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FALL/WINT ER 2017 WEBB M AGA ZINE
ALUMNI PROFILE
Jeff Luhnow ’84, General Manager of the Houston Astros From Webb to the World Series. B Y J E S S I C A R I C E ’12
T HE WEBB SCHOOL S webb.org
J
eff Luhnow ’84 grew up rooting for the Dodgers. He listened to legendary broadcaster Vin Scully on the radio as an honor committeeman in Appleby Dorm and regularly went to Dodger games with renowned teacher Rick Whyte ’57. “I bled Dodger blue back then!” Luhnow recently wrote to Head of Schools Taylor Stockdale. This November the 51-year-old stood on the field at Dodger Stadium with his son Henry in his arms, moments after the Houston Astros clinched their first-ever World Series title. General Manager Luhnow said the feeling of walking onto the field was amazing and surreal. “It’s a goal that we’ve been working towards since I got here,” he says. Luhnow joined the Astros as general manager in December 2011. At that point, the “Astros were the worst team in baseball, with one of the worst farm systems in baseball,” he acknowledges. Some five years later, the Astros finished the 2017 regular season 10161, and went on to defeat the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees and finally the Los Angeles Dodgers to clinch the historic title. Many have credited the team’s success to Luhnow—someone who never thought he would work in baseball.
“I figured that to work in baseball you have to be either a former player or coach or know somebody,” he says. Growing up, Luhnow played baseball and collected baseball cards in Mexico City, where he was born and raised. He was an infielder who “had trouble hitting a good fastball,” but did not play at The Webb Schools because it was the same season as tennis, he notes. After graduating from University of Pennsylvania with dual bachelor’s degrees in engineering and economics, Luhnow wrote a letter to a fellow U Penn graduate in the O’Malley family, who owned the Dodgers at the time, to see if there were any opportunities to work with the team. “It was a long shot but I figured it was worth a letter!” he says. Although he did not get a response, his love and interest in baseball followed him into adulthood. He completed a project on the Chicago Cubs while earning his MBA from Northwestern and played fantasy baseball for years. Luhnow worked as an engineer, a management consultant and a technology entrepreneur before he found his way to baseball. He says his career experience helped him develop skills he needs as a baseball executive and believes it is one of two things that differentiate him as a general manager. The other is his bicultural background and ability to speak both English and Spanish fluently. “This is a very international game, and the largest population outside of Americans are players from Latin America whose first language is Spanish,” Luhnow says. “So being able to communicate with them and understand where they come from