At age 31, Jim Bowden became the youngest general manager in the major leagues on Oct. 16, 1992. By the time he'd been on the job for three years, he knew he was too young.
At least he said as much on the elevator at Riverfront Stadium one day in 1995 to J.B., his oldest son who used to be always at Bowden's side. The kid was 8 then and never seen without a coat and tie.
Bowden withstood numerous difficulties during those early years, especially 1993, when he operated not just as a rookie general manager but as ownership proxy during Marge Schott's first suspension. Bowden made mistakes for being young and made enemies for being successful.
He continued to make enemies as they thought his youthful mistakes to have calloused into a card sharking mode of operation. But he carried with him Schott's imprimatur, always, from his first days in the organization as an administrative assistant in 1990 until the very end July 28, when the Reds dismissed him and manager Bob Boone.
For going on 20 years, since the day in 1985 when Schott introduced herself as the new Reds owner while her dog Schottzie sat on Pete Rose's foot at the press conference, the Reds have been infused with a screwy tension that's made them one of baseball's most fascinating clubs, even as marketplace disparity worked against them in recent years.
The Reds under Schott and Bowden could always be counted on for the large gesture, the fuzzy dice roll, the mad science that saves the losers from obscurity. Sometimes, the mad science does it by making the losers into winners. At other times, the madness just weaves a weird tale, hurts some feelings, makes enemies and still loses. Either way, we're all ears.
Now that the Reds have eliminated the last vestige of Marge Schott with Bowden's firing, one wonders what they're going to do for fun. Especially in his early days, Bowden loved putting on the show. He thought quite a lot like a fan, which is why he's so often been derided as a rotisserie league general manager. And he always operated with flair, in his best and worst moments.
That flair made him a very good general manager during the first half of his 11-year tenure. That flair is also why he's failed in the second half and should have packed up his career for another location three years ago rather than waiting for the Reds to drop their axe on him.
Of course, the Reds needed to change out their front office, a closet of intrigue where political acumen can trump baseball competence even under the best circumstances. The question isn't whether Bowden was a good general manager. The question is whether time could sustain his methods (it couldn't) and whether his feel for the position was appropriate for the club's needs in the 21st century (it's not).
Bowden was two general managers, just as the Reds under Schott and then Carl Lindner are two different kinds of businesses.
Schott used to drive Bowden crazy by not setting a payroll to give him an idea what he was working with, but he learned how to ride those rapids as he understood the extent to which they both wanted to win. Schott and Bowden had two years together, 1994 and 1995 -- the Reds won the NL Central in 1995 and were in first place when the season-ending players strike hit in 1994. Of course, Schott had to screw it up by firing the manager of those clubs, Davey Johnson, because he was living out of wedlock with his fiancé, an estimable woman who at the time was opening a private school for children with severe cognitive defects.
For all the times Bowden sang and danced for Schott to sign a free agent or make a deadline trade, he probably did his best work in 1995 simply by insulating the clubhouse as much as possible from Schott's bizarre moods and suggestions. Whatever it is that keeps the smelly stuff from running downhill, Bowden absorbed it. By the time MLB suspended Schott for good in 1996, Bowden needed her gone as much as anyone.
Unfortunately, the voodoo didn't leave the Reds with Schott's departure. It took up residence in Bowden's body and behavior, right about the time many who follow the Reds were beginning to understand the franchise needed to go about business a different way.
Since 1997, the Reds have been in building mode. In the capacity of a general manager building an entire organization, as opposed to piecing together a major league club, Bowden struggled. And after seven years of building an organization specifically to compete with homegrown talent, the Reds are dreadful.
It didn't suit Bowden's temperament to slow brew a baseball club any more than it suited his temperament to slow brew his career. He isn't a man to be patient through struggle.
Dull struggle took its toll. If Bowden could have continued in the mode of finding the last pieces for a contending club and performing his managerial magic under a big top, he'd still be fine. But real life isn't like that. After the Reds began emphasizing austerity in 1996, Bowden evidently found his life going tedious on him and made lots of stuff start happening. It's all come to a head in 2003, with his divorce and the loss of his job.
Not surprisingly, the national view on Bowden's firing overlaps very little with the view in Cincinnati. Nationally, the pundits are saying the Reds are just too cheap and that the state of the Reds basically isn't Bowden's fault. As Cincinnatians understand, that's mostly wrong.
The Reds are 17th in payroll right now, right around the middle, compensating their players enough to be much better than they are. The national pundits are saying Lindner is cheap because he won't lose $15 million to chase the pennant.
Cincinnatians understand what that means better than the pundits, for many think Schott might have been crazy enough to lose $15 million in a year when she had a chance to win. But they still understand that it's crazy and no one wants to give Lindner a very hard time, so he gets a pass.
Rather, Cincinnatians cited episodes in Bowden's downfall -- the 1993 firing of Tony Perez by telephone, the sleight of hand by which Boone rather than Ron Oster became manager in 2000, the ill-fated trade for Junior Griffey and last year's Sept. 11 remarks. Lately, a specific dispositional defect in this organization has been much discussed -- the inability to develop pitchers in the system.
Only the last of those reasons really has to be behind Bowden's firing. Reds Chief Operating Officer John Allen said at the press conference that it was all about performance. That's all it needs to be about. The Reds need to build from within, they needed to have it done this year and they didn't do it because they just couldn't develop pitching.
Rightly, the Reds held Bowden responsible. They need a general manager who knows how to raise pitching. They don't have to produce Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson and Barry Zito, but they ought to be able to develop a few average major league starters. Without at least that, the Reds will never win.
But the Reds also just needed a change. Only John Schuerholz with the Atlanta Braves has been in his GM's office longer than Bowden's 11 seasons, and Schuerholz wins every year. If Bowden won every year, 11 years worth of tension would still be a heavy load.
Now Bowden is out, and many people are certain he's so disliked he won't find a good job in baseball. Reds insiders who made it onto the air Monday generally spoke breathily about Boone's inherent goodness, then had no such remarks left over when the subject turned to Bowden. Bowden gave it everything he had to give, took everything he could take and now has little to show for it.
Without putting too fine a point on it, Bowden lived to be general manager of the Reds, gave his life for it and isn't the GM anymore. That's a sad state of affairs for Bowden. Sadder still is that it's good for the Reds.
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