How a former Texas Rangers bat boy came to have the single hardest job in MLB

Perry Minasian has the hardest job of any general manager in pro sports, and if anyone was trained to deal with the four-letter words that comes with his position, he was.

He began his career in baseball cleaning the toilets in the visitor’s clubhouse of old Arlington Stadium, working for his dad, long, long time Texas Rangers’ clubhouse attendant, Zack Minasian.

“I was 7 and the bat boy; there weren’t child labor laws then, or, if there were, no one enforced them,” Perry said. “I cleaned the toilets for a long time; I was good at it.”

On Tuesday, standing in the visitor’s dugout at Globe Life Mall while his team prepared to play the team he grew up around, Perry is now an adult, versed in every detail of a pro baseball franchise as the GM of the LA Angels.

Perry Minasian is a graduate of Lamar, a Texas-Arlington alum, and holds a PhD in Major League Baseball.

He will need all of the skills gained from a life in baseball to try to keep the best player this sport has seen in decades, Shohei Ohtani, from wanting to leave the Angels for another team this offseason.

Minasian was the young man who would handle umpteen thankless details that need to be done for a Major League Baseball clubhouse, up to and including being “Nolan Ryan’s Guy” when he was with the club at the end of his career.

Whether it was Tom Grieve, Bobby Valentine, Buck Showalter, Doug Melvin or John Hart, every time a Rangers GM or manager asked Perry if he wanted to do a little bit more, or sit in on a few meetings, he said yes.

Hired by the Angels as a first-time GM in November of 2020, he inherited a roster with Mike Trout and Ohtani. The Angels did not have a winning record in ‘21 or ‘22, and are currently under .500; the club has not had a winning season since 2015.

Although it was hardly a unilateral decision, it was Minasian who decided against trading Ohtani at the trade deadline even though he can be a free agent after the season.

“We’ve had a ton of injuries, and a lot of teams have them so it’s not an excuse,” Minasian said. “We’ve had so much change in trying to shuffle the roster.

“As long as we are in the mix, and we still are, I felt like I owed it to the group to keep it together.”

Entering play on Wednesday, the club was 59-62, and 13 1/2 games behind the first-place Rangers. The Angels are eight games back of the wild card.

The Angels are vying for the most disappointing team of 2023, along with the New York Mets, San Diego Padres and New York Yankees.

The reality is the Angels have two Hall of Fame talents on a roster that still needs help.

“This isn’t basketball; it’s not 1-on-1, or 2-on-2; even in basketball you have to have role players,” Minasian said. “Look at the (Dallas) Mavericks when they won their championship (in 2011). They had depth and they had role players.

“If it’s a 1-on-1, or 2-on-2 game I’d feel really good. It’s not. It’s six months. It’s a team sport. It’s every day. You love having great players and you want as many as you can get, but everyone has to pull their end of the rope for the team to win.”

Minasian has been around a team with some faint similarities to these Angels.

He was around the Rangers team in 1989, the first season with Nolan Ryan.

“He treated me like gold,” Minasian said, who added there are similarities between The Express and ShoTime. “The attention; what’s incredible is despite the attention and the spotlight, the performance does not waver. He doesn’t let outside affect him at all.

“All great players can do that. They block out the noise. I saw it when I was here; Pudge Rodriguez. Juan Gonzalez, when he wanted to; man on second with two outs, I don’t know if I’d want anyone else up.”

Those Rangers teams with Nolan had other names such as Julio Franco, Ruben Sierra, Rafael Palmeiro, Pudge Rodriguez, Kevin Brown, and they never made the playoffs.

Minasian has seen this before, so he understands how a roster that has a Trout and an Ohtani may not be winning.

“All of these jobs in professional sports are tough. It’s expectations and money, and everyone wants it to happen with a snap,” he said. “It is a difficult profession. But every day, even when I was a bat boy, it was, ‘How can I make this organization better?’”

The difference now is Perry Minasian’s task is not to clean a toilet, fold a uniform, or do advance scouting for the Texas Rangers.

His task is to make the Angels competitive enough so the greatest player in the game does not want to leave.