Winning in Both Leagues: Reflections from Baseball’s Front Office by J. Frank Cashen (review)

Before Frank Cashen died in June 2014, he wrote his memoirs. Their title, Winning in Both Leagues, ostensibly refers to his rare accomplishment of having been general manager of World Series champions from both the American and National Leagues. It could also describe Cashen’s success both in the world of baseball and in the rest of his world. He was—more or less in chronological order, with a few repetitions—a sportswriter who made his daily newspaper’s horserace picks, manager of a couple of regional tracks, a brewery public relations director, chief assistant to the commissioner of baseball, and gm for the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Mets. Oh yes, along the line, he also got a law degree. Cashen’s own take on his careers was, “I never had a job I didn’t like” (155). His account of all of this is breezy, friendly writing, the type you might expect from an ex-sportswriter.

He never seems to have been unemployed after graduating from Loyola College in his hometown of Baltimore. He was personally sought out by several of his employers and had his first big baseball job, as general manager of the Orioles, more or less forced on him by the team’s majority owner, who was already his boss at the National Brewing Company.

Cashen ran the Orioles for Jerry Hoffberger, who had Frank covertly scouting the team’s management from his public relations post at Hoffberger’s brewing company. Then Hoffberger made his undercover man the Orioles’ pr director in late 1965 when Hoffberger made his move to become the team’s principal owner. Practically before Cashen could warm up his executive chair in the Orioles’ headquarters, he was made gm when incumbent Lee MacPhail left to become American League president. At the time, Cashen’s sports-management experience consisted of running the two financially strapped racetracks in Maryland.

The Orioles won the Series in 1966; and in Cashen’s ten years, they went to the League Championship Series six times, won four pennants, and captured another World Series title in 1970. After a few years back in brewery pr and a stint as baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn’s chief assistant, he returned to a front office in 1980—this time, with the failing New York Mets, last place finishers for three straight seasons. Cashen had a negative opinion of the previous management but nevertheless believed that “I could make the changes needed to make the Mets a winner,” and he promised new principal owner Nelson Doubleday that he’d do that (95). With key trades bringing in the likes of Howard Johnson and Ron Darling and a farm system that gave the big club Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, Cashen had another ring by 1986.

Cashen was clearly proud of his accomplishments (besides his bachelor’s and law degrees and his jobs in baseball, journalism, horse racing, and brewing, he turned down an offer from Doubleday to head that publishing company’s editorial department). But the story isn’t all about him. In the book, he gives plenty of credit to the men who worked for him, several of whom went on to run their own teams, reeling off a sort of front-office all-star team of Harry Dalton, Lou Gorman, Al Harazin, and John Schuerholz, among others. He’s occasionally self-effacing about his accomplishments and has an understated sense of humor about it: “I have often joked I was so successful in running the tracks that today they are both strip shopping malls” (72). (Of course, the general economic misfortunes that beset horse racing might have had something to do with that.) He also notes that he advised one candidate for the New York Yankees managerial position in 1996 not to take it: “Fortunately, Joe Torre didn’t pay any attention to me” (104).

Cashen was the sociable type and seems to have...