LAS VEGAS — The shock is starting to wear off, but the disbelief was still permeating The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas hotel Tuesday night like cigarette smoke hovering in the air at the craps games and poker tables.
There he was, 10 years after he last set foot at the Major League Baseball General Manager meetings, in a room with peers having heard of him, but precious few knowing him.
Paul DePodesta, who spent the last 10 years with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, was holding court with the national media for the first time, with everyone having the same question:
What in the world is he doing here as the new president of baseball operations for the Colorado Rockies?
There wasn’t a single GM who called DePodesta’s hire an “insult,’’ like former manager Joe Maddon said about the San Francisco Giants’ hiring of college coach Tony Vitello to be their manager, but still, no one had an answer.
Hiring DePodesta, 52, isn’t like hiring a reliever who retired two years ago to manage, like in San Diego, or a 33-year-old getting a managerial job in Washington. He had 20 years of MLB experience and was once the GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Still, when you’re away from the game for a decade and are wearing a headset and studying a clipboard on Sundays, folks are curious.
“I can’t wait to talk to him,’’ said Alex Anthopoulos, Atlanta’s president of baseball operations. “I’d love to hear about his experience in the NFL.’’
The only National League GMs even around when DePodesta departed the New York Mets for the NFL were A.J. Preller of the San Diego Padres and Andrew Friedman of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
No one believed they’d ever see DePodesta in baseball again.
Besides, when the Browns go 56-99-1 under your watch as the Browns’ Chief Strategy Officer, and you’re directly involved in the disastrous Deshaun Watson trade – sending three first-round picks and giving Watson a five-year, $230 million contract – a whole lot of folks tend to lose your number.
Well, not the Rockies – with former Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd running interference – who selected DePodesta after Arizona Diamondbacks assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye was offered the job, and rejected it, because of family reasons.
Now, here DePodesta is, after failing to obtain the next Holy Grail of sports and lead the Browns to their first Super Bowl championship, he’s trying to get the Rockies their first World Series title.
“I’m rooting for both,’’ DePodesta says. “I’ll actually take them in either order, as long as they both happen pretty quickly…