Long Story Short
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Long Story Short
Meet Mark Shapiro
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In this episode of Long Story Short, we sit down with Mark Shapiro, President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays and one of the most influential leaders in professional sports. Mark shares the journey that took him from growing up around the game to leading one of MLB’s most iconic organizations, and the lessons learned in leadership along the way. From navigating the pressure and scrutiny that come with professional sports to building strong teams and thinking long-term in an industry often defined by wins and losses, Mark offers a candid look at what it means to lead when the stakes are high. His story is a reminder that great leadership goes far beyond the scoreboard, it’s about people and having the conviction to build a strong foundation.
Long story short, brought to you by Valiant Law and Viridian Realty.
SPEAKER_01All right, Mark Shapiro, welcome to Long Story Short.
SPEAKER_00Very good to be with you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for having us here.
SPEAKER_00Good to do.
SPEAKER_01So for those of you that don't know, Mark Shapiro is the president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays since 2015. Just signed on for another five years. Congratulations. And let's get right into it, right to your undergrad. You did an undergrad in history. I did. So history and baseball, can you tell me a little bit more about how you see the two connect?
SPEAKER_00And how simplify it? I think I think I see history connecting to everything. You know, I mean if you um it's more of a philosophy of kind of studying, you know, what leaders have done in the past, what events, how events have transpired in the past, and just a more of a mindset that you can always learn something, you know, from someone else's experiences. And if you are open, you know, to that as you examine and take an entry point into anything, any experience you have from today to in the past. Um, but I, you know, I think also just I had a passion for thinking about everything from being kind of a second-generation immigrants family to, you know, the experience, you know, that my father and and mother and their parents and grandparents had, and all, you know, all those things that kind of root are the roots of character and the roots of philosophy and the roots of kind of how you live your life, you know, are kind of seated in in history. So that's how it's and and I um I would I'm embarrassingly probably shied away from STEM and math and science, you know, instead of kind of saying it's not my strongest area, but I need to develop it. And I always wrote really well and enjoyed reading. So like I I was gonna be somewhere in the liberal arts, you know, either you know, English, reading somewhere more in in that end of things.
SPEAKER_01And I think we saw that in all the analytics you've implemented in sports medicine and sports science in the industry.
SPEAKER_00And in decision making. I mean, I've moved more towards that way, you know, which is interesting, but I I often wish that I had a better foundation myself instead of having to kind of understand it and learn it, you know, and have other people do all that work.
SPEAKER_01And you played football. So what did you take from your experience as a player and bring it into your leadership?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's interesting. Um, you know, the baseball piece is is a separate topic. It's more of a foundation, it's a link to my family. It's it was the sport that I played more growing up. I was genetically predisposed to play football. That's a nice way of saying I was a pear-shaped, overweight, you know, wide-bodied kid. I was 275 pounds and you know, recruited to play football in the US university. And so, um, but I very much, as I entered into baseball and as I grew as a leader and I was leading player development and dealing with players, even though it was a different sport, even though I was not very good, I always kind of took a player's mentality of how do I want to be talked to, how do I want to, how do I want to be treated. Um, and when I built uh player development systems, you know, in Cleveland in my early years of leading, the thought was always player-centered. When Ross Atkins and I came here, you know, the goal was to build up, you know, the ultimate player-centered environment here, meaning the player is at the center of every decision. You know, when we build facilities, when we talk about layering resources, when we hire staff, as we think about the food they eat, how their family's treated, we wanted the player to feel that we cared ultimately, uh, and that we commute, we took the time to communicate effectively. So that stems from competing, that stems from playing. It stems from not so great conversations with coaches over a career of playing, and some really great ones, you know. So have coaches that were transformative for me and coaches that were more transactional, and always saying, I want to build transformative cultures, transformative environments, hire transformative cultures, and give players that experience. And players will, you know, it's it is it is uh values-based, but it's also performance-based belief that that's going to make us better too. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02You one thing you touched upon in your answer that I wanted to expand on a bit was you mentioned your family and the connection to your family. Yeah. You know, it seems like your your parents were both incredibly formative for you as you were growing up. Um, so when you were you know growing up with a father who was incredibly successful as a sports agent and a lawyer, right? And a lawyer. Yes, he was. He was also a lawyer as well from Horror. Corporate lawyer, and yeah, absolutely. Um, what was that world like as a kid when you were seeing your dad kind of engage with the baseball industry? Did you ever see yourself getting into it? Because I know that he at one point was like maybe trying to steer you away from that.
SPEAKER_00Well, first of all, my dad for the first 13 years of my life was not, you know, he was a corporate lawyer, he taught law school, taught he started the bar review class in Maryland. He was securities commissioner of Maryland, so he was he taught securities law. His license plate was 10 B5, which is a security thing. You're laughing as a lawyer, you know. Yeah. Yeah, and he wrote he wrote a legal book. I mean, you know, like he's written four books that are on negotiations since like a legal textbook, too. So he was a legal scholar, and like I used to go with him when he taught law school, and he would plant questions that no none of the law students could answer. And I would like at eight years, eight years old, I'd raise my hand and answer those those. So I remember watching him teach, and law was just kind of what he did, you know. He by chance helped a great player who's a Hall of Famer named Brooks Robinson out of uh an uh endorsement deal that the company was going after him for all of his life's assets. And Brooks asked my dad to negotiate his last contract in the mid-70s, and that was a time when there weren't many agents, and so that's how he kind of happened into it. Never did it full time, but over almost overnight, I went from being the kid hanging over the rail trying to get autographs to eating dinner and vacationing with like great players that were like my heroes, so which was kind of odd, really odd, you know, and not it didn't feel normal to me, you know. Um, but those players, their perspective of the game, their understanding of what it means to be a good teammate, their definition of professionalism, their love of the game and their their view of the game had a formative impact on me and influence on me. And I think as I was a very typical um liberal arts graduate trying to find my way and not certain I didn't have a calling and not certain of what I wanted to do. The you know, coming across some major league executives when visiting my dad touring spring training, it it was more in you know intuitive, probably somewhat like silly and naive, you know, like, oh, I want to do that. That's a great way to combine my you know my passion with my interest in business. And uh it took a very long time to get in. There were no examples of like executives who didn't play or on the baseball side, you know, on the player personnel side. And when I did, I didn't have a lot of choice. I went to the one team that was willing to offer me a job, and it was the worst team in all of Major League Baseball and you know, a city that wasn't exactly like attractive for a young single person to go to, wasn't exactly exciting in any way, shape, or form. But man, I was like, the second I got there, I was like, this is it. I'm happy. Like it before this is like I jumped out of bed every day for the first time working and was like, this is what I want to do. These are who these are people I want to work with, this is how I want to work. And yeah, I got it just it I was very fortunate in the circumstances from there because we got very good very quickly. And I had a ridiculous level of you know, uh responsibility and leadership given to me in a very quick period, which I as I reflect back how young I was and how much I was leading, it's be kind of beyond belief to me. You know, now it did back then it just seemed natural. Now it seems like, oh, I can't imagine that, you know.
SPEAKER_01So I want to go back to there. So you talked about making your own way. I know you tried, I think, real estate in Florida, a couple other things before you eventually mailed your resume to 26 MLV teams over at Cleveland gets that got back to you.
SPEAKER_00Do you know what that is, mail?
SPEAKER_01We were talking about an email and a PDF. No, it was a uh mail mail my resume and so you got this piece of mail back, and what did that moment tell you about and you spoke about this, how careers we think they're supposed to work work versus how they actually work.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I think that my biggest takeaway, so I are I'm a big believer in kind of reflecting back and trying to what can I take away from that and what can I pass on? Like, how can I have that? You what pieces of this are actually valuable, what pieces are not valuable? Um, and I do I as much as so many young people come and like want to work in sports, and so I'm obviously, and I usually almost never turn down those those opportuns. Um and you know, I think it's like maybe a little bit disheartening. My my baseline advice, which is take first take the time to know yourself, you know, and do that hard work of kind of what are your values, what's your compass, how are you making decisions, what's important to you. And that's not an easy thing to do for 22, 21, 23. Like that's that, you know, and when you really start to think about what that means, that means all the great things in your life, your parents, your schools, your communities, like what are you separate from all those things? What is your identity separate from the great influences and from the maybe not so great influences? But what is your, you know, when you're and I I think one way to think about that is when you're happy, fulfill that peace and content. Who are you with and what are you doing? So you trace that back. Okay, let me think about, let me peel that back, think about who I'm with, what I'm doing. You start to be able to fill out, okay, these are my values, these are my pillars, these are the things that I need to make uh use the compass to make big decisions in life. And ultimately, when you're thinking about work, it helps you think maybe less about what you're doing and more about who you're doing it with and who you're doing it for, which is culture, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think that if you use that to guide career decisions, you know, what are the leaders like? What is the culture like? Does that align with me? It actually is a great thing because it opens up so many other jobs you may not think. Happiness, you may think at 21 comes from what you're doing every day. But if what you're doing is working for miserable people who don't care about your growth and development and aren't invested in you and are transactional, it doesn't matter if you're doing the greatest thing in the world, you're not going to be happy. And if something you may not think you enjoy, but you're working in an environment with transformative leaders who care deeply about your growth and development and want to build best in class, you know, performance environments to work in, which means surrounding you with other great people that are also like-minded and caring, it may open your open up a wealth of opportunities. So when I reflect back, what I always think is if that first job in real estate development had been a job where I aligned with the leaders and was in a culture that aligned with my values, I might still be doing that today. I might it might not have kind of caused me to continue to search, you know.
SPEAKER_01And the Jays might not have been at the World Series. There you go.
SPEAKER_00It would have been a class that's true, better play back. But I, you know, but I I think like one of when I think back, like one of the things that like when I got out of my interviews in Cleveland, it was I want to work with those guys. Yeah. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily I want to do that job. It was I want to work for those two leaders. I believe in those, like I got off the plane being like, I was like excited, you know, I was just buzzing. I felt like a palpable energy of like, I believe in their vision and their plan, and I want to work with that group you know for them.
SPEAKER_01It's like a gut feeling.
SPEAKER_00What's that?
SPEAKER_01It was like a gut feeling.
SPEAKER_00It was uh it was a gut feeling, but I I think you need to unpack gut, right? Like because gut is anecdotal and maybe confused by emotion and may not be substantive. So um I did, I did make a gut decision, but when I want to think about what the value of that decision was and why it was a good decision, I think about, you know, I it was maybe I was lucky because I don't think gut decisions are the way to make decisions very often. Um, but I didn't have a process for making decisions, and that's what I'm trying to kind of get to here. This is what I would, this is the way for me to break down my good fortune and say this is the process that I actually kind of intuitively, it was more intuition than it was gut, uh, that I intuitively kind of benefited from.
SPEAKER_02I think it's you talked about how you have to kind of really focus and how everybody should really focus on what their values are and and not define yourself by what you do. I think that that's something that a lot of people struggle with. I mean, for example, even, you know, when we first started talking when you came in for the interview today, and we talked about what we do for school, what we're doing for work. Like we so closely align ourselves to the job rather than who we are as individuals. And taking the time to kind of unpack that can definitely go a long way and maybe help you unpack some of your gut feelings, as you were saying.
SPEAKER_00The danger in doing that is you live a kind of a fragile existence, right? Especially for me, you know, where there's outcomes I only I don't have a lot of control over day to day, um, where there's people who react emotionally to our to my business, you know, much more than many other businesses. And so if I'm strictly, and I have seen I've observed many other sports leaders who really do, like they they they live and die a roller coaster existence. They feel good about themselves and are puffing their chest out with pride when the team does well, and they're kind of like hiding when the team goes badly. And so I kind of determined early on, like I am not gonna derive my self-worth, my self-esteem, or my identity from outcomes, you know, and instead, you know, I'm gonna focus on being the best person I can be. And that person is the leader I am, and with it with a an overall belief that will lead organizations that I work for to good outcomes too, you know, over time with persistence, you know, with resilience, with determination, uh, with uh obsessive and relentless, you know, focus on getting better, improving, and learning from mistakes, uh, but not tying self-worth, not tying self-esteem. So never deriving, you know, any disproportionate satisfaction from winning and outcomes and applause and praise, but also trying to buffer myself, you know, from criticism as well. It's not, you know, from it's not the critic that counts, right? It's the it's the person in the arena, yeah, doing the job.
SPEAKER_02So you um going back a little bit, you had touched upon your time at Cleveland and your kind of growth um there. So you spent 24 seasons with the Guardians and progressed from director of player development all the way to president.
SPEAKER_00Well, from from entry-level cubicle dweller with no seat. Yeah, director of player development was like in my fourth year. Like I spent three years picking up people at the airport, pulling off game reports. Yeah. So really starting from the bottom of the city. I started from the bottom. There was no I had no title. That's that was the bottom, yeah.
SPEAKER_02What was the hardest part about rising through an organization in general, like that one, for example, and what do you wish somebody had told you sooner?
SPEAKER_00Wow. I don't remember, you know, I was so excited to be working in baseball and so excited to be working in the environments that uh that I was in, and so open to learning and you know, thirsty to learn from different people that I don't remember anything being below me. And I think that's some of what my dad taught me and just kind of work ethic. That's some of the sport experience of like, hey, as an athlete, you know you have to earn respect and trust. In my mentality, nothing I wasn't worthy of anything being handed to me, not because of my education, not because of my background, not because of anything I've done, that I needed to walk into that environment and demonstrate that you know I needed to earn respect. And I only had kind of two basic guiding principles. And again, I think these are also timeless. And that was every single thing, and I don't know where I came up with this, but I think this is still valid. Again, I thought I can give you the reason why I think it's valid when I think back. But it was I'm gonna do everything better and faster than my bosses expect. That was all I that was all I thought. It was pretty simple, right? But there's something behind that, right? Well, one better just means you have high standards and expectations. And so, like the elite academic institution I was from, I was around the best quarter percent of students in the world. And like my standards were high. Yeah because for me to just hang with them, I was the bottom, but for me to hang with them, I had to like work my tail off and have really high standards. And so I was gonna exceed standards. That was one. And the timing thing, I think that there is something about urgency, you know, that if you are working for someone and you demonstrate that you've got urgency, that's just showing that you care a lot. And that demonstrates confidence in you, and you're gonna likely get more to do. And I kept getting more assigned to me because they were like, well, this guy clearly cares a lot. You know, he's working really hard, he's getting us back things faster than we expect, better quality than we expect. And I kept getting more to do because of that. So I think that's one formula. It's not guaranteed to work for everyone, but I think there was some that's that's the way I approached my early days. But I honestly never felt like I never had a time frame. Um I never felt uh disenchanted with doing grunt level, entry-level work. You know, I just approached it wanting to learn, being you know, looking to learn from anyone that would take time with me to teach me everything I was assigned, wanting to do better and and faster than it was assigned. So again, I think the only other piece I would say, you know, in hindsight is it's a little bit of an entitled white male kind of to assume that that's gonna result. You know, I just I think I had an innate confidence that that would just result in good things. And I think that as I reflect back, you know, that's probably like a pr a white male privilege kind of point of view. And so I'm not sure that every person would feel that same way, you know, but I do still think that's a good approach to take in general.
SPEAKER_01I think right before we start your summer job, it's good to know do it better and faster than everybody else. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's like so simple, right? It's nothing, there's nothing that heady about not that intellectual, but I think it does actually, while it is simple, it does actually kind of like send the right message to the people you work for, and you're likely to get more work from that. And you know, that's a that's a good way to grow, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's important to say it out loud too, like just to remind yourself that that's where the kind of what's guiding you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. High standards and expectations for yourself and others, sense of urgency.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And you've said I've never been a grass is greener type of guy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But 24 years in one place, sat for at least 15 more here. What does that kind of loyalty and patience cost you? And what does it give you that?
SPEAKER_00It's I've never approached it um with a desire to stay or with a desire to go. So I've always kind of just taken and and I looked at a lot of opportunities while I was in Cleveland and thought about leaving. And I've looked at opportunities since I've been here that I've been offered and thought about leaving. So I think what that the the the not being a grass is greener person is kind of saying is it the seductive nature of different that or wanting to be appreciated more or something superficial like money that is causing you to consider leaving? And then it gets back to values again, like know yourself, you know, what is important for me to be happy and fulfilled and at peace, and is something else really offering me more of that than what I have here? And so I think as I've done that, as I've walked through that formula in Cleveland every time but Toronto.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And as I walk through it in Toronto, I've never been, you know, tempted to leave. And when I have gone down the road and thought maybe this is it, I've gotten to a point where I've said, wait a second, I think that's just about money, or that's just about fame, or that's just about power, or that's just about status. And the one thing I'm certain of after 35 years in this business or 37 years of working is money, fame, power, and status are never good drivers. They will never result in you being happy. They can never be quenched or satisfied. You will never reach an endpoint, you'll never find peace, you'll never have enough. And but they are the single most corruptive, most prevalent, kind of most common. And they get they you're not necessarily aware that they're driving your motives. So when those are motivating factors, they often take you off course. And same thing with me. I'm like I'm human, you know. So when I start to go off course, those are the things that usually cause me to go off course. And I haven't I have not made decisions, and that's resulted in me valuing the uh leadership that I was empowered to kind of create in Cleveland, um, the alignment that I had with the people that I worked with and the people I worked for there, um, and the appreciation for the empowerment and autonomy that I'm given in Toronto, the nature of the city here and the country, um, and the people that I work with here that kind of make me better. Every day.
SPEAKER_02So I mean, let's let's get to your time in Toronto. So you mentioned earlier about one of the reasons why you separate the outcome from the process, I guess, and the effort that goes into it is because, especially in the sports world and baseball, it can be very emotional for the fans. When you first came to Toronto in 2015, I mean, I know we're in Canada, but you did receive a bit of a frosty kind of welcome at first. There was a beloved GM who had left the organization around the same time. How did you lead through that kind of noise when you hadn't fully earned the trust of maybe the city, but also the country because you are Canada's baseball team?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, it was a shock, man. I I came here making a decision to leave someplace. I didn't, I wasn't out of work. You know, I chose to come here thinking I was a respected executive. Ma'am, it was good. It was really good because it was shocking. I was hate, I wasn't that you the frosty is a nice way. I mean, I was I was hated when I came here and it affected my kids, you know. They got, you know, my son playing would get harassed, you know, playing baseball, you know, for being my son. Nothing he did, you know. But it was, it was, it was perfect. It was great. You know, it was like what I it was what I needed, you know. It was uh, I mean, I'm a big believer like in Amor Fati, like embrace, don't just accept your fate, embrace it. And that was everything I needed to test my character, to test my values and to test my beliefs. Um it was it was what I needed, you know, and what I did very, you know, what I ultimately came up with was okay, are you gonna sit here and feel sorry for yourself that this is not what you thought it would be? You know, are you gonna bemoan the fact that after you made the decision that the organization went on the greatest three-month run in the history of modern sport, um, that, you know, someone chose not to work with you, even though that's been portrayed incorrectly. Someone chose not to work with you because it wasn't right for them, which is fine. Um, that you've been kind of vilified, you know, hey, no, like that's it is what it is. Like, who cares? Like, you know, so what can I do? What can I what I can do? Like, kind of it is what it is. I can get to work. That's what I can do, and start to control what I can control. And I can't control any of those things. I can't control the externals, I can't control what people think or believe about me. Um, and all I can do is what I do, which is to get to work, to build the organization, to do the things I believe in, and to believe deeply that over time that will be valued and provide the fans with what they want and just not not wait too much. So it never impacted my morale, it never impacted my beliefs, it never impacted, you know, my, you know, my most important roles in life, you know, father, brother, son, you know, friend, you know, partner. Like, I I stayed true to being the person that I am and made sure that I didn't like hang my head or feel sorry my kids didn't see me doing that. Like, hey, this doesn't matter. Like, that doesn't matter. That's not I'm not in it for the praise and the applause. And the criticism, you know, is not a reflection of someone's meanness or maliciousness. It's just misinterpreted, you know, information and that because they care and that's it. So don't let it affect you. It doesn't affect me. And I'm gonna get back to work and control what I can control.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's sad that like people oftentimes forget there's a human aspect to sports. I think there is like, yes, people have criticism and it maybe comes from a place of passion, which is inherently good, but that there is a cost on the other side of that passion somebody else.
SPEAKER_00I cringe whenever I hear booze. You know, like IKF was here, Isaiah kind of file was here. Um, I know this is gonna be aired later, but just here because the Red Sox were just here the day after the day before we're we're filming this. And, you know, he's one of the better teammates, better people in the game. And, you know, he was didn't do anything wrong, but he's associated with us not winning game seven because of inches, and you know, and you know, there were boos yesterday, fortunately not a lot, you know, but there were still some booze, and he's gotten harassed some because of that, and it like hurts me, you know. Like I like it's not what's because this guy should be celebrated for the good things about him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, you can do a million things right, and you shouldn't be punished for maybe the one or two times.
SPEAKER_00But I would say this like if you're gonna work in this arena, you better be prepared for that. Like that's the nature. This is sports and entertainment, you know, and you know, fans care deeply and they do not want to intellectualize it, you know. And so you're gonna be, you know, you're gonna be judged on outcomes. It doesn't mean you have to judge yourself on outcomes, but you better be able to accept the criticism. You know, there are gonna be people that are writing about what you do that aren't held to be aren't held accountable. They can write one thing and write another thing another day, and they're critics. That's just what they do. They just they're talking about what someone else is doing in the world, you know, and that's what they've made, that's what you know, that's what they're doing, you know, and so it's the nature of it, and fans are emotional by nature, they don't they don't want to process, you know, they're not looking to do that. It's not why you follow sports, yeah, you know. Um maybe a small percentage of people do, but most people do it for the for the fun of it, you know. And so, yeah, I I wish they would just be positive, you know, and just focus all their emotions on the positive side. But sometimes the trauma of being a fan, you know, causes you to be negative as well.
SPEAKER_01So let's go to the World Series, which I'm sure everybody wants to hear the most about. So the Jays went from the last place in 2024 to the World Series in 2025, one of the most traumatic turnarounds in recent baseball history. So, what changed? And is there a specific moment you can take us to that you knew that this team is going to go incredibly far this season?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I it's interesting. Um we made some changes, you know, but I think what's most powerful is what we didn't change, you know. Um we always kind of do a deep dive. We're doing it constantly. We're doing it during the season, we do it at the end of the season, where we reflect deeply on kind of trying to separate the signal from the noise and you know, what was random in the outcomes and what was meaningful in the outcomes, where the opportunity is to learn from what we did. And we made some real changes in the way we deployed our players and talent, in the way we uh and who was coaching our hitters and how we were coaching our hitters. But we didn't make like wholesale massive changes. We didn't change people, even though if you go back and look, they were calling for heads, you know, the GM, the manager, like major changes to be made. And I think, you know, the belief that things were not as bad as kind of the what the you know, what the ending record showed um is just as evident as maybe things were not quite as good as our record last year, you know, like that's the that's kind of the reality, but not reacting, not overreacting, but still taking necessary action. And so having that line of kind of where to learn, grow, adjust, develop, you know, make adjustments, meaningful adjustments, but where to stay steadfast in your beliefs and kind of the core, you know, it enables you to get better more quickly than if you blow it up and react and kind of I call it feeding the beast. If you're feeding the beast of the public, it never satiated, it never gets full. You know, then you then every time you stumble, you got to keep changing, right? And if you keep changing, you're reinventing, you have to kind of deal with new, you know, instead you know what you've got, make adjustments instead of changes. So we made adjustments instead of wholesale changes, um, and trusted our process and and got back to the pursuit.
SPEAKER_01You know, I think that's always why you say you don't want it to be sporadic, you want it to be sustained.
SPEAKER_00Yes, sustainable is the goal, you know.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So you as president and CEO oversee both the baseball and business sides of the organization. You're one of the few MLB executives with a hand in all facets of the game from your past experience over the past 30 years. When these two worlds of both the baseball and the business kind of pull you in opposite directions, what side wins, so to speak? And how do you kind of go through that process of maybe wanting to change something about the organization while hearing what the fans want and kind of finding a way to balance all of it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think I never feel that there's a pull by side. I think there's needs to be a reminder that the biggest lever on our business is always about winning and losing, you know, that the business side is a really well-executed sports business side, softens valleys and heightens peaks, you know. But the best sports business in the world is not going to be able to succeed if the team's, you know, losing 100 games. Yeah. So um part of the business's job, and I think this is because of my past and the way I lead, is that we're here to put the baseball side in a position to be successful. So when a business side leads a renovation, it's you better believe that we're thinking about how to build best in class player experience, how to support the families. All those are business functions. We support the families, maybe more and better than anybody in the game. We view that a competitive advantage, but that's the business side, right? So the business side and the baseball side have the identical goal. And we don't have divide, we don't have two different missions. We've got one mission here: get better every day to bring world championships to Canada. The business side's work on working to bring world championships to Canada. The baseball side's working to now they're doing different functions and they're working very differently in different ways, but they need we it needs to be the same goal. Like it can't be two separate goals that I have to move in between. It's like we're trying to do the same thing. Everything we're trying to do on the business side, increase revenue to have more money to get better players or to better systems and better process to win more games to win a World Series. Everything's tied back to that. Everything. You know, clean the concourse better so it's a better fan experience, so fans have a better time, so they come back, so we raise more revenue and we can get better players and win more games, you know, sell more hot dogs, everything's tying back to what everything's tied to winning world championships. You know?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So I think as we start to wrap up, in the beginning of the interview, you were talking about how you would have never imagined where you are today. So if a 25-year-old version of yourself could see where you ended up, what do you think would surprise him the most? But also what would he recognize immediately?
SPEAKER_00Wow. I think uh man, no one's ever asked me that question in that way. Um I would hope that the 25-year-old version of myself would be proud of the leader that I am, the way I treat people, um and the cultures and environments I've created to work in. You know, I think that's probably like what I would say. And I think the 25-year-old version of me would would have aspired to kind of have done that. You know. Um the surprising part of the 25-year-old me would be that be in another country. You know, like I do like Canada? I chose to come here because it was uh, you know, from a values perspective and from a culture perspective, it was where I wanted my kids to grow up, have the second half of their childhood to, and it's been life-changing for them and for me to be here. I'm a Canadian citizen now. Um and yeah, I'm incredibly proud, you know, to be here. I think uh looking at Toronto in particular through the lens that I of the country I grew up in, you know, a place that's so open-minded and doesn't view race, religion, you know, color, background to be a defining attribute and characteristic coming from a world in the US that where it's even people that are open-minded and compassionate still acknowledge that difference. Um, it's hard to even explain and to verbalize, you know, and through the lens of being here. But that and just you know, so many other positive things, mostly just compassion and open-mindedness, you know, that I I just really has been such an uplifting, um, so much gratitude for that, really.
SPEAKER_02Now, eventually, you know, God willing, 10, 15 years down the line, when you decide to step away from all of this, what do you want people to say was your real contribution and legacy? Not the wins or the renovations to the fan experience, but the thing that was underneath all of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I never I don't spend any time on that. I think what I want to do, what I want my legacy to be, is that I leave people behind that can continue to provide this organization, but I don't care about being remembered. I my view on that is, you know, we walk through streets every day and see monuments of people that we have no idea who they are. We walk over, you know, plaques on the ground that have names of people that no one knows what they actually did. And so I only care that the people that I've had a chance to impact, you know, benefit from my interactions with them, that I leave leaders who impact other leaders in a way that's positive, that my kids, you know, feel that I was authentic and genuine and caring and made life better and easier for them, that they so that they can do it for their kids as well. Um, yeah, I mean, that's it. It's the relationships and the people that I worked with and that I've developed and had a hand in developing the next set of leaders for the Blue Jays and Major League Baseball and beyond. Like that's that's what legacy means to me. But as far as like what's remembered about me, nothing will be in 50 years remembered about me. And I just don't care about that. I mean, I think no matter what I do, right? Like we just don't, that's just not the world. Like, you know, I think so.
SPEAKER_01I mean, in 50 years, we'll tell our kids about this. I'll tell my kids about this.
SPEAKER_02I will definitely remember you would make sure that they know too.
SPEAKER_01Last question. Mark Shapiro, long story short, how do I become the architect of a championship culture?
SPEAKER_00Um caring, connecting, chasing excellence instead of outcomes and results. Um and have a relentless approach on learning curiosity and open mindedness.
SPEAKER_01Perfect.
SPEAKER_02I can't think of a better way to end off.
SPEAKER_01And that's the pirate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Long story short, brought to you by Valiant Law and Viridian Realty.