Good move for Phillies: Gillick is in charge

A little more than nine years ago, Phillies president David Montgomery hired a general manager and a lot of people wondered if the man was too old for the job. Pat Gillick was 68 at the time, and his age, as it turned out, was a factor. It meant he had the patience and the wisdom to make the moves that took the Phillies from being a good team to a World Series champion.

Gillick is 77 now, and Wednesday the Phillies asked him to fill an even more important role within their organization. They asked him to become the team's full-time president, a role he was filling on an interim basis while Montgomery recovered from cancer surgery.

The best news of the day was that Montgomery, 68, has recovered enough from his May surgery to return to work. The addendum to that announcement from the Phillies was that Montgomery is coming back in the role of chairman, which used to belong to Bill Giles.

Elias Sports Bureau probably does not keep statistics on such things, but if it did, researchers would be hard-pressed to find an organization that replaced a 68-year-old president with a 77-year-old one. In this case, it's a solid transition for a rebuilding team with an embattled general manager in Ruben Amaro Jr.

"I think he's the one who deserves the credit," Montgomery said when asked how much more Gillick would be doing now than when he was in his role as a senior adviser the last six years for the ball club. "All of a sudden you're right back in there. Ruben now has the ability to access Pat fully. The past few years . . . Pat was great to us, but he primarily participated in the free-agent and scouting side.

"He would be with us in spring training and then he would go back out west [to his home in Seattle] and he'd scout all the significant prospects out in the western part of the country and then come back for the draft. That's how we used him. I said to him, 'You may have to look at prospects in the eastern half of the country' because he's going to be based here. The change is almost bigger for him than for me."

Given the fact that Gillick started filling in for Montgomery at the end of August, this really is not a change at all. Beloved as the GM who brought the franchise its second World Series title in 2008, Gillick inherits an immensely unpopular GM in Amaro. By all accounts, it was Gillick's call to keep Amaro around as the Phillies started their offseason rebuilding project. The last time he made a decision that unpopular with the public was when he let Charlie Manuel stick around as manager in 2006 after the Phillies failed to make the playoffs for the 12th straight year.

That decision worked out pretty well for the manager and the general manager. This rodeo figures to be Gillick's last and it's not likely to be as smooth as his tenure as GM, when he inherited a solid roster. Gillick says he won't remain too long in the role of president but is committed for this season at least.

"Maybe as he gets into it, he'll find it invigorating enough to do it longer," Montgomery said. "I don't know. That is really going to be Pat's call, and we'll see how long he is willing to do it. In the meantime, we get the benefit of his expertise, which is great."

It is good that Gillick has agreed to accept this role even if it's only for the short term. It's good because he is going to be a different kind of team president than Montgomery, who wore a lot of hats, including many of which had nothing to do with the product on the field.

Gillick's focus will be entirely on the personnel side, which is his area of expertise. He is the first Phillies president who does not have an ownership stake in the team since Giles and his business partners purchased the team from the Carpenter family in 1981.

"I know he has grown to love our organization and he's willing to do what it takes," Montgomery said.

It's also good because John Middleton, the wealthiest of the Phillies' ownership partners, is very comfortable with Gillick in charge. He said as much on the final day of the season, when he was in the home clubhouse to discuss the franchise's future with Amaro and manager Ryne Sandberg.

Montgomery admitted that Middleton and ownership partners Jim and Pete Buck played a role in his decision to relinquish the title of team president. He also admitted they are gaining more influence in franchise decisions.

"The reality is that John's holding has grown and the Bucks' holding has grown," Montgomery said. "If you have a hundred shares of stock you pay attention to it and if you have a thousand shares of stock you really pay attention to it. I think that is what has happened here over time. That has been the evolution of the partnership group."

That group convinced Montgomery that it was time for a new president. There's some irony in the fact that they all agreed on a 77-year-old man at a time when the team is desperately trying to get younger.

@brookob