In Philly, has Dombrowski finally found home, sweet home?

PHILADELPHIA -- When Dave Dombrowski was an eighth-grade Chicago kid, his teacher did one of those surveys asking each student what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Dombrowski was, at that young age, an active athlete, playing football, basketball and baseball. But rather than entertain delusions of grandeur on the field, he already knew what his professional path would be:

“I want to be a Major League Baseball general manager,” he told his teacher.

“Oh, come on,” she replied. “Give me something that’s realistic.”

That’s how Dombrowski’s storybook -- and many would say Hall of Fame-worthy -- career as a big league GM basically began. But with Dombrowski having turned 66 this season, it’s fair to suggest that he is closer to the end of that particular story than the beginning.

With the Philadelphia Phillies, however, Dombrowski just might get the kind of storybook ending his baseball operations career deserves.

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You might have heard the note that Dombrowski just became the first executive ever to take four franchises to the World Series. And actually, he was already the only executive ever to take three franchises to the World Series.

That’s amazing stuff. But of course, baked within it is the fact that Dombrowski, for all his successes, has sure had to move around the league a lot.

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“I guess if you’re in this game -- this is, what, my 45th year?” says Dombrowski, “you experience a lot of different situations during that time period.”

Though he did have lengthy stays with the Marlins (1992-2001) and Tigers (2001-15), Dombrowski has never had the opportunity -- like legendary Braves team-builder John Schuerholz, the most recent executive inductee in Cooperstown -- to become a franchise fixture somewhere, the kind of leader whose track record is so renowned and importance is so appreciated that he gets to a point where he is past looking over his shoulder.

Instead, every stop on Dombrowski’s path has mixed a little bitter with the sweet.

He came up as an administrative assistant with the White Sox in the late 1970s, studying under the widely respected Roland Hemond. In 1980, he became the South Siders’ farm director. By 1982, he was an assistant general manager in a progressive, creative White Sox front office.

But when Ken “Hawk” Harrelson surprisingly became the team’s GM in late 1985, Dombrowski, who one could easily argue should have been Hemond’s successor in Chicago, became a casualty. He was unceremoniously booted by Harrelson midway through the ’86 season.

“I wasn't on the same page as Hawk was,” Dombrowski says. “My job was to help him however I could. But he acknowledged he didn’t really have a pulse on what being a general manager was like. I was a victim of that. And that’s just the way it went.”

So Dombrowski went to Montreal, where he first served as farm director in 1987 and then, in 1988, was picked to succeed Bill Stoneman as general manager at just 32 years old.

Known as the “Boy Wonder” GM, Dombrowski was disruptive not just because of his young age but because of his willingness to make aggressive trades. The results of those trades were mixed (Dombrowski made a famous early misstep in parting with Randy Johnson in a win-now deal for Mark Langston that didn’t work). But in hindsight, it’s clear he sowed the seeds of the Expos squad that would become one of MLB’s biggest-ever “what ifs” -- the 1994 club that was first in the NL East when the strike hit.

Dombrowski was gone by then. In late 1991, the roof was caving in on his Expos … quite literally, as the Olympic Stadium roof suffered tears during a windstorm and then a 55-ton beam fell into the stands, necessitating closure for 94 days. And Dombrowski, frustrated with the criticism of his moves, sought an escape.

“In Montreal, that was one of the best farm systems they had in their existence,” Dombrowski said. “One instructional league, we had two teams, we had like 15 players play in the big leagues off those instructional teams. But then, unfortunately, we had a change in ownership [from Charles Bronfman to Claude Brochu in 1991], and the new owner who came in just wasn’t going to be able to run it from a financial perspective. So that’s what led me to go to Florida.”

In Florida, with the Marlins, Dombrowski had a chance to work with a blank page on an expansion team.

Incredibly, it took him just five seasons to put together a World Series championship team.

And then, it took just one winter -- on the orders of owner Wayne Huizenga -- to burn it all down, with the Marlins' infamous fire sale that broke Dombrowski’s heart.

“After a couple of days of, ‘Oh, woe is me, I can't believe we're doing this,’” Dombrowski said, “it really came down to you either tackle it and do the best job you can and try to get the best young talent to do it, or quit.”

So off went Moises Alou, Jeff Conine, Bobby Bonilla, Charles Johnson, Robb Nen, Devon White, Al Leiter, Kevin Brown and others. Dombrowski spent that next season crisscrossing the country just to deliver the scattered members of the 1997 champs their World Series rings.

When, by the end of 2001, it was clear the Marlins’ stadium issues would continue to put a clamp on the payroll, Dombrowski was a man on the move yet again -- this time to Motown. True to form, though, the trades and the farm (which included a young Miguel Cabrera) he left behind had the Marlins in position to soon put together another title run, in 2003.

Dombrowski inherited a dire situation in Detroit. But when owner Mike Ilitch gave him the green light to invest in established talent, he ran with it. The Tigers were in the World Series by 2006, and, with the masterful Miggy trade reuniting Dombrowski with his former Florida farmhand, the Tigers put together a terrifying core of talent that would take them back to the Fall Classic in 2012.

The bitter there, though, was the Tigers’ inability to win the Big One, in part because of persistent problems in the ‘pen. By 2015, with Ilitch old and ailing, Dombrowski knew his time with the Tigers was up.

“I had reached a point where my contract was up in a couple of months, and I really had already talked to my wife about it probably being the right time to leave,” Dombrowski says. “All of a sudden, people are getting agitated because you haven't won the World Series, even though you've done a lot of other things. It was just time.”

Within days, Dombrowski was hired by the Red Sox, who were in the midst of a disappointing 2015 season of their own. He inherited a burgeoning core, fronted by Mookie Betts, and he put together the pieces -- notably, David Price, Chris Sale and J.D. Martinez -- it took to bring Boston back to the Promised Land and earn Dombrowski his long-awaited second ring.

And then, less than a year later, he was canned. Dombrowski and owner John W. Henry, who had worked together at the tail end of Dombrowski’s Marlins tenure, did not see eye to eye on the reigning champs’ future direction.

The move stunned Dombrowski. He eventually retreated to Nashville, where he joined the Music City Baseball group trying to bring an expansion team to Tennessee. He was hurt and hesitant about jumping right back into a GM job.

But in a story that is quickly becoming an important piece of Philadelphia sports lore, Phillies owner John Middleton pestered Dombrowski for days, basically begging him to come kick an underachieving and stalled Phillies team into gear. And once his arm was thoroughly twisted, Dombrowski did just that.

So will this Phillies tenure be a happy cap to Dombrowski’s Cooperstown-worthy career? Whether or not the Phillies win this World Series, Middleton has made it known that he views this relationship as open-ended. Dombrowski has two seasons remaining on his current contract but has been given reason to believe he will be the one to dictate his direction.

“John Middleton has talked to me about staying here as long as I would like,” Dombrowski says. “I hope that it ends up working because I think we have a chance to be good for a while.

“This National League East is great -- the Braves are tremendous, so are the Mets, Miami has really good pitching, Washington's rebuilding right now and they’re being sold, but you know you're going to be good eventually. So you're in a situation where you're going to have to be at the top of your game. But that's all right, that's a challenge. The one thing about our club is we're not old. Even though we’ve worked in [Bryson] Stott and [Alec] Bohm, our best young players are just coming -- [Andrew] Painter, [Mick] Abel and [Grif] McGarry. So we have a chance to be good for a while.”

Dombrowski himself is not the “Boy Wonder” he used to be. His magnificent head of hair has long since gone gray. But he still has the spark, the curiosity, and the competitiveness that has long driven him to greatness in his game.

“I’m healthy,” he says. “And I love what I do.”

He also loves where he’s doing it. Hopefully, he’ll get to stick around for a while.