O’Brien Likes Plush Feel of Angel Hot Seat

Dan O’Brien is sitting in the chair that used to be Mike Port’s, behind the desk that used to be Mike Port’s. A writer is sitting in the chair that used to be O’Brien’s whenever he and Port needed to huddle over complex math problems, such as calculating Mark Langston’s salary or Dave Parker’s age.

“I had no idea when I came to work on Tuesday that I’d be sitting here and you’d be sitting there this afternoon,” O’Brien says. “I had no inkling.”

O’Brien knows about these chairs, though. He knows enough about them to know the truth about them.

These chairs are musical chairs.

“I know Rich Brown didn’t tell me, ‘You’re here forever, or as long as you want to be,’ ” O’Brien says. “I work for him. I work for the Autrys and Rich Brown. And if the job I do isn’t what they want or what they like, then you’ll be right back there in the same chair, talking to somebody else.”

Dan O’Brien is the newest Angel general manager, the sixth in a series. That’s six in 30 years, an average career-span of five years, a statistic that correlates with O’Brien’s own resume.

He was the Texas Rangers’ general manager for five years, 1974 through 1978.

He was the Seattle Mariners’ general manager for five years, 1979 through 1983.

O’Brien left Texas on his own volition, having suffered enough under one owner with too little money to spend (Bob Short) and another with too much time on his hands (Brad Corbett).

He left Seattle on George Argyros’ volition. “I’ve been in the business 37 years,” O’Brien says, “and I was only asked to leave once. That was George. George wanted to bring in his own people, and that was fine.”

Argyros wanted to bring in his own people to trade away the prospects the Mariners had stockpiled under O’Brien. O’Brien still winces as he ticks off the list:

Matt Young.

Danny Tartabull.

Mike Moore.

Floyd Bannister.

Phil Bradley.

Mark Langston.

“Seattle has so many names playing in the major leagues that came out of that system,” O’Brien says. “You can go on and on. . . . When you look at it, you try to imagine how well they’d be doing if it had been all left in place.

“When I was there, the best year we had was 1982, when we won 76 games. This is now 1991 and since that time, they’ve only exceeded that twice, once when they won 77 games and once when they won 78.

“That doesn’t seem like progress, does it?”

This is why O’Brien is a firm believer in building from within--and then keeping it within. “I’ve said from the beginning, scouting and player development is the way to go,” he says. “Quite frankly, we followed that course every place I’ve been. Check Texas. Check Seattle.”

Both times, however, O’Brien encountered checkmate at the hands of owners too shortsighted or shallow-pocketed to see it through.

Short hired him first, largely because the talent pool was draining every time Short interviewed a candidate. Joe Burke worked for Short in Washington, before the Senators moved West to become the Rangers, and he asked O’Brien to apply as a favor. “Joe said, ‘We can’t seem to find anyone out there who can get along with Bob Short,’ ” O’Brien says. “Would you be interested?”

O’Brien gave it a go. He’s a people person, as the Angels’ Brown says. He got the job and he got along with Short--to the point, at least, where he can say, “He was a tough guy to work for, but I liked him. He wanted to do the right thing, he just didn’t have the wherewithal. He was on a limited budget, if you will.”

O’Brien says Short once told him, “Look, I can’t afford to keep this. If you keep it floating until I sell it, you’ll be doing me a big favor.” He also remembers having to talk Short out of selling his double-play combination, second baseman Dave Nelson and shortstop Toby Harrah, to the New York Yankees.

“Gabe Paul was running the Yankees at the time,” O’Brien says, “and he would come to Pompano Beach in Fort Lauderdale to visit Bob every morning during spring training. He’d always bring a check, a $500,000 check, because he wanted to buy Harrah and Nelson. He did this for three weeks, every day.

“After breakfast, Bob would come back, tempted, and tell me, ‘He just laid this check on the table. What do you think?’ And I said, ‘Bob, you just can’t sell two players like that,’ because that’s really all we had at the time. As it turned out, fortunately, he was true to the club and held out to the players. And we ended up having a pretty good year that year.”

That’s one problem O’Brien won’t have in Anaheim. From Port, he inherited a $32-million payroll and an owner who is convinced that the American League pennant is priceless. The money is there. And, O’Brien believes, the talent, too.

“We have, essentially, all the ingredients that you would hope to assemble in one club,” he says. “I said the other day that we weren’t going to throw away the book. I think Michael wrote a good one. . . . He was conservative, sure. He was cautious, yes. But he was also pretty good.”

Likewise, O’Brien is conservative and cautious when asked to compare his approach to Port’s. “I think that’s for you people to determine,” he says. The closest he gets to an out-and-out knock of the Port regime is when he describes the Angel farm system as “middle of the pack.”

“I think in many instances, they’ve done an outstanding job with the farm system here,” O’Brien says. “Perhaps, in other ways, I can make it a little better. That’s what you’re striving for, isn’t it? To always make things better.”

Do that and you get to keep your seat.

At the moment, O’Brien likes the way he has the furniture arranged.