KANSAS CITY, Mo. The moment that sticks in the memory is a loud and wet and smoky Royals clubhouse, another wild celebration with the volume turned up to 12. Tarps protected lockers. Music blared. Conquering ballplayers smoked Cubans and toasted domestics.
The oldest and richest man in the room glided toward the relief pitcher who was once seen as a throw-in on a trade but had since become a force of nature. David Glass, the Royals owner, could relate to slow starts and strong finishes.
He wore a blue dress shirt and wide eyes as he approached Wade Davis.
I was nervous until I figured out you werent, he told the Royals relief pitcher.
Davis had just pitched on both sides of a rain delay, one in a long line of curious decisions by manager Ned Yost that wouldve left him blasted with criticism, except it worked. The Royals won the ALCS that night. Nine days later they would win the World Series.
Glass was inducted into the National Business Hall of Fame. He grew up with modest means but became a force of his own, leading Walmart from a successful regional business into a global power. Yet in some ways, those 2015 Royals represented the greatest accomplishment of his life.
Glass, 84, died last week. He owned the Royals for 20 years before selling the club to local entrepreneur John Sherman last year. There is a certain symmetry there, with the man club founder Ewing Kauffman wanted to run the team a generation ago doing the same all these years later.
We often like our stories clean and tidy, black and white, but Glass was never that way. He led the board of directors that Kauffman set up after his death, executing his late friends wishes to sell the team. The process turned messy, with the IRS blocking Kauffmans original desire to gift the team to Kansas City.
One purchase fell through, and by the time Glass bought the team for $96 million in April 2000 it had been gutted of both talent and self-esteem. Nobody knew it at the time, but the Royals slow climb back would go through starts and stops and take more than a decade.
In what turned out to be his last interview, Glass said in September that he probably could have accelerated the resurgence to a greater extent than we did. It was, basically, an agreement with the description of his ownership from people who worked for him before and after 2006.
That year is when everything started to change. Before 2006, Glass employed many of the same people whod been around for the fall. But in 2006 he hired general manager Dayton Moore and vice president of business Kevin Uhlich. There were other hires many other hires as Moore led a rehab of baseball operations and Uhlich did the same for the business side.
From that point on, Glass was a model small-money owner. The Royals kept modest payrolls, but their spending routinely outranked revenues. He communicated with his business and baseball people constantly, then trusted their decisions.
The journey back to respectability took longer than Glass and those he hired expected and wanted, but when it happened it changed a city. Glass had overhauled his ownership style, but he was the same man in the good and the bad inquisitive with those he trusted, involved in all decisions, and always in the background publicly.
Glass generated consistent loyalty and appreciation from those who worked for him. This is a small thing, but perhaps its telling: Kauffman Stadium staff provides a consistently positive customer experience, particularly for families. Thats a priority handed down directly from Glass.
Glass helped shape modern baseball. Most prominently, he was a leading and consistent voice for more revenue sharing and chaired MLB Advanced Media. He served on baseballs executive council and worked closely with the Hall of Fame.
