Lou Gorman

James G. "Lou" Gorman is a former general manager of the Boston Red Sox. He served in this position from 1984 to 1993. After that, he became an executive consultant for public affairs with an emphasis on community projects. He also is the coordinator of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 2002. He was inducted in the Kinston Professional Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985.

Before Boston

A native of South Providence, Rhode Island, Gorman grew up a Red Sox fan. At the high school level, he was an excellent athlete, but was cut from the minors. After his professional baseball career stalled, Gorman enrolled in Stonehill College for his bachelor's degree and Bridgewater State College for his master's. After college, he joined the United States Navy and served more than eight years in the armed forces, including two tours in Korea.

He started in baseball in 1961 with the San Francisco Giants, and worked in management and player development capacities for the Seattle Mariners, Kansas City Royals, Baltimore Orioles, and New York Mets. He was the first farm system director in the history of the Royals, and the first-ever general manager of the Mariners when they entered the American League in 1977. He left Seattle to become vice president, player personnel of the Mets in 1980, where Gorman helped lay the foundation for the Mets' 1986 World Series championship - achieved at the expense of his next team, the Red Sox.

Career with the Red Sox

In 1984, Gorman was offered a job as Vice President and General Manager for the team he rooted for his entire life, and took it. When he arrived, the team already had players like Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Dwight Evans and Bob Stanley, stars that would form the nucleus of the talented Red Sox teams of the late 1980s. However, it was Gorman's acquisitions of Dave Henderson and Spike Owen that helped lead the Red Sox to the 1986 World Series.

Though the team made it back to the playoffs in 1988 and 1990, they never got any closer to a championship than in his first year. Though he made several key trades, such as picking up Nick Esasky and Rob Murphy from Cincinnati and getting all-time saves leader Lee Smith for World Series goat Calvin Schiraldi and pitcher Al Nipper, he made mistakes as well. It was Gorman that traded away future All-Stars Jeff Bagwell and Curt Schilling in pennant-stretch deals. In addition, he has been blamed for crippling the Red Sox farm system for the Dan Duquette years.

Trivia

*Gorman refused to let ambidextrous relief pitcher Greg Harris pitch with both his natural right hand and his left hand during his tenure with the Red Sox. Harris eventually became the first pitcher to do so since Elton Chamberlain did so in the 19th century.

Book

*"One Pitch from Glory: A Decade of Running the Red Sox",foreword by Doris Kearns Goodwin. 2005, ISBN 1-5967-0067-X