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Lee C. Kluck tells the full and colorful story of Harry Dalton, many consider the first modern baseball executive.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 21, 2024

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This video is a transcript of an interview with Lee, who discusses his book about Harry Dalton, a prominent figure in Major League Baseball. The interview begins with the date and setting, and Lee explains his motivations for writing the book, which include his personal fandom for the Milwaukee Brewers and a desire to engage with his history degree after experiencing a significant health issue.

Lee delves into Harry Dalton’s life, highlighting his journey from a sports writer and military officer to becoming a successful baseball executive. Dalton is recognized for revolutionizing the role of the general manager in baseball, focusing on team building and specialization in talent evaluation. He is credited with significant trades that brought key players to teams, contributing to their success, especially with the Baltimore Orioles and Milwaukee Brewers.

Throughout the interview, Lee emphasizes Dalton's collaborative management style, his positive interactions with players, and his contributions to the sport that extend beyond winning—such as improving player welfare during crises like the cocaine problem in the 1980s.

The discussion also touches on Dalton's legacy, with Lee arguing that he should be considered for the Hall of Fame due to his substantial impact on the game and the careers he helped shape. Overall, the interview serves to highlight the importance of Dalton's influence in modern baseball and the values he represented as an executive.

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I am a huge Milwaukee Brewer fan, which, for those in,

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in, on your side of the pond, might,

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might not be too familiar,

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but it's an American baseball team in Wisconsin.

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And, they are,

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it's my home state.

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And Harry Dalton built some of the teams

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that I watched growing up.

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And I thought, Hey, why were these teams good?

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Because I knew that they were gonna start having financial

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trouble, as the, as the nineties

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progressed, you know, there,

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there wasn't a situation where they had a lot of money

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to invest in players and things like that.

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And it became a real problem.

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And I thought, why was this team good for as long as it was?

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And the answer I came up with was Harry Dalton.

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And so I thought, okay, this is, this might be worth a,

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a look to see.

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Um, and the other, the other reason honestly was,

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at the time I was working a, a nine to five, like,

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everyone generally has to,

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and, I have a master's degree in history.

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And I, I wanted to find a way to keep myself engaged,

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with my degree.

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And, something about me, I,

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I had a heart attack about halfway

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through my master's program.

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I was 28 years old.

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Um, so for me, I,

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I really wanted to use my degree.

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So that's, that was sort of the motivation behind it.

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And, and, you know, a lot of it had to do with, I thought

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that Harry was worth the treatment.

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Um, one of the things we study in baseball history more now

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is, is how teams are built

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and the cultures behind different organizations.

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I think the research is a combination of,

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it's very primary source heavy.

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Um, I use the, the Dalton papers, which are at the,

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national Baseball Hall of Fame

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and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

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Um, which was great

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because it had, you know, you don't think

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that the memo you write to your boss may someday be a,

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be a historical piece of evidence, right?

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But, you know, there was all that stuff

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and, Harry saved a lot.

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That was just really, you know, in his family when,

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when Harry died in 2005, his family donated a lot of his,

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ephemera to, to the Hall of Fame.

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So, beyond that,

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the primary sources were sources, newspaper articles, if,

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if, if a newspaper article got written by about Harry Dalton

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in, in 40 plus odd years, I probably read it.

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Um, and then of course, you know, there's the, the, the,

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hey, what's been written about team building,

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in baseball, what's been written about Harry Dalton,

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you know, this what we call historiography.

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Uh, going through that and, and,

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and making sure that, you know,

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what I cover is different than

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what other people have covered,

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or that it ends a, puts it in a new light.

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Um, and, and that research portion took,

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you know, it took me about seven years to write the book,

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and it probably, that research portion took about five

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of those, you know, f four or five of those years.

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So, that's, that, that was the,

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the sort of the research methodology.

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I consider Harry to be the first modern baseball executive

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because it has his style of management.

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Um, prior to that, general managers, as they're called 'em,

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baseball, were generalists.

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They dealt with team building, they dealt with media,

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they dealt with concessions, they dealt with everything.

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Um, post Harry Dalton, I would argue that

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the number one job of the general manager

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was building a winning team.

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You know, you, you start to get specific, specialization

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in these other areas where you're going, okay,

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you're gonna handle media, you are gonna handle this.

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I'm going to handle putting a winning team on the field.

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Um, and,

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and I think that was, you know, that is,

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that is why I call 'em the first modern baseball executive.

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Um, and I think he has a lot in common with,

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with the 21st Century executive.

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It's a very, his his style was

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very collaborative.

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Um, you know, he took, he took opinions from everybody.

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Some people would write books

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and you find out that the person you're writing about was

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really good at their job, but not a very good human being.

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Um, but Harry was

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genuinely a good person.

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Everybody I talked to,

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the first thing they told me was he was one

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of the best people they ever dealt with.

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He was willing to help anyone.

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He was willing to, you know, he was very sympathetic.

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I think, his approach to managing players

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and things was very 21st century.

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And the fact that he didn't see them as chattel,

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Baseball, and I can't remember.

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I've read some on the labor,

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battles in football in England,

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but, up until the 1970s,

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if a player was signed

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or drafted by a major league baseball team,

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they were pretty much linked to that team for the perpetual,

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for the length of their career.

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Um, that meant that you didn't have

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to treat the players very well.

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But it, he, he did.

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And as time changed, he changed.

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So it was a very good person,

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and I think that that gave him a lot of cr

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I would say today, street cred with,

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with the people that he worked with.

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You will have the general manager,

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and under that there will be two branches.

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There will be the scouting department

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and the player development department,

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which the player development department is.

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Um, you know, in England, I'll,

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I'll use an analogy again.

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In England, they have the under eighteens,

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the under fifteens, the, those types of things.

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Uh, major League Baseball,

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they have the minor league system.

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And so what they did were really good at,

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in his entire career, no matter where he went,

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was he surrounded himself with people

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that could evaluate talent.

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And then he also made sure that his system was stocked

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with coaches,

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and managers that understood

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that the team had an overarching philosophy

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and they would adhere to that philosophy.

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And each and every player was taught that way

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from the minute they got there

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to the minute they made the Major League team.

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And I think that's what made him very, successful even

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as the game changed around him.

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Perry was born in Massachusetts in 1928.

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He was an only child.

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Um, his father was a, salesman

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and worked for a sporting goods company,

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mainly dealt with hunting and fishing.

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Uh, Harry was a very intelligent, even as a kid,

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he was very intelligent.

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He was actually a member of Mensa.

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So he was, I mean,

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he literally would've probably been good at just about

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anything he wanted to do.

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Um, and he chose baseball, which, you know,

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that was, that was it.

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But he, he, originally was a sports writer,

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and he worked as a sports writer.

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And he had gone to college.

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He was an English major at Amherst in Massachusetts.

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Um, he was,

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an award-winning journalist.

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He got his sports writing was, was lauded at the university.

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Um, he got a job with the, Springfield newspaper.

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He was from West Springfield, Massachusetts,

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which is in Western Mass.

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And he, worked

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as a sports writer, and then the Korean War kicked off.

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Um, and he originally enlisted,

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he was a, he was a, he was a Cold War kid.

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He was a, he was a very firm believer in the fact

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that his generation would have to fight the conflicts

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that were born out of World War ii.

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And so his, his sort of mindset was very patriotic.

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And so he joined the Air Force

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and it quickly became apparent that this man

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who had enlisted in the Air Force was more officer material.

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So he was sent to Officer Candidate school

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and then worked as a PR person for the Air Force in Colorado

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before going to Korea.

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He had spent 36 months in, in Korea, writing

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for the, far East Air Force

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in, in Japan.

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And, and then he,

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when he got out of the Air Force,

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his parents had moved to Baltimore.

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His father had taken a job at a sporting goods

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store in Baltimore.

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And that was sort of how he ended up in Baltimore.

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Um, but yeah, that was his, his sort

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of pre baseball life to that point.

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He showed early in his career that he was a hustler,

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you know, that he was willing to work hard.

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He used his intelligence.

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He, he looked at the larger pictures around it, you know,

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he looked at how they did things.

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He looked at how the game was played, how the game was

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managed, and, and sort of prove it that way.

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And then, you know, he worked as the farm director.

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Um, he worked as the assistant farm director in,

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acquiring players

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and things, for the, for the minor league system.

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And then in 19, in the winter of 1965, he, he

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became the general manager of the Orioles.

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Um, and his, his defining work, I think, you know, he's,

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he's always sort of known at various stages in his career

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for the big trade, he was always sort of known

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as the big trade.

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So he, in Baltimore, for instance,

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his outgoing, his boss said, Hey, I traded

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for Frank Robinson, who was an already an MVP

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and would go on to win an MVP in Harry's first year

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as general manager when they won the World Series in

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Baltimore in 1966, when he would go to California,

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which his on the field in California,

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they weren't very good, but he traded for Nolan Ryan,

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who would go on to be a hall of Famer.

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Um, and in Milwaukee he traded for, Ted Simmons

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and Pete Vukovich and Raleigh Fingers.

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Uh, two of the three are Hall of Famers

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and award-winning players

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and got Milwaukee to their only World Series birth.

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So that was sort of his, his, you know, if, if people were

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to say, what do you remember Harry Dalton for?

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I think his work ethic.

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And, and also like I said, he was, he was sort of, they,

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they call him at one point, they called him traitor Dalton,

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because he was able to, to, to make these moves that sort

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of always worked for people.

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Fun is, you can't necessarily be measured just simply

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by team building In modern sports, we wanna look at winning

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as being the, the benchmark of everything.

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Right? And, and rightfully so.

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It's a business and,

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and winning is, is what kind of keeps you solvent

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and, you know, keeps everyone employed.

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Um, Harry always said, he used to tell people goes, you,

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you work this job to be fired,

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and this is eventually, you know, it'll happen.

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Um, but I think, you know, he was a great team builder,

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but we have to look beyond team building.

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He was a deep thinker

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whenever they had an existential question about the game.

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Uh, bud Seig, who was the commissioner of baseball and, and,

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and Harry's boss in Milwaukee, he said,

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whenever we had a, a major question about the game,

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Harry was the first person we consulted.

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He was the best baseball, he was the best mind

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in the game at that time as far as the larger

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issues facing the game.

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Um, he did some

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of the first work in Major League baseball on,

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employee assistance programs.

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Uh, in the eighties,

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major league baseball had a huge cocaine problem,

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and it sort of permeated through the Milwaukee clubhouse.

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And Harry was one of the first people to say

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after that fact, like, okay, we need to be able

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to help these guys as, as human beings

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and developed programs that will,

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that will help them, their mental health.

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I think his other legacy is,

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besides the team building

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and the, the, you know,

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the off the field things they worked on, his,

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his overarching legacy is, I think he's a hall of famer.

14:31.365 --> 14:33.425
Uh, he is, he is,

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he was extremely successful for a very long time.

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He was, able to change with the game.

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Um, he was,

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he managed Hall of Famers.

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He, he launched careers

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and players that are, will go down

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through the annals of baseball.

14:57.885 --> 15:02.835
And I think the other thing then too is when you take all

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of those things combined, and he's,

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and he trained some executives that went on

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to big time careers that are in the Hall of Fame.

15:09.735 --> 15:11.595
So to me, if you look at it

15:11.595 --> 15:15.215
and go, these people were trained by this individual,

15:15.635 --> 15:18.015
why isn't this individual in the Hall of Fame?

15:18.635 --> 15:23.115
And so I think that that is, a big,

15:24.665 --> 15:29.595
it's a big part of, of his legacy, his overarching legacy is

15:29.595 --> 15:32.635
that we have to look at him as a, as a potential Hall

15:32.635 --> 15:32.995
of fame camp.

00:00 - I am a huge Milwaukee Brewer fan, which, for those in, in, on your side of the pond, might, might not be too familiar, but it's an American baseball team in Wisconsin. And, they are, it's my home state.

00:19 - And Harry Dalton built some of the teams that I watched growing up. And I thought, Hey, why were these teams good? Because I knew that they were gonna start having financial trouble, as the, as the nineties progressed, you know, there, there wasn't a situation where they had a lot of money to invest in players and things like that. And it became a real problem. And I thought, why was this team good for as long as it was?

00:53 - And the answer I came up with was Harry Dalton. And so I thought, okay, this is, this might be worth a, a look to see. and the other, the other reason honestly was, at the time I was working a, a nine to five, like, everyone generally has to, and, I have a master's degree in history. And I, I wanted to find a way to keep myself engaged, with my degree. And, something about me, I,

01:27 - I had a heart attack about halfway through my master's program. I was 28 years old. so for me, I, I really wanted to use my degree. So that's, that was sort of the motivation behind it. And, and, you know, a lot of it had to do with, I thought that Harry was worth the treatment. one of the things we study in baseball history more now is, is how teams are built

01:59 - and the cultures behind different organizations. I think the research is a combination of, it's very primary source heavy. I use the, the Dalton papers, which are at the, national Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. which was great because it had, you know, you don't think that the memo you write to your boss may someday be a, be a historical piece of evidence, right?

02:31 - But, you know, there was all that stuff and, Harry saved a lot. That was just really, you know, in his family when, when Harry died in 2005, his family donated a lot of his, ephemera to, to the Hall of Fame. So, beyond that, the primary sources were sources, newspaper articles, if, if, if a newspaper article got written by about Harry Dalton in, in 40 plus odd years, I probably read it. and then of course, you know, there's the, the, the,

03:14 - hey, what's been written about team building, in baseball, what's been written about Harry Dalton, you know, this what we call historiography. going through that and, and, and making sure that, you know, what I cover is different than what other people have covered, or that it ends a, puts it in a new light. and, and that research portion took, you know, it took me about seven years to write the book,

03:45 - and it probably, that research portion took about five of those, you know, f four or five of those years. So, that's, that, that was the, the sort of the research methodology. I consider Harry to be the first modern baseball executive because it has his style of management. prior to that, general managers, as they're called 'em, baseball, were generalists. They dealt with team building, they dealt with media, they dealt with concessions, they dealt with everything.

04:24 - post Harry Dalton, I would argue that the number one job of the general manager was building a winning team. You know, you, you start to get specific, specialization in these other areas where you're going, okay, you're gonna handle media, you are gonna handle this. I'm going to handle putting a winning team on the field. and, and I think that was, you know, that is, that is why I call 'em the first modern baseball executive.

04:59 - and I think he has a lot in common with, with the 21st Century executive. It's a very, his his style was very collaborative. you know, he took, he took opinions from everybody. Some people would write books and you find out that the person you're writing about was really good at their job, but not a very good human being. but Harry was genuinely a good person.

05:33 - Everybody I talked to, the first thing they told me was he was one of the best people they ever dealt with. He was willing to help anyone. He was willing to, you know, he was very sympathetic. I think, his approach to managing players and things was very 21st century. And the fact that he didn't see them as chattel, Baseball, and I can't remember. I've read some on the labor,

06:04 - battles in football in England, but, up until the 1970s, if a player was signed or drafted by a major league baseball team, they were pretty much linked to that team for the perpetual, for the length of their career. that meant that you didn't have to treat the players very well. But it, he, he did. And as time changed, he changed.

06:32 - So it was a very good person, and I think that that gave him a lot of cr I would say today, street cred with, with the people that he worked with. You will have the general manager, and under that there will be two branches. There will be the scouting department and the player development department, which the player development department is. you know, in England, I'll,

07:00 - I'll use an analogy again. In England, they have the under eighteens, the under fifteens, the, those types of things. major League Baseball, they have the minor league system. And so what they did were really good at, in his entire career, no matter where he went, was he surrounded himself with people that could evaluate talent. And then he also made sure that his system was stocked

07:24 - with coaches, and managers that understood that the team had an overarching philosophy and they would adhere to that philosophy. And each and every player was taught that way from the minute they got there to the minute they made the Major League team. And I think that's what made him very, successful even as the game changed around him. Perry was born in Massachusetts in 1928.

07:58 - He was an only child. his father was a, salesman and worked for a sporting goods company, mainly dealt with hunting and fishing. Harry was a very intelligent, even as a kid, he was very intelligent. He was actually a member of Mensa. So he was, I mean, he literally would've probably been good at just about anything he wanted to do.

08:26 - and he chose baseball, which, you know, that was, that was it. But he, he, originally was a sports writer, and he worked as a sports writer. And he had gone to college. He was an English major at Amherst in Massachusetts. he was, an award-winning journalist. He got his sports writing was, was lauded at the university. he got a job with the, Springfield newspaper.

08:59 - He was from West Springfield, Massachusetts, which is in Western Mass. And he, worked as a sports writer, and then the Korean War kicked off. and he originally enlisted, he was a, he was a, he was a Cold War kid. He was a, he was a very firm believer in the fact that his generation would have to fight the conflicts that were born out of World War ii. And so his, his sort of mindset was very patriotic.

09:34 - And so he joined the Air Force and it quickly became apparent that this man who had enlisted in the Air Force was more officer material. So he was sent to Officer Candidate school and then worked as a PR person for the Air Force in Colorado before going to Korea. He had spent 36 months in, in Korea, writing for the, far East Air Force in, in Japan. And, and then he,

10:07 - when he got out of the Air Force, his parents had moved to Baltimore. His father had taken a job at a sporting goods store in Baltimore. And that was sort of how he ended up in Baltimore. but yeah, that was his, his sort of pre baseball life to that point. He showed early in his career that he was a hustler, you know, that he was willing to work hard. He used his intelligence.

10:33 - He, he looked at the larger pictures around it, you know, he looked at how they did things. He looked at how the game was played, how the game was managed, and, and sort of prove it that way. And then, you know, he worked as the farm director. he worked as the assistant farm director in, acquiring players and things, for the, for the minor league system. And then in 19, in the winter of 1965, he, he became the general manager of the Orioles.

11:12 - and his, his defining work, I think, you know, he's, he's always sort of known at various stages in his career for the big trade, he was always sort of known as the big trade. So he, in Baltimore, for instance, his outgoing, his boss said, Hey, I traded for Frank Robinson, who was an already an MVP and would go on to win an MVP in Harry's first year as general manager when they won the World Series in Baltimore in 1966, when he would go to California,

11:48 - which his on the field in California, they weren't very good, but he traded for Nolan Ryan, who would go on to be a hall of Famer. and in Milwaukee he traded for, Ted Simmons and Pete Vukovich and Raleigh Fingers. two of the three are Hall of Famers and award-winning players and got Milwaukee to their only World Series birth. So that was sort of his, his, you know, if, if people were to say, what do you remember Harry Dalton for?

12:19 - I think his work ethic. And, and also like I said, he was, he was sort of, they, they call him at one point, they called him traitor Dalton, because he was able to, to, to make these moves that sort of always worked for people. Fun is, you can't necessarily be measured just simply by team building In modern sports, we wanna look at winning as being the, the benchmark of everything. Right? And, and rightfully so. It's a business and,

12:46 - and winning is, is what kind of keeps you solvent and, you know, keeps everyone employed. Harry always said, he used to tell people goes, you, you work this job to be fired, and this is eventually, you know, it'll happen. but I think, you know, he was a great team builder, but we have to look beyond team building. He was a deep thinker whenever they had an existential question about the game. bud Seig, who was the commissioner of baseball and, and,

13:19 - and Harry's boss in Milwaukee, he said, whenever we had a, a major question about the game, Harry was the first person we consulted. He was the best baseball, he was the best mind in the game at that time as far as the larger issues facing the game. he did some of the first work in Major League baseball on, employee assistance programs. in the eighties,

13:51 - major league baseball had a huge cocaine problem, and it sort of permeated through the Milwaukee clubhouse. And Harry was one of the first people to say after that fact, like, okay, we need to be able to help these guys as, as human beings and developed programs that will, that will help them, their mental health. I think his other legacy is, besides the team building and the, the, you know,

14:24 - the off the field things they worked on, his, his overarching legacy is, I think he's a hall of famer. he is, he is, he was extremely successful for a very long time. He was, able to change with the game. he was, he managed Hall of Famers. He, he launched careers and players that are, will go down through the annals of baseball.

14:57 - And I think the other thing then too is when you take all of those things combined, and he's, and he trained some executives that went on to big time careers that are in the Hall of Fame. So to me, if you look at it and go, these people were trained by this individual, why isn't this individual in the Hall of Fame? And so I think that that is, a big, it's a big part of, of his legacy, his overarching legacy is that we have to look at him as a, as a potential Hall

15:32 - of fame camp.

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