What do a fly and a tree have in common?
For a brief moment two weeks ago, Doug Melvin thought his future hinged on the answer.
The question was part of a grueling six-hour psychological test ,, Melvin took during his second interview with the Texas Rangers.
For once, he was stumped.
"When I think back, it was sort of funny," Melvin said. "But I don't know if I would have thought it was funny if I was still working in Baltimore."
Not to worry -- the Rangers named him general manager.
And now, Melvin might get the last laugh.
He'd report for work at 7 a.m. with the Orioles, beating the custodial crew into the offices. Already, the Rangers are benefiting from his intense preparation, his vast knowledge.
New York Yankees manager Buck Showalter nicknamed Melvin "Scoop" when they were minor-league teammates. The Latin players went further, calling him "Lawyer."
"I think he's been preparing for this for a long, long time," said Lon Babby, the Orioles' former club counsel. "In his mind, he's probably made these decisions a hundred times."
Take his first two weeks on the job.
Melvin, 42, fired manager Kevin Kennedy and farm director Marty Scott two days after taking over. Then, after two managerial candidates failed to jump at interviews, he hired Johnny Oates.
Rash decisions?
Hardly.
Melvin told Kennedy that new GMs who retain managers are only delaying the inevitable -- and that once such managers are fired, they frequently find it difficult to get another job.
As examples, Melvin cited Cal Ripken Sr. in Baltimore, Butch Hobson in Boston and Buck Rodgers in California.
Kennedy probably scoffed at the argument.
But six days later, he had another job.
Melvin was equally decisive in choosing Kennedy's replacement. Oates was the only candidate he interviewed. Buddy Bell balked at the offer. Dave Duncan responded too slowly.
Rather than contact other candidates for the sake of appearance, Melvin went with his gut instinct and picked Oates.
As an assistant GM with the Orioles, he never had the chance to be so bold.
"Someone has to make decisions, and someone has to be held accountable for it," Melvin said. "I don't have a fear of being held accountable, if you've gotten good input and the decision is well thought-out."
With Melvin, the decisions are always well thought-out -- so much so that Rangers president Tom Schieffer said he shouldn't worry about the fly and the tree.
Indeed, Schieffer must confess:
"I don't know about that myself."
Testing his patience
The psychological test, Schieffer said, did not play a major role in Melvin's hiring, which was a good thing, since Melvin wasn't sure he identified the proper continent for Saudi Arabia.
"I should have played more Trivial Pursuit," he said.
The test -- three hours of multiple-choice questions, then a three-hour interview -- was the kind disdained by many in baseball.
A woman from a psychological management firm sat with a stopwatch, staring at Melvin, timing some of his responses.
"For me, it was a test of patience," he said. "I'm sitting there thinking, 'Keep your cool, don't show you're upset.' "
Peter Angelos didn't want him.
But the Rangers did.
He came all the way from Chatham, Ontario -- Ferguson Jenkins' hometown.
His passion for the game stemmed in part from a simple Canadian fascination with America's national pastime.
His high school didn't have a baseball team, but Melvin quit hockey when he was 13 to concentrate on the sport. He eventually pitched six years in the minors, peaking at Double-A with the Yankees.
"I knew for sure he was going to stay in baseball -- someway, somehow," said former Orioles coach Jerry Narron, Melvin's former minor-league teammate and roommate.
"When he was in A ball and Double-A, he knew every guy in the league. He was scouting players then, saying this guy was going the major leagues, this guy wasn't."
Narron joked that Melvin was such an excellent judge of talent, he quit the game in 1978 to pitch batting practice and coordinate advance scouting reports for the Yankees.
That's how Melvin began his front-office career -- at the bottom. He spent six years with the Yankees, then eight with the Orioles. Always, his diligence stood out.
His father, Art, was a mechanic for a trucking company. Melvin said he was never late for work, never came home early, and called in sick maybe five times in 37 years.
Those closest to Melvin with the Orioles noticed the same work ethic -- even if it was lost on Angelos, the team's owner.
"He used to sit up in the GM's box with reams of papers and scouting reports and newspaper clippings," Babby said. "He was always working.
He'd be watching the game, and reading the whole time."
Two months ago, Melvin had such a bad case of laryngitis, Lee MacPhail IV -- the Orioles' assistant director of player development -- said he sounded "like 'Scarface.' "
MacPhail and others pleaded with him to take a day off.
Even then, with his Orioles career fading, Melvin declined.
Crunching numbers
Melvin views everything through a baseball prism. Shopping for a new home in Texas, he compares searching for the right school district to building a strong farm system.
See the analogy?
Both require top instructors.
With the Orioles, Melvin viewed himself as a David Segui.
"He wanted to be an everyday player, and we went out and got Rafael Palmeiro," Melvin said. "I wanted to be a general manager, but there were roadblocks."
So, when the opportunity arose in Texas, Melvin didn't approach it casually.
Before his interview, he hired computer whiz Reid Nichols -- the Orioles' director of minor-league field operations -- to help him prepare a series of graphics detailing his plans for the Rangers.
Melvin presented a statistical analysis of the past four seasons, comparing the Rangers to the World Series champions. His charts detailed the Rangers' imbalance -- their emphasis on offense, at the expense of pitching and defense.
He analyzed the Rangers' past five amateur drafts. He projected the payroll if certain players were subtracted. He unveiled a pie chart showing the percentage breakdown of a minor-league budget.
"He was very well-organized, very thoughtful," said Schieffer, the Rangers' president. "He had a game plan for spring training, for scouting, for player development, for the major-league club.
"He had ideas in mind for different people in the organization, ideas in mind for players. It was not so much that any one of those things caught your eye. It was just the overwhelming feeling that this man was prepared to be a general manager."
Glenn Davis lesson learned
Indeed, Melvin seems to have it all figured out.
Ask him about Oates' limited experience with Latin players, and he'll tell you of his plans for Rudy Jaramillo to serve as a buffer at hitting coach.
Ask him about possible deals, and he'll tell you that Joe McIlvaine erred by trading Roberto Alomar shortly after taking over in San Diego.
He won't act impulsively. To this day, the Glenn Davis trade haunts him. Melvin believes the Orioles should have done more research on the way Davis responded to injuries, his personality.
Melvin learned.
And he never forgets.
During his psychological test with the Rangers, he thought of his eye doctor in Columbia, who performs similar tests for the Washington Redskins.
The eye doctor once told him that Jay Schroeder got extremely frustrated during the questioning -- an ominous development for his NFL career.
Melvin survived the ordeal, even took something out of it. He was asked at one point to align wooden pieces in geometric shapes. Now he thinks that would be a way he might test a player's analytical skills.
He found the final piece of his puzzle in Texas.
Now, if only he could figure out, what do a fly and a tree have in common?