Today’s New Breed of General Managers: They Have a Flair for the Pare

There was a time when you could walk into the front offices of the Angels or Rams and kick your feet up on the general manager’s desk.

You could light up a cigar, sit back in a chair and blow smoke with him for hours. In that time you could find out who was going to be traded where and why. You could talk about the wife and kids and the rising cost of rosin bags.

Tip a few drinks with the GM later in the hotel lounge bar and, bingo, you’ve got your story for the morning edition. Well, that was yesterday.

Today, the Rams and Angels are run by a couple of computer whiz kids from the Orange County sports and accounting firm of Shaw and Port Inc.

That’s Shaw as in John Shaw, the Rams’ vice president of finance, and Port as in Mike Port, general manager of the Angels.

Together they represent the new wave in sports management and everything you either love or hate about Orange County. They’re young, conservative, button-down-collar guys who rule their teams with an iron first and a pocket calculator.

They are revered by their employers and hated by every sports agent who ever blinked first at a negotiating table.

Meet Shaw and Port, Poindexters of professional sports; company men and proud of it. These are two guys who are as concerned as much with the bottom line as the scoring line.

A successful season for them is finishing not first but in the black.

As a sports reporter, you wouldn’t walk into their office unless you needed help with your tax return.

Shaw, 34, doesn’t even talk to the press.

Port, 41, does, but sometimes you wish he didn’t.

He was once asked to describe himself. You’d better sit down.

“I would say I am amicable enough on occasion, but at the outset, a baseball fan, and . . . desirous of wanting to see players do well but within the proper vein of how I see baseball and what the game should be. I’m cooperative enough and open-minded enough, but otherwise, with a very structured impression of what baseball is and the public trust that it holds and how the game and the club should be operated.”

Huh? How ‘bout those Mets, Mike?

Shaw and Port have found that success lies largely in detaching themselves from their players.

After all, you can hardly slash a guy’s salary in half by day and be on his bowling team later that night.

For this, Port and Shaw have garnered reputations as ruthless, faceless, emotionless negotiators.

Great guys to invite to a party.

Imagine Port and Shaw shopping together for groceries.

Port: “Given the parameters at my disposal, all things being equal, within the range of their respective positions, one should consider taking the cucumber over the grapes.”

Shaw: “I say we let the grapes sit there and rot the whole season. Then we come back next year and get a great deal on raisins. See how it works? Besides, I know some guys in Fresno who might be looking to buy.”

Port majored in business administration at United States International University at San Diego. He was hand-groomed by owner Gene Autry to be the Angels’ successor to the retiring Buzzie Bavasi, who was as gregarious as Port is stoic. Port took over the team in 1984 and has been slashing prices ever since.

Determined to trim away the payroll fat, it was Port who last year stared Rod Carew in the face and told the seven-time batting champion that he would not be invited back for the 1986 season.

It was Port who refused to re-sign Juan Beniquez, the only .300 hitter the Angels had last season.

It is Port who has nine soon-to-be Angel free agents playing as though their next at-bats might be their last, which they might well be.

It is Port who will likely close the door and walk away from Reggie Jackson, who wants to keep his big contract right here in Anaheim for one last season.

And you thought Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster were tough guys.

Shaw, a Brooklyn-born tax attorney, has been with the Rams for seven long, cost-effective years. Ram owner Georgia Frontiere moved him in at about the same time she was moving GM Don Klosterman out. It was a smooth transition, Klosterman returning from vacation to learn that he, uh . . . no longer had an office.

Unlike Port, who is an avid baseball fan, Shaw doesn’t pretend to know or care a lot about football.

Now, dollars and cents are a different story.

It was Shaw who let the franchise, Eric Dickerson, sit out two games last season in a salary dispute.

It was Shaw who this year put the squeeze on rookie Mike Schad, the offensive tackle, signing him to the worst first-round contract in years.

It is Shaw who sits back calmly as wide receiver Henry Ellard misses game after game in a contract dispute.

When it comes to the handling of Ram finances, Shaw is czar.

Not even Coach John Robinson can intervene.

“I have no power when it comes to money, that’s true,” Robinson said.

It is Shaw who runs the Rams. Some say he’s ruining them, especially when conversation turns to the treatment of Ellard.

But it’s clear that Shaw, through Ellard, is making a statement to Rams for years to come.

The fact remains that the Rams are 4-1 without him. The Angels, without Carew, are a few swings from the World Series.

Business is a cruel world, but these two are doing something right.

Yes, Shaw and Port may be ruthless, maybe even are merciless tightwads.

But, yes, too, do their teams make money.

And, as anyone at IBM could tell you, that’s the bottom line.