Larry Lucchino, who served as president of three different MLB teams, has died at the age of 78, the Boston Red Sox announced Tuesday.
Lucchino won three World Series titles during his 14-year tenure in Boston, bringing a long-awaited championship to the city in 2004 and ending an 86-year drought. The team would go on to add titles in 2007 and 2013.
Red Sox owner John Henry hailed Lucchino as ‘one of the most important executives in baseball history,’ in comments to the Boston Globe.
Perhaps more than anything else during his 27-year career in baseball, Lucchino played a major role in the building or renovation of iconic ballparks in which his teams played.
First as president of the Baltimore Orioles, he supervised the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The stadium bucked the prevailing trend of generic, symmetrical multipurpose facilities by championing the incorporation of the brick-walled B&O Railroad warehouse in its design. The immediate glowing reviews for Oriole Park when it opened in 1992 jump-started a new era of modern ballparks built solely for baseball.
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After joining the San Diego Padres in 1995, Lucchino presided over the construction of Petco Park in the heart of the city’s thriving Gaslamp Quarter.
And then after he arrived in Boston in 2002, Lucchino was the driving force behind the decision to renovate the historic, but aging Fenway Park instead of bulding a new stadium. In addition, he hired a relatively unknown 28-year-old Theo Esptein as general manager. Two years later, the Red Sox were able to ‘reverse the curse’ and win the World Series for the first time since 1918.
“Larry Lucchino was one of the most accomplished executives that our industry has ever had,’ MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. ‘He was deeply driven, he understood baseball’s place in our communities, and he had a keen eye for executive talent.’
He also oversaw the construction of new ballparks at the Red Sox’s spring training home in Fort Myers, Fla. and their top minor league affiliate in Worcester, Mass.
A lawyer by trade, Lucchino was born Sept. 6, 1945, in Pittsburgh. He played college basketball at Princeton, where he was a teammate of future NBA star and U.S. Senator Bill Bradley on a Tigers squad that reached the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four in 1965.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Lucchino joined the law firm headed by Baltimore Orioles and Washington Redskins team owner Edward Bennett Williams. He served as executive counsel for both teams before Williams named him president of the Orioles and launched his lengthy second career in baseball.
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