Former Blue Jays’ exec Gord Ash sets his sights on a World Series win with Brewers

Sure, Gord Ash has fond memories of the Toronto Blue Jays’ back-to-back World Series wins in 1992 and ’93, when he was the team’s assistant general manager. Still, he figures it’ll be more fun this time around, when he watches the Milwaukee Brewers, with whom he’s worked for 25 seasons, go up against the Tampa Bay Rays in a Fall Classic that starts Friday night.

That’s because, when he was with the Jays, “I didn’t enjoy it like I should have,” he said this week. “When you’re in the middle of it, it’s just a constant swirl.

“I’m not a live-in-the-moment person. I’m an over-analyzer, so I probably spent too much time thinking about, ‘Why didn’t we do this, why didn’t we do that?’”

Ash is no longer directly responsible for whatever might unfold on the field, so he can relax a bit and take in the spectacle. It’s been quite a ride so far.

“The people in Milwaukee are absolutely crazy. I have a good friend, he works at Marquette University there, and he’s built a shrine in his living room to the ’82 team,” Ash said, referencing the last Brewers squad to play in the World Series. (They lost in seven to St. Louis.) “The ticket prices on the secondary market, they’re absurd!”

Cathal Kelly: The collapse of the Dodgers dynasty is a reflection of America as a whole

So, it’s something of a relief for Ash, who is now a consultant with the Brewers, that he no longer has the power he did as a club executive: He has tickets to the games for himself and his family, but none to spare and no way to pull strings.

“I learned long ago, the best thing to do at this time of the year is stay out of the ticket business. Everybody wants something. One of the former trainers that worked with me at the Blue Jays lives in Tampa, and he’s literally called me or texted me 15 times. Never actually asked for tickets, but you know what he’s getting to. Just have to say: ‘Don’t have any!’”

Ash, 74, is in a bougie North Toronto coffee shop sipping an oat-milk latte a couple of days before heading off to Milwaukee for Game 1. He’s lived in the neighbourhood since moving back to the city in 2015, when, after 13 years as assistant GM of the Brewers, the team appointed him vice-president of baseball projects, which no longer required him to live in Milwaukee.

In that job, he led the planning and construction of the Brewers’ massive new US$20-million baseball academy in Santo Domingo Este, designed to help the team gain an edge in recruiting Dominican talent. He was supposed to retire after it opened in 2024, but there are still some things with the facility that need work, so who knows when he and the team will finally call it a day?

Not that he’s in a rush for the association to end. He’s accompanied the team through its dominant postseason march through San Diego and Los Angeles and is cautiously optimistic about its chances against Tampa Bay.

“In a perfect world, we probably would have preferred to play Cleveland,” he says. “Tampa’s a tough place to play. I think our team’s a little more rounded. Tampa’s starting pitching might be a little better, our bullpen’s a little better. I think they have strong hitters, but I think our lineup is a little more balanced.

“They probably have a little more speed than we have.”

Sitting here now, Ash seems an unlikely baseball GM, where a dissembling personality can come in handy. He is withdrawn at times, self-deprecating; he crosses his arms on his chest and makes frequent comments about his weight. (He notes that when he was a kid, he played goal in a local league and friends would call him ‘Turk’ after Turk Broda, the notoriously big-boned Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender.)

His success is a relic of a bygone era. Ash grew up an only child in a working-class Toronto home. His mother worked as a keypunch operator for Union Carbide, before dying young of heart failure; his father worked as a TTC streetcar operator. (His dad’s favourite route was the Bathurst line, which ferried fans to the old Exhibition Stadium.)

Ash loved history and had hoped to become a high school teacher, maybe coach sports on the side, but after graduating York University in the early 1970s the only district with opportunities at the time was in northern Ontario, and he didn’t want to relocate. So instead he landed a spot with the management training program of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

“I hated every minute of it,” he says. “It was Groundhog Day. Every day was the same. That’s not for me.”

One day in 1977, a friend who was working for the Jays during their inaugural season told him they were looking for people to man the ticket wickets at Exhibition Stadium. Ash started Victoria Day. The job was especially appealing, he says, because after the second inning “you closed your window, got to go and watch the game.”

The next spring he worked as a mail order clerk, processing ticket orders, then got a gig as a groundskeeper, even though he knew nothing about groundskeeping. He learned on the job.

“I didn’t have any aspirations of being involved in management,” he says. “I was just happy to be in that environment, because it was unique and it was fun and most of the staff were young people like I was at the time.” But whenever another position came available, Ash put his hand up. He worked in a series of operations roles – overseeing game day staff, security, ticketing – until early 1984, when Pat Gillick, who was then the general manager, appointed him AGM.

At first, he wasn’t sure what he’d gotten himself into: He’d never traded a player or dealt with contracts. But he watched and learned. “The beauty of baseball life back then was, you were involved in everything: minor league contracts, scouting, player development, the major league team.

“Pat was the type of guy who – you know, he must have taught babies how to swim, because that’s what he did with me.”

Ash mimics chucking a baby into water, and laughs. “‘Okay, here you go!’”

Gillick also held large staff meetings where, Ash says, everyone was encouraged to speak their mind. When Gillick left in 1995, Ash replaced him as GM.

That kind of generalist’s career is over, Ash says. “Everyone’s an expert in their field, but their field is so narrow, and they’ve not experienced these other things. We’ve got a lot of smart guys and girls, and they know what they know but I don’t believe they know what they’re missing.”

He mentions Taylor Smith, the A’s newly hired 31 year-old president of baseball operations whose background is in predictive modelling. “I’m sure that’s important. But I’m not sure you build a career from that alone.”

To be sure, Ash is no Luddite: Unlike some of his generation, he’s always been open to new developments in analysis and science. The Jays hired their first in-house sports psychologist under his watch. That wasn’t an easy sell.

“Players would say, ‘I don’t want to be seen getting involved [in therapy] because then my teammates will think I’m weak,’” he says. “That’s gone now.”

He still sees his old players from time to time: He was invited to the Jays’ unveiling of the Joe Carter statue outside Rogers Centre and the tribute to Buck Martinez during the summer. He doesn’t wish he was back with the team, but he does acknowledge a sense of something unfulfilled.

“I wish I would have gotten another opportunity to lead an organization, because I felt I was much more prepared – which is true for most people. The second time, you can take advantage of all the mistakes you made the first time,” he says. Still, “I’m also happy being an associate; I don’t need to be in charge. It doesn’t feed my ego. Just being involved is enough.”

So: If the Brewers win, will he get a ring?

“That’s a good question!” he says, suddenly animated, poking the air.

“I can tell you, having gone through it with the Blue Jays, it’s not a fun process to decide who’s getting what. Because 33 years later, there’s still some ill feelings from people who felt they should have got a ring but didn’t.

“I’m really not an employee, but the Brewers treat me like one,” he says with a smile. “It depends where they draw the line. I’d like to get one though, I will say that.”