What Peter Drucker Saw in Baseball — And Why One MLB Exec Built a Team Around It

Peter Drucker didn’t believe in distractions. He didn’t own a television. He rarely indulged in what he called “noise,” meaning too much information and too little insight. But every October, he made an exception. Drucker would rent a television just long enough to watch the World Series. He never missed it.

There’s something poetic in that image: the father of modern management, sitting in his quiet Claremont home, eyes fixed on the baseball diamond. Not because he loved sports, but because he saw something others didn’t—a live demonstration of teamwork, timing, leadership, and strategy. For Drucker, baseball was more than a game. It was an organization in motion.

A Front Office Executive with a Copy of Management

Thousands of miles away, Peter Bavasi was watching baseball through a similar lens. Raised in the game—his father, Buzzie Bavasi, helped build the Dodgers into a dynasty—Peter took on leadership roles of his own, serving as GM of the Toronto Blue Jays and later as president of the Cleveland Indians and San Diego Padres.

But what set Bavasi apart wasn’t his name. It was his philosophy. “When I read Peter Drucker,” he said, “I realized the front office wasn’t that different from any organization Drucker was writing about. Leadership wasn’t about instinct. It was about clarity.” He wasn’t a “baseball man” in the traditional mold. He was a Drucker reader, and he kept Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices on his desk, not as a trophy but as a guide.

In 1985, after taking over a Cleveland team that had just lost 102 games, Bavasi stumbled upon one of Drucker’s essays on “widow-maker jobs,” roles so broken that even the best leaders were set up to fail. Wondering if he had just stepped into one, he picked up the phone and called Drucker.

That call evolved into a working relationship that altered how Bavasi viewed leadership. He would later reflect on Drucker’s influence in a recorded conversation, available here, where he describes Drucker as his “spiritual adviser” and credits him with shaping how he built his teams and led under pressure.

A Management Playbook Behind the Bench

Bavasi’s tenure in Cleveland became a live experiment in Drucker’s thinking. He reorganized departments, gave scouts greater autonomy, and created clarity where there had been confusion. These weren’t baseball moves. They were management decisions.

And they worked. The team stabilized. The culture improved. Even Drucker, who had been watching from afar, took note. In a handwritten letter dated July 7, 1986, Drucker praised Bavasi’s leadership: “The greatest turnaround in baseball history—my congratulations and admiration!” He added warm regards not just to Bavasi, but to the team and their “changes in management.” It was more than praise; it was a rare, personal endorsement from one of the most respected thinkers in leadership and organizational theory.

For Bavasi, it confirmed what he already believed. Drucker’s ideas weren’t bound to business. They were about people, systems, and the work of making organizations function with purpose.

Drucker’s Ideas, Played Out on the Field

Drucker believed organizations are human communities, not machines. Leadership, in his view, is about aligning people around a shared purpose and creating the conditions for them to do their best work. Baseball, perhaps more than any other professional sport, reveals this in plain sight.

Teams don’t win solely on talent. They win when every player understands their role and contributes to the team as a whole. That was how Bavasi ran his front office. He focused on team dynamics over star power. He centered the fan experience, echoing Drucker’s belief that “the purpose of a business is to create a customer.” He trusted his scouts and development staff, demonstrating Drucker’s principle of decentralizing decisions to those closest to the work.

Above all, both men shared the belief that leadership is about integrity. Not ego. Not control. Service.

Moshidora: Drucker, Baseball, and a High School Manager in Japan

Drucker’s influence in baseball wasn’t limited to front offices. In Japan, it made its way to high school dugouts and into the cultural mainstream.

In 2009, author Natsumi Iwasaki published a novel titled What If the Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker’s ‘Management”? The story follows Minami Kawashima, a teenager with no prior sports experience, who discovers Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices in a bookstore and uses it to coach her struggling team. She treats the team like an organization, applying Drucker’s ideas about mission, goals, strengths, and systems.

The novel, affectionately known as Moshidora, became a runaway bestseller. It sold over 1.8 million copies, inspired a manga series, an anime adaptation, and a live-action film. But more than its commercial success, it demonstrated something powerful: Drucker’s ideas are accessible, adaptable, and deeply human. They resonate with anyone trying to lead, whether in a Fortune 500 company or a high school sports program.

Whether in a dugout or a boardroom, the message remains the same. Lead with intention. Build around people. Leave the system better than you found it.

Why It Still Matters

Baseball, like leadership, is a game of nuance, pressure, and timing. There are slumps, injuries, bad calls, and unlikely comebacks. Success doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from coherence—knowing what matters, investing in people, and staying focused when things go sideways.

Today’s leaders face a different set of challenges: analytics overload, public scrutiny, decentralized teams, and decision-making under uncertainty. Drucker didn’t offer a cheat sheet. What he provided was more durable: a way to think. Start with values. Serve the customer. Know your people. Lead with clarity.

Leadership is not a grand slam moment. It’s built inning by inning through consistency, focus, and trust.

The Drucker School: Leadership That Crosses Fields

At the Drucker School of Management, we believe that leadership is not limited to a single industry. It is grounded in principle.

Whether you’re managing a corporate team or building a clubhouse culture, Drucker’s philosophy holds. Put people first. Make the purpose clear. Measure what matters. Act with integrity.

Our students are trained to lead across sectors and communities, guided by Drucker’s belief that management is about human beings. And yes, we believe he’d smile knowing that his ideas still show up in stadiums, dugouts, and team huddles.

Final Inning

Peter Drucker passed away in 2005, just days before the White Sox swept the Astros in that year’s World Series. But every October, his ideas return to the field—in the way a manager steers a team through a slump, in the way a front office resists a short-term trade, in the quiet systems that make teams work not for headlines, but for each other.

So if you’re watching the World Series this year, take a moment between innings. Think about Drucker, the rented TV, and the idea that leadership is everywhere, even in the most unexpected places, especially when it matters most.

Learn More

• Explore values-based leadership at the Drucker School of Management
• Discover modern applications of Drucker’s philosophy
• Browse more stories at Drucker+

This article was co-authored in collaboration by  Bernie Jaworski, Peter F. Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts, Matthew Alex, Director of Marketing at the Peter F. Drucker & Masatoshi Ito School of Management.