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Great Sport

Pitch-perfect Pittsburgh Pirates GM, Dave Littlefield has the touch

– Sam Silverstein ’91

Creativity and civility are part of his job description: Dave Littlefield ’84, ’88G behind home plate at PNC Park. (photo by Ben Barnhart) WHEN THE PITTSBURGH PIRATES TAPPED Dave Littlefield ’84, ’88G to lead them out of the abyss in the middle of a miserable season two summers ago, they were attracted to his human touch as much as his baseball acumen. The team was having its ninth consecutive losing season. Changes, as they say, had to be made. But Major League Baseball’s 30 franchises vary in clout, and the Pirates are strictly “mid-market”: able to compete for free agents that are the game’s lifeblood, but not rich enough to make anyone an offer they can’t refuse. Littlefield is the Pirates’ senior vice president and general manager, charged with improving the product on the field however he can. Creativity and civility are part of the job description. “My approach with things – and I try to live my life this way – is I’m looking for solutions,” Littlefield says, the buzz-wordiness of a term like “solutions” undercut by his salt-of-the-earth New England accent. “I’m looking for a way to get it done.” While at UMass in the early ’80s, Littlefield honed his resourcefulness at the knee of a master. A three-sport star out of Portland High School in Maine, Littlefield signed a professional contract with the Philadelphia Phillies following his senior year and played three years of minor league baseball before finally matriculating to UMass on a football scholarship in 1981. In the last game of his freshman year Littlefield tore up his knee, cutting short his career as a linebacker and kick-returner. That spring, of his own initiative, Littlefield marched into UMass varsity baseball coach Dick Bergquist’s office and offered his services: perhaps a 20-year-old freshman with three years of professional baseball under his belt had something to offer the team as an assistant coach? Bergquist made a career out of squeezing the most out of slim resources and recognized Littlefield’s pluck. For the balance of his stay at the university – he earned an undergraduate degree in marketing and a master’s in sport management – Littlefield was a student by day and coach in the afternoon, even traveling weekends and evenings trying to attract talented players to bolster the team’s fortunes against more resource-rich rivals. “He brought up the idea of recruiting players one evening, and I said, ‘It’s O.K. with me so long as you can find time with all your responsibilities.’ I was concerned about his studies,” Bergquist recalls. “After that, he was gone.” Littlefield helped recruit several of the most talented players ever to pass through the university’s baseball program, including Dave Telgheder ’91, Gary DiSarcina’90 and Kenny Greer ’90, all of whom played in the major leagues. While an undergraduate, Littlefield was in the potentially awkward position of coaching his colleagues. “I was going to class with these guys during the morning and coaching them in the afternoon,” he says. What Littlefield lacked in stature he made up for with his knowledge of the game, and the ability to bend people to his will via empathy. “I can’t say we got our money’s worth, because we hardly paid him anything,” Bergquist says. “But he was an extremely hard worker, let’s put it that way. He was the most outstanding assistant coach I ever had in baseball, not only his baseball skills but also his people skills. I think that’s why he is where he is today, because he’s an outstanding person.” Since taking over as GM in July 2001, Littlefield has attracted free agents such as Kenny Lofton and Reggie Sanders to play for the Pirates where dollars alone wouldn’t have gotten the job done. His contacts in Latin America and Asia, developed over a decade in professional baseball scouting and management subsequent to leaving UMass, have helped re-stock the franchise’s farm system. The Pirates’ win-loss record has shown gradual improvement during Littlefield’s brief tenure. The team’s karma already is improved. The Pirates play in a sparkling new downtown stadium, PNC Park, and attendance has jumped. The team itself has a promising core of starting pitchers and position players generating palpable buzz. Littlefield’s deal for young starters Josh Fogg and Kip Wells prior to the 2002 season was described by Sports Illustrated as a “swindle.” Both have star potential. THOUGH LITTLEFIELD'S DAY IS HIS own, the work involved in reversing the Pirates’ fortunes is bottomless. Time with his wife, Joanna (Matarazzo) ’85, whom he met at UMass, and their two children is sandwiched around scouting trips and myriad meetings. The Pirates organization comprises six domestic and two international minor league teams, one in Venezuela and one in the Dominican Republic. All told 200-plus players, 80 to 100 managers and dozens of scouts and front-office personnel report directly to him. “There are a lot of things that are delegated. But if something is significant, certainly I’ll be involved,” Littlefield says. For example, it often falls to him to tell key players they’ve been traded, or to inform them they’ve been released from their contract – baseballspeak for fired. At such moments Littlefield draws on his own experience in the minor leagues prior to enrolling at UMass. In the span of roughly 1,000 days he was signed and subsequently released by three teams. Professional baseball is a business, but the commodity is human beings. We pay [the players] extraordinary amounts of money. As part of that tradeoff, we have the ability to walk over to them and tap them on the shoulder and say, ‘tomorrow we want you 2,000 miles away from where you’re at right now.’ They’re on the plane the next day and the wife and the kids are left behind to pack up the house,” Littlefield says. On his frequent forays to the Dominican Republic, he makes a point of finding some human connection with the young ballplayers. Scouring that baseball-crazed island for talent is a critical part of his job. He’s there on business, but they see him as having the power to make their dreams come true. Littlefield doesn’t check his bedside manner at the customs counter. Only a small percentage of the wannabe professionals he contacts during his visits actually have the goods and the good fortune to make it all the way to the major leagues. Littlefield makes a point of always leaving an encouraging word behind with the ballplayers he meets. He says, “We all can look back and think of those moments and how much they meant to us.”

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