Owens of the Phillies and Gabe Paul of the Yankees. In truth, Burke’s key decision was the hiring of Herzog. He made one excellent trade—dealing backup catcher Fran Healy to the Yankees for pitcher Larry Gura—but otherwise did not alter the team that Tallis had left him. In fact, this core would win three more division titles over the next four years, finally reaching the World Series in 1980. By this time the Royals had rightly earned a reputation as one of baseball’s best organizations, one that could compete with the larger market franchises in this new era of free agency.

By the time Kauffman forced him out, Cedric Tallis had assembled the nucleus of players that would carry through to the Royals’ 1980 pennant. In particular Tallis made his mark with an extraordinary series of trades over a four-year period, usually at baseball’s winter meetings. “Your look must be not lascivious, but eager,” Tallis described his trading face.65

Tallis believed that deal making was an organizational process. “I’ve always had a horror of people who are ‘I’ people,” he once said.

Our trades have been a cooperative effort, I’m no genius. That’s a lot of junk about anyone being a magician in making trades. We have competent knowledgeable scouts I have confidence in. We have an owner who will permit us to have an extensive scouting system. My job is to study the scouting reports and attach the proper weight to each man’s judgment. I have to take into consideration how many games they have seen a player in. Some scouts are conservative in judging players, others are more enthusiastic. If possible, I like to see a player myself, but mainly my job is that of a coordinator. After all the information is weighed a final decision has to be made. I’m the one responsible for that decision. I’m not patting myself on the back, but if you spend 13 years in the minors, you learn about talent.66

“I think there are three main reasons why we have been successful trading,” he continued. “First, we’ve been fortunate enough to have players available at positions other people were trying to fill. . . . Second, I think we’ve benefited from the cross-checking we’ve had our scouts do. When we start thinking about making a deal, we like to have more than one report to go on. Third, if we didn’t have an owner like Ewing Kauffman who says, ‘Go ahead, let’s go,’ we might have been more cautious and more inclined to stand pat.”67

Five of the starting-nine position players on the 1976 pennant winner came via Tallis’s deal making: catcher Buck Martinez (acquired shortly after the expansion draft from the Astros), first baseman Mayberry, shortstop Patek, center fielder Otis, and designated hitter McRae.

To evaluate Tallis’s trading a little more tangibly, we examined each of his deals and calculated how much WAR each of the involved players accumulated over the remainder of their careers. The trades made by the Royals during Tallis’s tenure as general manager brought in 184 future WAR while surrendering only 97. Table 10 summarizes the major trades and the future WAR of each player included in those trades. Tallis is right to credit others in the organization for the evaluation involved in making each of these deals, but the final decision rested with the general manager, and Tallis was the one who bears the ultimate responsibility for the deals’ success or failure.

Table 10. Key Cedric Tallis trades

Date	To KC (key players)	Rem WAR (all players in trade)	From KC (key players)	Rem WAR (all players in trade)
December 12, 1968	Ed Kirkpatrick	9.3	Hoyt Wilhelm	3.7
April 1, 1969	Lou Piniella	12.5	Steve Whitaker	1.7
December 3, 1969	Amos Otis	50.0	Joe Foy	2.9
June 13, 1970	Cookie Rojas	7.2	Fred Rico	0.0
December 2, 1970	Freddy Patek	27.3	Bob Johnson	1.0
December 2, 1970	Tom Hilgendorf	3.5	Ellie Rodriguez	13.0
December 2, 1971	John Mayberry	24.4	Two young pitchers	-1.6
October 25, 1972	Gene Garber	17.7	Jim Rooker	17.2
November 30, 1972	Hal McRae	26.7	Nelson/Scheinblum	1.8
April 2, 1973	Fran Healy	5.7	Greg Minton	17.9
October 24, 1973	NA	0.0	Tom Burgmeier	16.6
December 7, 1973	Lindy McDaniel	0.8	Lou Piniella	9.3
Total		185.1		83.5

Source: http://BaseballReference.com.

The rest of the nucleus of the 1976 team also arrived under Tallis’s reign. Second baseman Frank White was a product of the Baseball Academy, while right fielder Cowens and third baseman Brett were drafted. Three of the starting pitchers (Splittorff, Leonard, and Doug Bird) came from the draft, as did ace reliever Mark Littell, while starter Al Fitzmorris was still around from the 1968 expansion draft.

In order to make good trades one first needs to build a solid base of talent. At the very beginning of his tenure, Tallis targeted young and tradable players in the expansion draft; he did not worry about getting veteran “name” players who might provide an ephemeral boost at the gate. He built one of baseball’s largest and best group of scouts. He hired smart baseball men for his front office and farm system and did not shy away if they were strong willed (four of his top staff eventually became Major League general managers).

In Ewing Kauffman Tallis had a tireless and innovative owner with an open checkbook. Of the eight expansion teams that began play in the 1960s, the Royals attained and sustained success the quickest, and Kauffman’s willingness to hire good baseball people and put money into his team is a big reason. Although he eventually closed down the Baseball Academy, Kauffman’s brainchild provided several lasting evaluation and training techniques and a couple of quality ballplayers. His early embrace of the computer and numerical analysis also offered a competitive advantage.

A smart, engaged owner can be a tremendous advantage by letting the staff know they are both supported and accountable. But to be successful the general manager must feel secure in his position. Kauffman’s impatience, exemplified by his unrealistic prediction that the Royals would win a pennant within five years, kept him from appreciating how much progress was being made and prevented Cedric Tallis from being around when the team finally broke through.