Shapiro: I’m not Darth Vader
Blue Jays president understands why some fans cast him as a villain, but says they’ll see a leader who ‘cares deeply about winning’
Back in April 2002, as Mark Shapiro was about to begin his first full season as general manager of the Cleveland Indians following an inaugural off-season in which he made a series of unpopular moves — trading Roberto Alomar and letting Kenny Lofton depart as a free agent — Cleveland Magazine published a 4,000-word profile entitled, “Don’t Hate Mark Shapiro.”
The article, and its comment section, saw renewed traffic this past Oct. 29, the day Alex Anthopoulos opted to leave the Blue Jays rather than work for Shapiro.
“Forget this guy,” begins one commenter. “He needs to go back to Cleveland. He’s a curse on the city of Toronto & he’ll run our team into the ground . . . #FireShapiro isn’t harsh enough. It should be #FireShapiroIntoTheSun. The guy is a pox on the city of Toronto. Mark Shapiro can go to hell!”
Granted, hyperbolic and irrational outrage is the bread and butter of anonymous Internet comments. But this wasn’t an uncommon sentiment among a broad segment of Jays fans after the sudden departure of Anthopoulos.
"He’s a genuine guy. He’ll look you in the face and what you see is what you’re going to get."
BUD BLACK FORMER MLB MANAGER
Shapiro, who officially replaced Paul Beeston as president in November, was the power-hungry interloper, hell bent on a hostile takeover of a popular, homegrown GM, who had just delivered a heart-pounding post-season run after decades of disappointment.
Anthopoulos was the martyred saint while Shapiro — a slick, Ivy League outsider, who in his first public appearances exuded a confident, corporate charm — was an easy villain.
The 48-year-old had spent half his life working in Major League Baseball with the Indians, climbing from the player-development ranks while earning widespread respect and admiration across the industry.
But to the average sports fan in Toronto, he was an unknown.
“Who does this Cleveland guy think he is?” cried the radio call-in mob. “And why does he pronounce his name like that?”
(Regarding the latter, in short, the long-vowel SHA-PIE-RO pronunciation has its roots in Philadelphia, where Shapiro’s eastern European grandparents immigrated.)
Shapiro says he anticipated a strong reaction from fans when Anthopoulos decided not to re-sign with the club. But he admits he was taken aback by the vitriol that greeted his arrival and was confused by his portrayal as some dastardly marauder.
“It’s not consistent with who I’ve been for 24 years,” he told the Star in an interview earlier this week. “I’ve got a pretty good track record of who I am as a person and who I am as a leader. So it’s a little strange to all of a sudden go from a guy who was considered to be a nice guy to a guy who’s Darth Vader.”
Shapiro has dealt with being unpopular before. His first order of business as GM in Cleveland was to oversee a complete rebuild, which involved trading away the team’s best players. In the aftermath, a radio caller once compared him to Osama bin Laden.
But “this,” Shapiro says — meaning his rough ride in Toronto — “is a little more personal than that.”
Shapiro grew up in Baltimore, where his father, Ronald, a Harvardeducated lawyer, became one of baseball’s premier player agents, representing Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken Jr. and Kirby Puckett among others. His father’s job afforded a VIP glimpse into professional sports, but Shapiro says he was just another autograph-seeking, wiffle-ball-playing kid like any other.
His father influenced him in a multitude of ways, but the deepest lessons, Shapiro says, were in compassion and empathy.
“My dad has gone through life and walked at the highest circles — politics, business, sports — and he has never qualified people. He treated the custodian the exact same way he treated the mayor of Baltimore. He taught me that how you treat other people really defines who you are.”
The elder Shapiro, who has authored multiple best-selling books on negotiation and leadership, also stressed the value of preparation.
“That everything I do is a reflection of who I am, so I’m not going to cheat the process. I’m going to give a full effort. I’m going to go to bed feeling good about the effort I’m giving — always.”
A creature of habit, Shapiro wakes every day before dawn, sometime between 4:30 and 5 a.m. “Five at the latest,” he says.
He’ll have a coffee and read some email before working out. Then he’ll eat breakfast in his Theatre District apartment and walk “the same three-block route, stopping at the same Starbucks” en route to his office at the Rogers Centre.
“He’s very disciplined in how he leads his life and how he approaches his job,” says Bud Black, the former big-league pitcher and manager of the San Diego Padres, who was a coach in the Indians’ farm system under Shapiro.
Shapiro’s office is remarkable only in its ordinariness. It’s small for a CEO and unadorned. The former Princeton offensive lineman works at a standing desk, surrounded by framed family photos — his 13-yearold son, Caden, 11-year-old daughter, Sierra, and artist wife, Lissa Bockrath, are staying back in Cleveland until the end of the school year (he goes home every weekend) — and autographed pictures of former players, such as Victor Martinez, who have since become friends.
Within that group Shapiro counts John McDonald, the retired infielder who spent the first decade of his professional career in the Indians’ organization before Shapiro traded him to Toronto, where he became a fan favourite.
McDonald was drafted by Cleveland in 1996, when Shapiro was the organization’s farm director. As a matter of course, Shapiro met every minor-league player at the beginning and end of every season — a novel approach at the time.
“That didn’t happen in any other organization,” says McDonald, who now works for the Indians as a minor-league infield instructor. “Whenever I talked to friends on other teams about their situation they were like, ‘We have no idea. Nobody talks to us.’ ”
McDonald says Shapiro’s honest and direct approach left a lasting impression on him. “That open communication early on in my career kind of set a tone for how I am now, how I view baseball, how I teach kids.”
That honesty landed Shapiro in more controversy last month when he said he didn’t think the Jays needed to install natural grass — something that had been near-promised by the previous regime — and that it may not a priority going forward.
Shapiro says he was just telling the truth.
“I don’t know if I can communicate any differently,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been an effective communicator throughout my career and that’s only by being honest.
“I think if you spin things and weave a creative version of the truth, it’s hard to stay consistent; you don’t remember you what you said last. I’m being who I am.”
“He’s a genuine guy,” says Black, who sought Shapiro’s counsel when he was weighing managerial posts nearly a decade ago. “He’ll look you in the face and what you see is what you’re going to get.”
But Black says Shapiro’s greatest talent, what separates him from similarly statured executives, is his “ability to grow others.”
That is Shapiro’s legacy in Cleveland, where he built a front office that became something of a farm system for future GMs, including Ross Atkins, whom he hired to replace Anthopoulos.
“As much as we talk about players being good teammates,” Black said, “on the executive side, Mark was a great teammate to those in and around him, not only with the Indians, but throughout the industry.”
Shapiro arrives at a pivotal time for the Jays’ franchise, which marks its 40th anniversary this season. The Rogers Centre is in need of costly upgrades and set to undergo an expensive renovation; the organization’s spring-training lease in Dunedin is up after next year; and while the team is a legitimate playoff contender that fell two wins short of a World Series berth, its stock of minor-league prospects was depleted by last year’s trade-deadline frenzy.
Meanwhile, franchise cornerstones Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion are set to become free agents after this year.
Given all that needs to be done, he says he isn’t dwelling on the public’s perception of him. “In these jobs, if you cannot handle criticism, fair or unfair, you’re going to have a fragile existence.”
But if he could impart one message to a skeptical fan-base, he said it would be that he’s here to win.
“I’m someone that cares deeply about winning and is going to wake up thinking about how to make the Jays better, is going to go to bed thinking about how to make the Jays better, is going to be consumed with only two things in life: my family and this organization, and that’s it. I don’t have a hobby; I don’t ski, I don’t play cards, I don’t play golf — nothing. It’s work and family for me.
“I’m a pretty boring guy, but if you love the team and you want someone that is working for the team that cares deeply and is going to work tirelessly, that’s who I am.”