Sandy Alderson was just a sophomore when he orchestrated one of the more unusual Dartmouth leave-term opportunities in history—simply by visiting his dad at work.

John Alderson was an Air Force bomber pilot who was flying combat missions in Vietnam. Sandy decided that since the Vietnam War was the most important thing happening in the world, he ought to see it. So he finagled a journalist visa that got him to the Philippines, then to Saigon.

There he hopped aboard a B-57 bomber and joined his father on a training mission, where he learned how maneuverable a bomber could be—Sandy vomited mid-flight—and how his old man approached his work. The meticulous preparation. The attention to detail. The dedication to the mission. And he heard all about what it was like when the elder Alderson first started flying.

“During World War II he had those long missions—12, 14 hours—and he would fly in these big formations, so he couldn’t really deviate from the plan,” Alderson says. “Maybe he had second thoughts about what he was doing or he had to make some small adjustments, but really he just had to keep together and stay the course.”

He adds: “I think about that quite often now. This job is a lot like that.”

That’s because, after a long and distinguished career in major league baseball, Sandy Alderson is now the general manager of the moribund New York Mets.

Young sportswriters quickly learn to be careful of using war terminology—a game is not a battle and athletes are not warriors—but in this case a few martial metaphors are unavoidable. Not only because Alderson has had to stay the course during a difficult time. But also because taking over the Mets—who have been forced to undergo the largest payroll bloodletting in baseball history, thanks to owner Fred Wilpon’s ties to Ponzi-scheming swindler Bernie Madoff—has to feel a bit like taking over for General Custer at Little Big Horn.

Perhaps the best way to understand how different Alderson’s job is—versus what he once thought it would be—is to follow his Twitter feed.

He opened the account, @MetsGM, in February. His first tweet: “Getting ready for Spring Training—Driving to FL but haven’t left yet. Big fundraiser tonight for gas money. Also exploring PAC contribution.”

The next day he tweeted: “Prepping for trip. Bought 4 like-new tires at chop shop across from Citi. He threw in free wiper fluid. Better than the Wheeler deal!”

Two days later: “Will have to drive carefully on trip; Mets only reimburse for gas at a downhill rate. Will try to coast all the way to FL.”

This was not how it was supposed to be. In 2010, when Alderson was hired out of the commissioner’s office, where he had been charged with cleaning up some of the baseball-related corruption in the talent-rich Dominican Republic, the Mets were a franchise adrift, but not for lack of money. Despite one of baseball’s highest payrolls, they had posted back-to-back fourth-place finishes in the National League East. Their minor league system was bereft of talent and their major league team was laden with bloated long-term contracts to underperforming and oft-injured stars.

Alderson’s charge was to bring small-market savvy to a team with big-market resources. As general manager of the Oakland A’s in the 1990s, Alderson had pioneered the baseball revolution later described in Michael Lewis’s best-selling book, Moneyball, which details how the use of advanced statistical techniques helped identify undervalued players for a team on a tight budget. While popularly credited to Alderson’s successor in Oakland, Billy Beane, portrayed by Brad Pitt in the movie version, it’s widely acknowledged in baseball circles, and by Beane, that many of the principles of “Moneyball” were started by Alderson.

When Alderson was hired by the Mets, it was supposed to be “Moneyball” with money. But that was before the full extent of the Madoff mess was known. Wilpon recently settled a clawback lawsuit with the bankruptcy trustee for Madoff’s victims for $162 million. It has been a crippling financial blow to the Mets, which were already losing $70 million annually thanks to declining attendance and poor play and now don’t have an owner capable of absorbing that loss.

“When I took the job there was an awareness that the ownership had lost quite a bit of money because of Madoff,” says Alderson. “But I don’t think there was any anticipation there would be this massive clawback lawsuit.”

Still, the understated and famously unflappable Alderson says he would have taken the job even knowing what he knows now: “What can I say? I enjoy challenges.”

The Mets have been nothing if not that. The payroll at the start of the 2011 season was $143 million. The payroll on Opening Day 2012 was around $90 million, squarely middle of the pack and less than half of what their crosstown rival, the Yankees, spent. No team in baseball history has cut so much salary so quickly.

And Alderson has been the axman. He traded baseball’s single-season-saves record-holder Frankie Rodriguez to the Brewers for two players to be named later. He traded seven-time All Star Carlos Beltran to the Giants for a young pitching prospect. Perhaps most painfully, Alderson had to watch the reigning National League batting champion, Jose Reyes, sign with the Miami Marlins for $106 million. There’s even talk, once unthinkable, that if the Mets fall out of contention this season they might trade free-agent-to-be David Wright, once considered an untouchable franchise cornerstone.

And yet, when you talk to Alderson—Twitter gallows humor aside—he doesn’t sound like a man at the end of his rope.

“It’s a cliché, but the enjoyment I get out of this job isn’t the destination, it’s the journey,” Alderson says. “We won the World Series in Oakland, but that’s not what I remember most about my time there. It’s about building an organization. It’s about following a process you believe in. It’s about identifying good people and then finding ways to keep them motivated and retaining them. It’s about the camaraderie you establish in the organization, whether that’s with the owners or the equipment managers or the clubhouse boys.”

In other words, it’s about sticking with the mission and, perhaps, hoping he doesn’t throw up this time. For now, prospects remain dim for the Mets, who are expected to be bottom-feeders this season. But Alderson has at least given beleaguered fans hope by restocking the farm system and shedding some of the monster contracts that have hamstrung the team. He is slowly positioning the team to be a contender for the future.

“The thing about Sandy is, he’s not in it for the short term,” says Jim
Beattie ’76, a former general manager for the Expos and Orioles. “He’s smart and he’s creative and he’s going to do what it takes to straighten things out. I’m not saying what he’s facing is easy. But if anybody is up to it, Sandy is.”

Brad Parks is a frequent contributor to DAM and an award-winning mystery novelist whose latest book, green energy sources, The Girl Next Door, was just released by St. Martin’s Press.