My thoughts on Terry Ryan….
When you cover a team for 10 years, you get to know people. And I’ve seen several sides of Terry Ryan since I’ve been on the beat here.
The first week on the beat in 1997, I arranged a meeting with Ryan in his office. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me like I was an accountant about to tell him that he was being audited for the rest of his life.
But then he said, “I got a call from Herk Robinson about you,” Ryan said. “He said you were a good guy and I should be able to deal with you.”
Herk, the former K.C. GM and one of the finer gentlemen in the game, took it upon himself to, `warn,’ Terry about my arrival after covering the Kansas City Royals for a few years. That would be the first several things Terry would surprise me with over the years.
There’s no one in baseball who has this man’s work ethic. I wrote in today’s editions about how Terry would scout other teams when other GM’s can’t be found. I can’t stress to you how true that is. “Who’s this guy?” Ryan would ask about a team’s 25th player. “Oh yeah, that’s so-and-so. Saw him in the Appalachian League when he played against E-Town. Not on him…”
I’ve had numerous beat writers from other teams come to me and say, “I wish I had your GM.” Their GM’s would be highly visible when things are going well but would dive for cover when the going got tough. Everyone saw Terry around, and respected him for that.
There are many GM’s in the game - Billy Beane, Mark Shapiro, Kenny Williams, Wayne Krivsky included - who think Ryan is truly great for what he does with what he has to work with. ESPN had a chart Thursday night that showed the Twins winning 90 games a year with a payroll ranked in the bottom half of the league. Trust me, people in baseball want to live Terry Ryan’s life. After all, he is a two-time Sporting News Executive of the Year award winner.
Terry takes things head on. He’s honest. He’s polite. Most importantly, he’s prepared.
I can’t tell you how many times over the years Terry would evaluate me. He would list all the things I do well - being prepared, on time, respectful, polite - but that was the meat in the compliment sandwich. Ryan would get into me about things I wrote or how I tried to dig up controversy or how I didn’t watch every little thing that happened on the field. That was cool. I respected Terry’s opinion. I just valued the fact that he thought I was prepared.
The first few years on the beat, the Twins staff played spring training pickup basketball games on a court near Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, Fla. Terry was right in the middle of everything. If he was within 15 feet, he could stick a jumper. And he kept everyone involved with nifty passes. Kirby Puckett showed up a few times, and he was the black hole. If you threw the ball into him, the ball wasn’t coming out. That’s another story.
What else? When the Twins were being threatened with Carl Pohlad-induced contraction, Ryan, Bill Smith and Wayne Krivsky made the death march to the GM meetings in Chicago and were treated like the plague. They hopped in a car after the meetings and drove back to the Twin Cities.
It was about that time that the Toronto Blue Jays called about their gig. Terry wasn’t interested. He was loyal to the Twins and knew there would be a mass exodus if he left. Still, he, Smith and Krivsky poured over the entire Blue Jays organization during the drive back to the Twin Cities. They studied the 40-man roster, contracts, deferred money, stadium lease, affiliates, overseas scouting, the scouting department, revenue, everything. Krivsky told me that they came up with such a complete assessment of the Blue Jays organization that he was going to duplicate the process if he got a chance to interview somewhere. I can’t help but think that Krivsky was over-prepared for his interview with the Reds.
What else? I used to live in Eagan, which is where Terry and his family lives. Sure enough, they were big Eagan High School supporters and would show up at the popular Al Baker’s bar after football games. I used to live right down the street from the joint, so I was able to get to know his great family. His wife Karilyn, is a GM’s dream. She gets it. She may have to shovel snow in February while Terry is putting sunscreen on during spring training, but she helped move the chains.
How focused was Terry on his job? I once saw Karilyn at a Twins game and said, “Hey, you’ve changed your hair style.” She replied, “Thank you. Terry hasn’t noticed.” Was Terry ticked off at me…
That reminds me… Karilyn would cut out negative stories in the papers about Ryan before the kids would read them. She forgot to cut out the story I wrote about Ryan possibly going to Toronto, and she hasn’t forgotten when young Tim Ryan exclaimed, “TORONTO!?” when he read the paper that morning.
What else? There was the time I gave Ryan a ride to the Dome when his car was in the shop. There was the time in spring training when Doug Mientkiewicz had a collision at home plate in St. Petersburg and the trainers borrowed my rental car because it was a mini-SUV to take laid-out Dougie back to Fort Myers, leaving Terry to wait for me to get my stories done so he could give me a lift back to home base. He wasn’t happy. That was an entertaining trip.
It’s going to be strange not talking to Ryan on a daily basis. I have a job to do, he didn’t like it sometimes and we sparred. But I’m going to make two statements about my 10 years interviewing him.
One, you want Terry Ryan to be your next door neighbor.
Two, my career is better off for dealing with him.
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