Chicago nights (and mornings) gave Dombrowski his education

The Phillies' president has influenced or taken four franchises to World Series.

The game would end whenever it ended, back in old Comiskey Park, and then the symposium would begin.

Scouts, coaches, executives, interns, managers, and anyone else who could be trusted wound up in the Bards Room. The sun would come out, on the South Side of Chicago, before many of them did.

Dave Dombrowski (pictured) was working for the White Sox then. Dan Evans was, too, but he was also a student at DePaul University, on the near North Side. The two rarely opened their mouths during the Bards Room sessions, primarily because they wanted to learn something, and also because they couldn’t drink. Their task was to get everybody home. Dombrowski, still living with his parents, would drive owner Bill Veeck and general manager Roland Hemond to their houses, then change clothes and head back to the South Side. Evans would stop over at the dorm and go to class.

Sleep? How could you sleep with all this overloaded information? Jim Leyland was a coach at the time, Tony La Russa the White Sox manager, Don Drysdale and Hawk Harrelson were broadcasters at various times, Bobby Winkles an advisor, Loren Babe a coach and legendary instructor. Sometimes the panelists would disagree on what side of the second base bag was better for receiving throws that would create double plays.. Tables would get moved, bottles would be re-positioned, and men of a certain age would be sliding on the floor. Such modern concepts as OPS-plus or FIP didn’t come up.

Players would be dissected, managers would be second-guessed, stories would be told. Hemond would scribble ideas on scraps of paper. At night’s end, he would gather them all, and the next day he would codify the ideas that were good. The bartenders were free to leave; everybody knew where the bottles were.

La Russa retired a couple of weeks ago, already in the Hall of Fame. Harrelson, who took a shot at the GM’s job, has retired as a play-by-play man. Evans became the general manager of the White Sox, then the Dodgers. Most of the rest are gone.

The lessons of the Bards Room are carried by Dombrowski, the president of a Phillies’ team that was going around in circles like the Geico gekko’s sailboat before he made the tough moves this season. Now they will open the World Series on Friday night in Houston, after they won only 87 games and were a well-beaten third in the National League East.

Dombrowski, well-preserved at 66, has driven several different kinds of vehicles deep into October. He was 31 when he became the general manager in Montreal and began assembling a team that was 74-40 when the baseball strike ended the 1994 season in August. By then Dombrowski had become the first general manager of the Florida Marlins. In their fifth year they won the World Series, at which point they decided to start over, and Dombrowski traded the key components for the kids who would become the core of the next Marlins championship team in 2003.

Again he was already gone. He took over the Tigers in 2002, watched them lose 119 games in 2003, and positioned them to win the American League in 2006, although they lost the World Series to St. Louis. By then Dombrowski had given the Marlins some promising youngsters for Miguel Cabrera, who got his 3,000th hit and won a Triple Crown in Detroit, and led them to another World Series in 2012.

On to Boston, where Dombrowski traded for Chris Sale and David Price and signed J.D. Martinez. Those Red Sox won 108 games in 2018 and beat the Dodgers in the World Series.

Now this. The Phillies hired Dombrowski after the 2020 season. A lot of parts were already in place, including Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Jean Segura and Rhys Hoskins on the lineup card, and the 1-2 starter’s punch of Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler. The 2021 Phillies didn’t field or relieve very well, but they were within a game and a half of first place with seven games left. Then they got swept by Atlanta in a 3-game series, and finished a dispirited 82-80.

Frankly, this year wasn’t much different, except that baseball had provided an extra playoff spot. The glum vibe carried over into the spring, and the Phillies were 23-27 in early June when Dombrowski fired manager Joe Girardi. This was not a traumatic event for Dombrowski, who had given Boston manager John Ferrell the Big Haircut after two consecutive playoff appearances and a World Series win three years before that.

Dombrowski couldn’t have known that Rob Thomson, George Steinbrenner’s confidant during the Yankee dynasty, would shepherd the Phillies into the Series, but then you can easily imagine Thomson expressing himself during question time in the Bards Room, and maybe Dombrowsi did too. The Phillies went 65-46 with Thomson managing, and now he’s the fulltime guy.

Although the Phillies had the fourth highest Opening Day payroll (they won the World Series in 2008 with the 13th highest), Dombrowski sold management on bringing in left-fielder Kyle Schwarber, who became the N.L.’s home run king, and veteran right-fielder Nick Castellanos. Shortstop Didi Gregorius gave way to Bryson Stott, the former first-round pick from UNLV. The Phillies gave the Angels one of their top kids in catcher Logan O’Hoppe — who automatically became Anaheim’s only player in Baseball America’s top 100 prospect list — and got Noah Syndergaard for pitching depth and, critically, Brandon Marsh to play center-field, which he has done expertly, with some well-timed hits thrown in.

But the Phillies lost 10 of their final 14 games and seemed unlikely to escape Busch Stadium in the wild-card round. They did, in two games. They were 8-11 against the Braves in the regular season but battered them in a four-game Division Series romp. They got rid of San Diego in five NLCS games. They have homered 16 times in the playoffs and are averaging more than five runs.

There is much talk about the yawning gap between the regular season and the postseason, some of it emanating from Elysian Park Avenue in Los Angeles. The more teams you let in, the more strangeness you invite. Remember, the Pirates won five of six against the Dodgers this year, even though the Dodgers won 111 games and the Pirates 62.

As we look backwards through the binoculars and are thus armed with extra wisdom, the Phillies were well-positioned for October because of power arms and bats. Nola and Wheeler can match zeroes with any pitcher. But the Phillies also had a clear idea who their starters were and which relievers would work in which situations, even though their bullpen isn’t renowned.

Meanwhile, Uber is providing the service Dave Dombrowski once did, and there’s a new(er) ballpark where Comiskey used to be. Its equivalent of the Bards Room is dark, just after the final pitch. Just as well. The bards of baseball are pretty much gone. Too many pros, not enough poetry.

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