General manager (baseball)

Before the 1960s, and in some rare cases since then, a person with the general manager title in sports has also borne responsibility for the non-player operations of the ballclub, such as ballpark administration and broadcasting.

[citation needed] In the first decades of baseball's post-1901 modern era, responsibilities for player acquisition fell upon the club owner and/or president and the field manager.

[1] In some cases, particularly in the early years of the American League, the owner was a former player or manager himself: Charles Comiskey of the Chicago White Sox, Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics, and Clark Griffith of the Washington Senators are three prominent examples.

Other owners tended to be magnates from the business world, although some, like Brooklyn Dodgers' president Charles Ebbets, worked their way from front-office jobs into ownership positions.

One notable exception, cited by Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Leavitt in their book In Pursuit of Pennants, was German immigrant Barney Dreyfuss, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900 to 1932.

"[6] One of the reasons for the creation of this new position was the soaring costs and revenues associated with modern MLB operations: "Ownership is often heavily involved in major investments and decisions ...

[8] In 2016, Sports Business Daily writer Eric Fisher cited the growing importance of data analytics in playing personnel evaluations and long-term planning (in addition to in game strategy), and heavier investments in player development, domestically and internationally, as contributing to the POBO movement and other structural changes in baseball front offices.