Alex Anthopoulos walked over to where Jim Leyland and John Gibbons were sitting in the stucco-and-green-grass spring training park in Lakeland, Fla., just to say hello.
Leyland, the warhorse manager of the Detroit Tigers, looked up.
"I want to congratulate you," he said in his cigarette-soaked voice, "for having big balls, for bringing him back."
Life has changed for Anthopoulos since he took the job as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays in 2009, at the age of 32.
Back then, he would lie awake in bed, thinking about every major decision; he would talk to everybody he could think of, up to and including the janitor, looking for more information. It took him nearly a year to hire an administrative assistant, after rustling up a list of 15 candidates.
That's not Alex Anthopoulos anymore.
"I don't agonize over decisions as much," he says, his phone buzzing every so often on the table. "And I think this off-season was really where -- you evolve, I think.
"I think what I learned is -- in the beginning, you still want to be a good leader and be inclusive. And I certainly still want to be all that.
"Over time, I've just forgot that, at times as an assistant GM, I did all kinds of things, but I had an opinion. I gave my opinion and it was my opinion and I didn't have to worry as much about it. Just boom, that's it.
"But as a general manager, you're leading the organization and you're not doing the job by yourself. You want everybody included, everybody involved, respect everyone's opinion. But ... I forgot that now that I'm a GM, I forgot to actually ask myself my opinion; to pretend I'm in the room and say, 'Hey, what do you think?' Because that opinion should carry a little more weight, because if it's wrong, it's me anyway."
Anthopoulos had a busy off-season and it required big decisions. It required his staff's input, the input of the scouts and the result was a team remade: Three starters in R.A. Dickey, Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle; a new starting shortstop in Jose Reyes; new pieces in Melky Cabrera and Emilio Bonifacio.
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