Eight years in, how much longer does Andrew Friedman want to run the Dodgers?

You don’t stroll away from a dream job with out explaining why. Should you’re Theo Epstein, and the dream job entails main the Boston Purple Sox to their first World Sequence championship in method too many many years, you write a column within the Boston Globe explaining why.

Epstein invoked the identify of a sporting legend — not a Purple Sox legend, or perhaps a baseball legend, however Corridor of Fame soccer coach Invoice Walsh. The speculation Walsh espoused was {that a} coach or government ought to transfer on after 10 years of operating a staff.

“The manager will get rebirth and the vitality that comes with a brand new problem; the group will get a recent perspective, and the prospect for true change that comes with new management,” Epstein wrote. “This concept resonated with me.”

Epstein walked away from the Purple Sox after 9 years. He took over the Chicago Cubs, once more strolling away after 9 years.

Andrew Friedman walked away from the Tampa Bay Rays after 9 years. He took over the Dodgers, main them to their first World Sequence championship in method too many many years.

Friedman is beginning his eighth season with the Dodgers. He’s obtained three youngsters. Fact be instructed, he cherished the lockout, and so did they.

“The lockout was superior,” Friedman mentioned. “It was the primary time over winter break that I wasn’t tethered to my telephone. I attempt to steadiness it, however I’m positive they really feel it fairly intensely. It was nice.”

He steered the Dodgers out of the post-Kirk Gibson wilderness. The Dodgers make the playoffs yearly. Their employees is raided yearly. Of the 4 groups that made the league championship sequence final 12 months, one was led by Friedman and the opposite three by executives who skilled underneath Friedman.

Nobody would blame him if he walked away from the Dodgers. In any case, they walked away from him first.

No, actually. He went to work on Wall Road after he graduated from Tulane, however not with out peppering each main league staff with letters and resumes, making an attempt to interrupt into baseball in some kind of entry-level job, someplace. His charge of rejection?

“Thirty for 30,” Friedman mentioned.

Who you realize may be extra essential than what you realize. On Wall Road, a buddy of a buddy turned out to be Matt Silverman, who labored with Stuart Sternberg. When Sternberg purchased the Rays, he introduced in Silverman and Friedman. If not for that, Friedman would possibly nonetheless be on Wall Road, and the Dodgers would possibly nonetheless be pining for 1988.

Friedman is 45, younger sufficient for a second act as lengthy and productive as his first. When Epstein walked away from the Cubs, he mentioned his days of operating a staff have been finished.

Friedman mentioned he has spoken with Epstein in regards to the Walsh concept, and about why Epstein embraced it.

“For me,” Friedman mentioned, “it’s much less about any inflexible timeline, and extra in regards to the stimulation of what you do, the enjoyment you derive from the folks you’re employed with.”

For Epstein, 9 years in a single place was lengthy sufficient. Friedman doesn’t sense an inner clock ticking. He felt nearer to leaving Los Angeles seven years in the past than he does now.

“It’s at an apex proper now, and that has taken time to construct,” he mentioned. “A 12 months in, after coming to the Dodgers, I most likely would have hit the do-over button. It was for no different motive than the belief and the relationships I had created in Tampa Bay weren’t right here at that time — nor ought to they’ve been. That takes time. I knew that was the case, however I didn’t know the way it could really feel. It made having success much less pleasant. I simply didn’t totally recognize that.

“Now that we’ve created that, it could be exhausting for me to go elsewhere, till pressured out, due to that ecosystem and tradition that has been created. I’ll be dissatisfied if it’s not higher six months from now, or a 12 months from now. There’s at all times issues to try for, to get higher. However these relationships make the success we’re having fun with that rather more pleasant.”

He’s extra prone to get a bobblehead doll than to get pressured out. However may he envision operating the Dodgers for one more decade?

“It’s exhausting for me to think about consciously and intentionally strolling away from having some involvement with this staff,” he mentioned. “What precisely that appears like, I don’t know, nevertheless it’s exhausting to think about the place it’s a acutely aware considered mine that, ‘Hey, I’m out.’ ”

That doesn’t imply the teachings of the lockout and the pandemic, and the sudden time spent with household, are misplaced on him.

“The query is, ‘Am I additionally being a ok husband, dad and buddy?’ ” Friedman mentioned. “I’m most likely tougher on myself now than I used to be three years in the past, as a result of I’ve extra perspective, nevertheless it doesn’t imply I can’t do the whole lot I can to be pretty much as good at my job as I can and in addition be pretty much as good at these issues as I can.

“I feel my ardour for what I’m doing and the satisfaction I get from it’s increased than it was seven years in the past. As long as it continues to keep up or climb, and I really feel like I’m balancing it in a method that I gained’t look again later in life with main regrets, then I’ll proceed.”

I needed to ask about motivation. He got here to L.A. to win a World Sequence. He did. What drives him?

“It’s to win one other,” he mentioned. “I need nothing greater than to look again on this time period because the golden period of Dodgers baseball.

“That’s a excessive bar. There have been some actually good eras of Dodger baseball. That’s what I need.”

Frankly, this already is the golden period. Within the final six years, the Dodgers have appeared within the league championship sequence 5 occasions, within the World Sequence thrice. However, if it takes a parade for Friedman to consider it, we’re good with that.