Baseball isn’t what happens between the lines.
It surrounds us. It steers us. It consumes us.
“It takes hold of us, a mystical unrelenting force that someone outside the baseball cult couldn’t possibly understand,” David Stearns once wrote, as a sports columnist at The Harvard Crimson. “From the time of your first game, from the time you can put on a cap, from the time you know what 6-4-3 actually means, it’s got you.
“It makes you define seemingly important moments in your non-baseball life by baseball-related events.”
Stearns’ first kiss came on a night Butch Huskey hit two home runs. His mom’s big promotion was the day of Mark Clark’s bid for the first no-hitter in Mets history.
His first child was born the day after Stearns’ Brewers clinched their first playoff berth in seven years. The Manhattan native’s second child arrived last year, shortly before the high school ace threw a curveball and stepped down as Milwaukee’s president of baseball operations at age 37.
“I love baseball,” Stearns said 11 months ago. “Baseball has been an enormous part of my life, and I anticipate that it will continue to be an enormous part of my life. In what capacity, I think remains to be seen. I think that could be anything from being a fan — a really passionate fan — to one day working again in a senior leadership position. I’m not really going to close any doors, but I know this is the right time to exhale a little bit.”
Now, breathe. Your dream job is here.
As the Mets’ new president of baseball operations, Stearns will accept the pressure and hopes and drama stitched to the long-suffering franchise he understands as well as any executive in team history.
It has been part of him since he watched his first game at Shea Stadium as a 4-year-old who was simultaneously elated and dismayed watching Dave Magadan’s walk-off home run bring a thrilling conclusion to a day he never wanted to end. It was a commitment he inherited from his grandfather, who adopted New York’s only National League team after Brooklyn broke his heart.
It accompanied him on countless trips on the 7 train. It lay beside him in his Upper East Side bed, where he stayed up late and secretly listened to Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen on his Walkman. It meant more than he could imagine on Sept. 21, 2001, sitting two rows in front of a woman who told Stearns she was using her deceased son’s ticket to honor the 9/11 victim.
“She already knew what I was just learning — that by bringing us together, sports can influence reality,” Stearns wrote in his final college column. “They influence the way we feel, the way we act, and the way we relate to others. I left Shea that night convinced of the power of sports … A game? Yes. Trivial? Anyone who was there that night at Shea could never think so again.”
Zach Moore was with him that night as Stearns kept score in his program and listened to the broadcast in one ear. He was with Stearns on several occasions, sharing thoughts about the team that bonded them and millions more.
“I was a knowledgeable Mets fan and I took it seriously, but he would know who should your relievers be, who should the pinch-hitter be, what should the shift be,” said Moore, his Columbia Prep classmate. “He knew the game. Even in high school, he had a really good feel for the game.
“A bunch of my buddies have been talking about this, like, ‘Holy s–t, David got hired to run the Mets,’ because never in a million years do you expect someone you know to be the president of baseball operations for any team, let alone the team you grew up rooting for … But if somebody were ever to ask, who was the one person you knew growing up who stood the best chance, it would’ve been David.”
Stearns could see Queens, spinning breaking balls during wiffle ball games along the East River at Carl Schurz Park. He envisioned himself in orange and blue, throwing heat while playing pillow ball in his bedroom, then strategically hiding the dents his wild pitches left on the wall.
He was like the players he most loved (Kevin Elster, Rey Ordóñez), a shortstop whose best work came in the field. At Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School on the Upper West Side, baseball coach Steve Rybicki bluntly told Stearns his bat wasn’t good enough to keep him in the lineup.
But on the mound, he could make a difference.
“He was not the best hitter, but he was our best pitcher by far,” said Moore. “He was also an excellent basketball player. He was a very good athlete. He took it really seriously, and he was very focused and disciplined. He could locate his fastball, mix in a good curve. We won the vast majority of games he started and we were like a .500 team in the games he didn’t.”
Teammate Yianni Patsalos added, “He was very analytical. Even in his technique, his wind-up, he was more methodical, where you could see him thinking things through.”
At the end of Stearns’ successful sophomore season playing at Randalls Island and Roberto Clemente State Park, the junior varsity team reached the league title game.
Before the championship, the Lions were disqualified and Stearns was cited for violating league rules.
“He pitched JV and varsity, so he technically wasn’t allowed to pitch in the playoffs for JV,” Moore said. “We just didn’t have a ton of players, so we played both. The team we beat in the semis found out that David had also pitched varsity and they filed a complaint and got us kicked out of the playoffs. The team we would’ve played in the finals, we beat them twice that season.”
Stearns kept a lower profile in the halls of the Upper West Side school.
Various scouting reports reached similar conclusions:
Dan Bertoldi: “He was one of the smartest guys in school. Definitely more reserved. He wasn’t doing anything crazy.”
Andrew Nisinson: “Didn’t really get into trouble or anything. … He was always someone who emanated positivity, a quiet intellectual type.”
Moore: “I’ve known him since the third grade, and he was always a particularly mature kid. But he was never pretentious or arrogant. He had his head totally screwed on straight, but was also very friendly and warm. He could handle any conversation because he knew a lot about a lot of different stuff and he had a really good sense of humor, too. You could bust balls with him and he’d bust your balls right back.”
Patsalos: “He had a certain type of smile, this charismatic smile. If you paid him a compliment, he’d be a little bashful. Always a sweet guy. ”
As a baseball executive, Stearns has been described as the smartest person in most rooms, but one who doesn’t make it a point to point it out.
It isn’t necessary. It isn’t his nature.
“He was like a secret genius,” Patsalos said. “You know in high school, I hate to use the word ‘nerds,’ but they were awkward and smart and you knew it. David was different. He was social and it threw you off.
“I remember when I asked him where he was going to college. And he said, ‘Harvard.’ And I said, ‘No, but for real.’”
In your third semester at Harvard, students are required to declare a concentration. Stearns chose government. Baseball wasn’t offered.
While squeezing out another two years on the field with Harvard’s JV team, Stearns stayed close to sports by embracing his passion for writing and becoming a staff writer at The Harvard Crimson.
“He was like a secret genius. You know in high school, I hate to use the word ‘nerds,’ but they were awkward and smart and you knew it. David was different. He was social and it threw you off.”
High school teammate Yianni Patsalos
Stearns, who worked as a 16-year-old intern at The East Valley Tribune in Arizona, primarily covered football, but he also wrote about soccer, volleyball, golf, squash and fencing.
“He wasn’t just a glory boy. He was a team player,” said Timothy McGinn, who also worked at the newspaper. “He had a quiet confidence. He was a steady, solid contributor, who did good work and was really an asset. He was a guy who knew how to set expectations and follow through.
“When he was running the football beat, someone was supposed to show up for a game and didn’t. David called him in, was super-professional about it, but he let him know that he’d let him down and the group down and it wasn’t going to be stood for. He was very polite, very respectful, but let him know they’d failed to meet expectations.”
Once, Stearns did, too.
As the author of a column called “The Commish,” Stearns branded the struggling men’s hockey team as a more effective sleep aid than Nyquil. In the aftermath, he attended a team practice and was welcomed by a puck fired at him in the stands.
“I know he was initially very embarrassed about it, but he handled it with grace and didn’t hold it against the team,” said John Hein, another Crimson colleague. “He was very professional about it.”
In 2005, Stearns penned an article about the Ivy League-bred executives revolutionizing baseball’s front offices. He wrote:
“For those consumed by the game — those of us who cringe at the thought of baseball drifting away — the door to a new reality is now open.”
But how to get your foot in the door?
Throw your best pitch, writing letters to numerous MLB teams. Cross out all other avenues. Cross your fingers.
“It was pretty clear that he wanted to work in baseball in a senior capacity and he was going to figure out the path for doing that as an 18-year-old,” McGinn said. “I remember how haphazard my summer employment was and how I treaded water until I got to law school. David was never like that. He was super-focused. He’d already made up his mind that this is what he wanted to do. He was thinking, in a very thoughtful, advanced way how he was gonna get there.”
Stearns, a rising sophomore, accepted a position with the organization he’d longed to join since childhood.
It wasn’t a dream. It just felt like one.
He ran races in a hot dog suit. He dressed as Sandy the Seagull. He cleaned bathrooms. He painted fences. He was pelted by rain, pulling tarps across the diamond.
He was a Brooklyn Cyclones intern. He was on his way.
“When you’re 18 years old and you realize the ballpark is now your office, it’s a fairly surreal experience,” Stearns told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2016. “All of a sudden, this is your job. That’s kind of the magic of it.”
His next break came when then-Pirates Director of Operations Jon Mercurio opened one of Stearns’ letters, prompting the undergrad to make a road trip from Cambridge, Mass., to Pittsburgh with his roommates — who took turns driving and were bribed by Stearns with tickets to that night’s game — to interview for an internship. Stearns spent two summers in the Pirates’ baseball operations department.
“Most smart people, especially at Harvard, are risk-averse, which is why so many of us become attorneys, and I think it’s a testament to Dave that he was willing to take a chance and bet on himself,” Hein said. “He would take an unpaid internship in baseball when others went into finance or something that paid them a lot more in the summer. He had a vision for himself, and he worked his way from the bottom up. He played the long game.”
After graduating from Harvard in 2007, Stearns became the assistant director of baseball operations for the Arizona Fall League. He then circled home to intern with the Mets’ baseball operations department, where he showed incredible promise and was recommended for a full-time position. The Wilpons reportedly declined because they didn’t want to add another salary.
Instead, Stearns spent three-plus years working in the league office under commissioner Bud Selig, quickly moving up after several senior colleagues left. Stearns served as manager of labor relations who assisted clubs in the salary arbitration process, and was a member of MLB’s negotiating committee in Collective Bargaining Agreement meetings.
Stearns found greater fulfillment as part of a team. In Dec. 2011, he became Cleveland’s director of baseball operations, concentrating on contracts and player analysis.
Less than a year later, Jeff Luhnow hired the highly recommended young executive as the Astros’ assistant general manager — a former colleague described Stearns as an “outstanding leader” and “innovator” given “tremendous respect” — who helped transform the club from the worst franchise in baseball into a playoff team in 2015.
That same year, the Brewers finished 32 games out of first place in the NL Central and Doug Melvin stepped down after 13 years as Milwaukee’s general manager. The Brewers considered 44 candidates, before Stearns, then 30, was made MLB’s youngest general manager.
“At some point, [age] doesn’t matter a tremendous amount,” Stearns told his former college newspaper in 2012. “It’s more about what you can bring to the table, if your skill set matches what is needed for the particular position.
“I had a lot of people to teach and mentor me and help me grow. That’s what led to me being able to work my way up. People trusted me with more responsibility than someone my age typically has. A lot of it is about being in the right place at the right time.”
Stearns didn’t take any pitches in his first at-bat.
He replaced half of the 40-man roster in his first offseason with the Brewers, firing five coaches and importing an assistant general manager from Tampa Bay. A heightened focus on analytics required the Brewers to construct new offices for the department.
Though the Brewers had MLB’s lowest payroll for parts of Stearns’ first three seasons, their win total improved each season — tying the team’s all-time mark (96) in 2018, when Milwaukee fell one win short of the World Series —and led to a franchise-best four consecutive postseason appearances.
“He’s smart enough to use the data side, but to peg him as an ‘analytics’ guy is not right,” said an MLB executive who worked with Stearns and requested anonymity because Stearns is still under contract with the Brewers through the end of the season. “He has a great baseball mind. He’s a good listener. It’s consistent. It’s authentic. When he talks to you, you feel comfortable, even if you don’t like what he says.”
In 2019, the Brewers promoted Stearns to president of baseball operations. His contract prevented Mets owner Steve Cohen from interviewing the executive he coveted.
Stearns wouldn’t hit free agency until this fall, but he became ripe for suitors when he resigned from Milwaukee’s top position last October, remaining an advisor to ownership.
The Red Sox were reportedly interested in having Stearns work two miles from Harvard. There was reported interest from Houston, where he met his wife, Whitney — at a party thrown by Astros owner Jim Crane — and where her family resides.
The Mets offered what no one else could.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons he chose the Mets,” said Hein, a New York native. “But it’s nice to think it’s because this isn’t just a dream job — it’s a homecoming.”