Rob Harris likes to accompany his son on at least one road trip each year. The treks are a way to see Scott, a baseball executive, in his element. A method of savoring a bit more time.
So last year in late August, Scott, then general manager for the San Francisco Giants, and Rob were out in the stands looking over Target Field in Minneapolis. It was early in the day, the ballpark empty and still. Then the phone rang.
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Scott looked at his phone. He showed Rob the screen. Chris Ilitch, chairman and CEO of the Detroit Tigers, was calling.
Harris looked at his father. I think I better take this call.
A few days later, Harris flew to Detroit to meet with Ilitch and interview to be the Tigers’ president of baseball operations. He would replace Al Avila, who was fired about two weeks earlier.
In Detroit, Harris toured the town while he met with people like Ilitch and other members of the Tigers’ brass. He even met with Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman.
Ilitch’s wife, Kelle, took Harris’ fiancee, Elle, out looking at houses.
“Very Midwestern,” Rob says of the interview process.
The opportunity for Harris was immense: The chance to run a baseball team and do it in a historic baseball city.
The tradeoffs were also stark.
“I knew he was conflicted,” Rob said. “He had a great job with the Giants, and they offered him the sun to stay, basically.”
Harris was serving as the No. 2 under top executive Farhan Zaidi. A Bay Area kid, Harris was only two-plus years into a job in his hometown. He was engaged, and his wedding rehearsal dinner was set to take place at Oracle Park that winter. The Giants won 107 games in 2021, and despite a .500 season in ’22, they were primed to spend in free agency the following offseason.
As for the Tigers? They were in the throes of a disastrous season, their eighth consecutive year missing the playoffs.
Detroit presented risk. But it also represented the actualization of a dream.
“When you have to decide between two great things,” Rob said, “who doesn’t want to have that situation?”
It’s hard to know exactly what Harris was thinking at that moment. Harris himself did not want to talk for this story. He’s cautious about coming across as self-serving. At 35 years old, he is still adjusting to being the face and voice of a professional sports organization.
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It’s an interesting predicament for a modern baseball executive. He is friendly but not quite comfortable with the spotlight. He is billed as a catalyst for change in Detroit, yet he finds it strange when a fan approaches him, nervous, and asks for a picture.
Now Harris will be at the center of every conversation about the state of the Tigers, whether he likes it or not.
Understanding his motivations starts with answering one question: Why, exactly, is he here?
Harris (center) smiles during his introductory press conference with the Tigers last fall. (Allison Farrand / Detroit Tigers)
When the news first hit last September, some people in baseball were stunned.
“Amazing they pulled him,” one league source said.
“Shocked,” said another.
Perhaps what these people did not know: This climb started with an email.
In the mid-aughts, Harris was an economics major at UCLA. The son of two doctors, he grew up with a certain level of privilege. Harris was raised in Redwood City, Calif., and the family had a second home at Lake Tahoe where Harris became an expert skier. His older brother, Chris, works in tech. His sister, KC, worked in public policy before moving into consulting. But as he considered the possibilities amid the monotony of business studies, he realized a typical path was not for him.
The email was written while he was spending a semester at the London School of Economics during his sophom*ore year, studying for a final, staring at charts about oil reserves. One night he shut the textbooks. He headed to a library computer and composed a message to his parents. In that email, he outlined a radical idea. Rob Harris says it went something like this:
I easily could go into business or law and do well and have 2.3 kids and a house in the suburbs and a dog. But what I think I really want to do is run a baseball team.
I know it’s a difficult profession to get into, but I think I would be disappointed if I didn’t give it a try.
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What do you think?
“It was the world’s easiest email to answer,” Rob says now. “I said, ‘I think you should absolutely do what your heart tells you to do.’”
Harris’ mother, Joanne Nino, received the email, too. She says she had a similar reaction. Clearly, their son was gifted. When he was in high school, Joanne worried he wasn’t studying hard enough. He would sit on the couch with the TV on. His laptop would be open to Facebook, or maybe he’d be playing music. And yet a test would come and Harris would ace it. Never a lack of focus. More about an impressive ability to juggle multiple things in his mind.
Plenty of gifted people aspire to work in pro sports and don’t make it. It often requires a connection. Soon Harris had one of those, too. His grandmother spent half the year in Southern California, and there, she crossed paths at a country club with former MLB executive Al Rosen. Never one to be shy, Harris’ grandmother approached the former executive and told him about her grandson. Did he have any advice?
Meanwhile, Harris was composing letters to all 30 MLB clubs. Most didn’t write back. But soon Rosen took Harris under his wing. He helped Harris secure an internship with the Washington Nationals. The internship was unpaid, and Harris threw batting practice to corporate sponsors for spare cash. That led to subsequent positions with the Cincinnati Reds before landing a job in the MLB commissioner’s office.
For Harris, the first door was ajar, and more opened. He continued his postgrad education at Columbia while working with MLB. After being hired by the Cubs, he took red-eye flights from spring training in Arizona to complete his MBA at Northwestern. He had promised his mother he’d finish his degree. So Harris slept on an airport bench at O’Hare in the dark hours of the morning before boarding a bus to class. He sent his mother pictures of the bench every weekend.
When it was all over, his mother gifted him a business card holder shaped like that bench, a reminder of the time and sacrifice.
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That path eventually took Harris back home to San Francisco. A nice situation, close to family, plenty of money, still a bright future.
But remember the email. The goal was to run a baseball team. Beneath Harris’ low-key exterior, there’s deep ambition.
“He always said this was what he was aiming for, was to be the head,” Joanne said.
Harris worked alongside Zaidi from 2019-2022. (Eric Risberg / AP Photo)
Farhan Zaidi was a rising executive with the A’s when the Dodgers called in 2014, and he was torn. Back then, Zaidi spent two weeks weighing his options. Stay or go?
Finally, he decided he would stay in Oakland. Finish what he started. Then he went for a jog, and his mind started turning again. He experienced a panic attack, overwhelmed by the anxiety of wondering what if?
Zaidi ended up taking the Dodgers job. So he knows what this process is like.
“You feel like you have to give it some thought, and then it can kind of take on a life of its own,” Zaidi said. “I really encouraged (Harris) to think about (the Tigers job). Didn’t try to discourage him in any way. You just don’t know when opportunities like this are gonna come up. Although for someone like him, it’s probably gonna be every year.”
When Harris took the job under Zaidi in San Francisco, his parents understood the situation. This was likely a temporary arrangement.
“I knew when he took the job that I was buying some time with him in town,” Rob said, “because he had one more step to go.”
Said Joanne: “He told us that he didn’t think he’d be here for very long.”
Harris’ interview process with the Tigers unfolded over a series of weeks. Finally, the decision was made. The weekend before Harris was introduced in Detroit, he found himself watching a minor-league game between a Giants affiliate and a Tigers affiliate. He wasn’t sure who to root for. The next night, he and his family boarded late-night flights bound for Michigan.
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“It happened so fast,” Joanne said. “Sunday night he called at midnight to say, ‘I hope I’m making a good decision.’”
Scott’s ambitious rise was born from his own father’s passion.
Rob, an Illinois native, was raised a Cubs fan and passed a faith in lovable losers on to Scott. Joanne, a Giants fan, rubbed off onChris. The brothers had different loyalties but shared an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport. They played a game on long car rides where they would take turns naming baseball players based on the letters of their first and last names. Will Clark, Cal Ripken.
Rob advised his boys to play baseball as long as they could. As much as they loved the game, they did not listen. Harris played soccer and lacrosse at the Menlo School in Atherton, Calif. He has joked his speed and small stature translated to those sports better. At UCLA, he played club lacrosse, a way to get that competitive fix.
But a lack of playing background does not disqualify one from working in a front office. Harris saw people like Theo Epstein holding World Series trophies and researched how they got there.
A few years later, Rob was back in Illinois and touring Wrigley Field. He just so happened to be walking the perimeter of Wrigley when Scott, then a rising hotshot at the commissioner’s office, called.
Dad, Theo Epstein just called. He wants to interview me.
Rob responded: “What part of ‘Duh’ do you not understand?”
Harris was only 25 when he was hired as the Cubs’ director of baseball operations. He dropped his business classes at Columbia the day the Cubs hired him and made an arrangement with the team to continue his studies at Northwestern.
A few years after that, the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, the team’s first championship in 108 years. The following summer, Harris met his father for dinner in San Francisco. Midway through the meal, Harris went to the car, claiming he had forgotten something. He came back to the restaurant with a box. Rob, the lifelong Cubs fan, opened it.
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Inside was a World Series ring.
There were a lot of antics during Harris’ time in the Cubs’ front office. Like the July night when the Cubs were coming off a shutout loss and needed runs. Epstein came up with a plan: Harris would start eating cake, and maybe it would spark a rally. Soon a full chocolate cake was wheeled into the suite. Harris took a fork and went to work. Sure enough, the Cubs’ offense roared to life.
From there it became superstition for Harris to munch food during tight games. Cake, bread, anything with carbs.
As the youngest guy in the office, Harris served as an easy target. They had a blast when Joanne called one day and Jed Hoyer noticed the caller ID read: Mommy.
But Hoyer, then the Cubs’ general manager under Epstein, would like to make something clear.
“Don’t let anyone think he couldn’t give it right back,” Hoyer said in November. “He was not the innocent bystander.”
Hoyer smirked. “That’s on the record.”
Over that time, Harris developed close bonds with Epstein and Hoyer. Those were two of the sounding boards he turned to after the Tigers called last summer.
“From the first time I talked to him about it, I think he thought Detroit was an intriguing opportunity,” Hoyer said.
Both Epstein and Hoyer had seen other talented young executives pass up jobs, waiting for what they viewed as a perfect opportunity. But GM jobs are usually open because of a struggle. Sometimes that perfect job never came, and those other executives eventually faded into obscurity.
So Epstein and Hoyer laid out the pros and cons. One factor to ponder was the idea of moving from San Francisco to Detroit, from the glorious Arizona spring trainings to two months of traffic jams in Central Florida.
That, though, was a small concern compared to other parts of life Harris would be leaving behind.
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“There was the Giants,” Hoyer said, “and then there was the personal part of it.”
Harris even talked the decision through with his boss at the time.
“I think he was happy,” Zaidi said. “He wasn’t looking for another opportunity.”
But in conversations with his mentors, they discussed the factors at play in Detroit: An ownership supposedly willing to be financially supportive, an AL Central division up for the taking, a strong manager in A.J. Hinch, some young talent already in the majors. Harris had already been contacted by other teams — most notably the Mets before the 2022 season — and said no.
“I think he wasn’t going to take just any No. 1 job,” Epstein said. “He wanted it to be a place where he felt like he could believe in the ownership, where he had some quality people around him to partner with like Hinch, and he’s a pretty patient builder, so I think he wanted a place where he would have enough runway.”
The Tigers interviewed other candidates but eventually found their match with Harris. Exact details areunknown, but the team is believed to have offered ample money and a long contract term.
“We looked at it as though it were a recruitment as much as it was an interview,” Ilitch said last year.
(Allison Farrand / Detroit Tigers)
Yes, Scott and Elle’s wedding rehearsal dinner was supposed to be at Oracle Park. When people asked Rob if they would proceed even after his son left for the Tigers, he always had the same response.
“Absolutely,” he said, “and there will be a bunch of Giants there, too. Believe me; there will be no animosity.”
Harris came to Detroit hailed for his baseball intellect but also his people skills. In Chicago, Epstein says Harris could talk with players as easily as he could analysts. Harris used to joke with his father he could never get any work done; people kept coming into his office wanting to chat.
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“He’s always had the most number of friends, the most interesting friends,” Rob said. “It’s how he is wired.”
Rob pauses for a moment when asked how his son is like him, or how he is different. He talks about Scott’s quiet nature — quieter than both of his parents, Rob says. He rarely gets visibly upset or loses his composure. Rather, if something bothers him, he’s prone to turn inward.
“His thought process is … maybe deeper than the rest of us?” Joanne said. “Or maybe his vision is deeper? It’s different. It’s more sophisticated.”
Many around Harris are quick to give praise. Giants manager Gabe Kapler used words like “driven” and “inquisitive.” Epstein raved: “He’s trustworthy, in it for the right reasons, in it for the greater good, looks out for the people he cares about.”
But here we arrive at an interesting contradiction. Venerated as Harris is for people skills, fans in Detroit have yet to learn much about him. He projects an approachable vibe. But dig beneath the surface, and he’s tricky to pin down. People talk about Harris not in details or anecdotes but more in strings of adjectives. Sharp. Detailed. Terrific. He drives a Cadillac, wears Lululemon pants and loves the waiver wire.
He doesn’t have profiles on social media, though he definitely sees what’s happening on Twitter. You won’t find wedding pictures or many hints of his old life online, other than a few UCLA lacrosse game recaps (Harris hurt his ankle late in his senior year).
“Scott’s pretty private,” Joanne said, “and he doesn’t want to talk about himself.”
The problem with having your dream job is you soon learn its realities.
Harris’ new position is public-facing. Tigers fans are looking to him to help end years of miserable baseball. But that roleinherently comes with criticism. Opportunity abounds. But now the costs are coming, too. Some of them are already here.
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At the Winter Meetings, Harris was asked if he’d get to disconnect for an extended period during his honeymoon.
“No, we work every day in these jobs,” Harris said. “I’m going to try to strike the right balance.”
Harris chats with A.J. Hinch and Miguel Cabrera at spring training in Florida. (Allison Farrand / Detroit Tigers)
Here’s another narrative detail already part of the Scott Harris canon: Growing up, discussions around the dinner table could get awkward. Such is what happens when one parent is an OB-GYN and the other is a urologist.
Graphic as the details of their jobs could be, watching two busy doctors came with lessons that made a mark on Harris. One of the tolls of a life in baseball is an unrelenting work schedule.
“He works as hard as I did when I was a surgical intern and I was on call every other night,” Rob said. “Does he look tired at times? Yep. But he’s also an upbeat person.”
As he thinks aloud, Rob Harris arrives at another interesting idea. Scott’s personality has always been measured, calculated. The way he prepared for his introductory Tigers press conference reminded Rob of the way he prepared for his first surgery, dictating the entire operative procedure.
“Never impulsive,” Rob said of his son.
You can see glimpses of this precision already in Harris’ tenure with the Tigers. There’s a fascination for the organism of a baseball team, how one system influences another. Harris did not take over the day-to-day operations of the team until three-plus weeks after he was hired. He spent those days listening to others, diving into every aspect of the Tigers — player development, scouting, analytics, athletic training — on a microscopic level.
“Basically every hour of my time was scheduled out on Zoom or in person in my office or grabbing lunch or breakfast or coffee with people,” Harris said at the Winter Meetings. “I did the best I could, but did I feel like I was totally prepared after those three weeks? No, I don’t think anyone could.”
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Harris’ first offseason reflected this surgical mindset. He inherited an organization the rest of the league considered behind the times, a disjointed roster filled with free-swingers like Jonathan Schoop and Javier Báez coming off a disappointing 2022 season.
In his first offseason, Harris traded relief pitching for controllable young hitters. He did not pounce on the free-agent market but signed two starting pitchers he believes have upside. He obsessed over the waiver wire and dove headfirst into every centimeter of the Tigers’ infrastructure, beginning to repair the organization from the inside out.
The early returns are encouraging. Under Harris, the feel around the Tigers is already sharper, smarter, more serious. But Tigers fans have already sat through a rebuild under Avila that did not work. Tough to know how long Harris’ plan will take to actually produce wins.
“Our goal for this year is to play competitive baseball as deep into the season as we possibly can,” Harris said this spring. “Coming off 96 losses, there are no shortcuts back to contention.”
When Harris accepted the Tigers job — when he again opted against the easiest choice —he was implementing lessons from his past. He was honoring his father’s emotional ties to the game. He was quenching the ambitious thirst of a high-achiever. And mostly, he was staying true to the college kid who wrote that email.
Before hitting send, he had typed: Hopefully, this is memorable in 10 years.
(Top photo: Allison Farrand / Detroit Tigers)
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