A l u m n i M a g a z i n e - Duke University's Fuqua School of Business

FUQUA
Alumni P rofile FUQUA GRAD
By D e b b i e S e l i n s k y
When Michael Patrick Crowley, ’92,
was growing up in the San Francisco Bay
area, he played a mean third base and
hung out at professional baseball games
every chance he got. Crowley might
have had the occasional boyish dream of
playing in the majors. But never in his
wildest dreams did he envision himself
sitting in the president’s office of the
Oakland Athletics Baseball Co. or sharing
locker room champagne dousing celebrations
with the American League West
Division Champions.
Crowley, who became the company’s
CFO in 1997, is wrapping up his second
season as president of the A’s and enjoying
the kind of success that Oakland has
sought in recent years. It’s been exciting,
admits the 37-year-old executive, and is
a far cry from his original plan to invest
his accounting education and expertise
in a Big Five company.
In a company and an industry that
are constantly changing, Crowley says he
36I F u q u a / W i n t e r 2 0 0 1
Michael Patrick Crowley ’92
“I learned a lot about the group concept
at Fuqua. So wherever I’ve worked since
then, we’ve had groups of people taken
from various disciplines and departments
and thrown them at a project or a
problem. I’ve found it very effective.”
ENJOYS SUCCESS AS
has to stay on top of that learning curve.
He’s pretty comfortable with the business
aspects of his job. “Having played the
game a little, I understand the needs of
the baseball side of the company,” he
says. “I also understand the company’s
finance and sales needs, having worked
in both. I’ve struggled a little with management
of the stadium, which is a very
specialized area.”
However, his biggest challenge, he
says, has been the “public part” of his job
and dealing with the media. “I took a
public speaking class at Fuqua—I should
have paid a little better attention to it,”
he laughs.
And Crowley has had lots to talk
about: The team, which underwent an
ownership change in 1996, is in a
“rebuilding mode” characterized by lots
of changes, he says. “We’ve started
investing more in our minor league systems—we
now have a complex outside
Santa Domingo in the Dominican
Republic—with emphasis on growing
our own players.”
Today’s salaries make it almost prohibitive
to focus on heavy hitters with
big salaries, he adds. “The economics of
baseball have changed dramatically in
the last 10 years. In 1989, when the A’s
won the World Series, they had the
highest payroll in baseball with $40 million.
The Yankees have the highest
today—$112 million. Our payroll today
is less than in 1989—$32 million. Now
we’re concentrating on bringing kids
along through our minor league system
and forming a core of players who will
be around for a while.”
The strategy appears to be working.
The A’s started seven players 25 years old
and younger in last season’s playoffs.
“We have a young team, but many of
them have played together at various
levels in the minor leagues,” Crowley
says. “We stress winning at every level,
with the idea that winning becomes a