PHILLIES THOME
Former Phillies general manager Ed Wade reflects on a career in baseball, and his part in assembling a championship team in our city.
Former Eagles general manager Jim Murray once told JerseyMan about the importance of hiring the right coach for a GM’s future employment: “You’re all in. If you hire the wrong guy, game over.”
Imagine if, instead of hiring a proven successful college coach like Dick Vermeil, Murray hired a relative unknown, who wasn’t known for being articulate, to coach the Eagles. All while, say, John Madden was available and interested in the job. In Philadelphia of all cities.
That’s about the level of risk Ed Wade took in 2005. It worked out, but you probably remember the bafflement of the locals when Wade passed on Jim Leyland and chose Charlie Manuel to manage the Phillies.
But Wade was more involved with the process than the fans and media. He had more skin in the game, after all.
“We had a great group of guys that came in and interviewed,” he recalls. “I think all of them saw what the capabilities were of what the club could be. I knew Jim was greatly interested in the opportunity. There were four or five guys there that had solid, big-league credentials.
“You have to do your homework and not just base it on an interview. Some people knock your socks off in an interview, but then when the rubber hits the road, it’s not quite what you had anticipated.
“Ruben [Amaro Jr.] was my assistant GM at the time. He played for Charlie in Cleveland, and we were in the process of chasing Jim Thome. Thome’s agent knew Charlie very well, and he was somebody that I really trusted his opinions. He had all the right things to say about Charlie.
“We hired Charlie to be the guy that really related with the players, could relate to great experience in the game, and obviously had the demeanor and baseball acumen to get it to the finish line. Everybody that was involved in the process came away with the same feeling, that this was the right guy at the right time.
“I’m a big believer in time and circumstance.”
Needless to say, during a lengthening championship drought, fans and media didn’t warm up to Manuel’s hiring right away.
“People were very disappointed,” Wade acknowledges. “They were surprised at his accent and the way he spoke, so on and so forth.
“Now I tell people, every time Charlie comes to town, he can’t buy a meal for himself.”
Public relations skills are important for a baseball GM, but so is the ability to ignore local sports media and fans in baseball decisions.
Wade credits his PR background when reflecting on his journey to becoming the head executive of the Phillies. In his humble beginnings, he had aspirations of being a sportswriter, but baseball people kept seeing greater things for him.
Growing up in the Scranton area as a Yankees fan, Wade dreamed that “I was going to be either Mickey Mantle’s or Bobby Murcer’s replacement in center field.” He played baseball as a journalism major at Temple, but he had no illusions about his skills.
“I was fortunate enough to end up with a team where the head baseball coach, Skip Wilson, was probably the only Division 1 coach in history that never cut a player. I thought that the best way to stay involved in the game was to try to become a baseball writer.”
He received some valuable advice.
“Temple had an internship program run by a guy named Ralph Flamminio, who had worked at the newspaper in Allentown. He encouraged me to take advantage of whatever opportunities presented themselves.”
Wade took the advice. He toiled for the sports department of the Scranton Times, worked as a gopher for the AP Philadelphia bureau, and then wrote about high school sports for the Philadelphia Bulletin. That led to an internship with the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, where he fatefully asked Phillies PR director Larry Shenk for a press pass.
“That relationship blossomed into Larry hiring me as an intern, and then writing letters of recommendation to all the other clubs. That got me my first full-time job.”
That job was with the Houston Astros, in their PR department. Wade ultimately became the Public Relations Director for the team, a job he later held with the Pirates for five years.
“At that point in time,” Wade remembers, “I thought that was the apex of my career.”
The Phillies had bigger things in mind.
“Lee Thomas became the general manager. I knew who he was, I know he didn’t know who I was. But between (Astros GM) Tal Smith and I’m sure some of the people with the Phillies speaking on my behalf, Lee ended up hiring me as his assistant.
“Tal Smith bringing me in and giving me a foundation on the administrative side, and the contract negotiation side, that prepared me for the opportunity to be able to step in as Lee’s assistant. All those opportunities gave me more experience, and David Montgomery then gave me the opportunity to move up to the general manager’s role.”
Ed Wade wasn’t with the Phillies long enough to pose with the trophy in 2008. But during his tenure as GM, the team built the foundation to get there.
Wade and his scouting staff drafted Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Cole Hamels, promoted Jimmy Rollins, and brought in Carlos Ruiz as an international signing. And of course, the team hired a now World Series champion manager.
Signing Chase Utley might be an easy decision but finding talent where 29 other GMs don’t see it matters too. You no doubt remember the Flyin’ Hawaiian, but you may not know the backstory of the Phillies’ acquisition of him.
“Our scouts had earmarked certain players that they thought might fit for us, and Shane Victorino was another Rule 5 guy,” Wade recalls. “He could have opted to refuse an assignment to the minor leagues. As it turned out, he accepted the assignment to Triple A.
“[Former Phillies pitcher] Dickie Noles was our employee assistance professional. Dickie went up to Scranton shortly after the season opened, and Shane called Dickie over and said, ‘I’m ADD, but I’ve never been medicated.’ Dickie took him to a physician, the physician concurred and got Shane medicated.
“Because we would see his talent. We’d see him make a terrific play in the outfield, and then mess up another play. Once he got to the point where he was medicated, then we saw all those tools show up. Not only from the standpoint of his ability and his versatility but also great makeup in the clubhouse.”
As any baseball executive knows, your people can make you look like a genius. Wade is more than willing to acknowledge that.
“The general manager obviously gets a large measure of credit when things work out and assumes most of the blame if it doesn’t. I think the key is to bring the right people in and put them in roles where they can succeed. A lot of the leg work is done by your scouts, who never get any credit.
“I can’t overstate the importance that scouts and player development play in putting a roster together, and then moving it forward to the big leagues and hopefully to the finish line.”
Wade wasn’t with the team at the finish line in Philadelphia. Nor did he manage to stick around long enough in Houston, another long-suffering city where he oversaw a re-engineering that ultimately resulted in a championship team. One of his many significant moves there was plucking Jose Altuve out of Double A.
That’s the life of a baseball executive who is hired to manage a rebuild. They often don’t get the credit when that rebuild blossoms into a championship, as Wade’s efforts helped to do in both cities.
But Pat Gillick knew that.
As the GM when the Phillies finally climbed to the top of the mountain, Gillick acknowledged that the 2008 Phillies were “Ed Wade’s team”. Wade remembers Gillick’s graciousness fondly and also believes the Phillies were “very, very astute” to hire Gillick.
“I was asleep in my apartment in Houston at the time that the Phillies won the World Series. My phone started to blow up, and it was people basically texting me, ‘Isn’t that great what Pat Gillick just said?’
“I think it validated some of the work that we had done to try to get to that point. So, I’m forever grateful for that.”
Despite not being featured in the championship team photos, Ed Wade has no ill will over how things turned out.
“I’m glad it worked out the way that it did. Some of these things, they move at a pace of their own, no matter how much effort you put into it or how close you think you are.”
Self-Published Author
Ed Wade currently lives in South Jersey, so he still seems to have a soft spot for the Philadelphia area. He calls his official current title “transportation director for three grandchildren”. Now that he has some time, he’s kept busy writing a couple of books, which he’s self-published.
Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, the books aren’t about baseball at all.
“Delayed Honor” centers on a character named Steve Laun, an ex-Navy SEAL who discovers that his father’s death was not accidental as initially reported. Soon, his father’s best friend is also murdered. In his investigation of what happened, he uncovers multiple bad guys and is determined to bring out justice.
Wade actually started “Delayed Honor” some time ago. “I had an idea for writing a novel, and between GM jobs, I had started to work on the idea a little bit, and I got the Astros GM job and set it aside.”
Once his second stint in the Phillies’ organization was over, he got back to it. “I just picked ‘Delayed Honor’ up and went through the research of self-publishing. Once I got ‘Delayed Honor’ to the finish line, I decided to try to write a sequel to it and ended up writing ‘Preserved Honor’.”
The books haven’t become bestsellers yet, but they have been well-received. As this sentence was written, “Delayed Honor” has a 4.2-star rating in 56 reviews (even if a few of them contain sarcastic remarks about Wade’s tenure as Phillies GM).
Selling books wasn’t so much the point to Wade. He hasn’t been on any promotional tours or signings. He just needed something to do with his time.
“If people want to read them, that’s great. I didn’t do it for the money or for people to read it. It really was just keeping my brain active and trying to do something a little bit different than worrying about a curve ball or a slider.”
You can find both “Delayed Honor” and “Preserved Honor” on Amazon, for Kindle devices.
2018 Brewers @ Phillies
Philly Sports Immortality
Ed Wade’s career as a general manager is an impressive one, even if many fans and media in the city didn’t acknowledge it at the time.
But the Phillies always did, and on March 13, 2025, the team put out a press release announcing that Wade would be added to the Phillies Wall of Fame at Citizens Bank Park, alongside lifetime Philly hero Jimmy Rollins.
Wade told JerseyMan he had no idea the honor was coming, nor did we (we would have asked him about it, of course), but it’s not like his enshrining in Philadelphia sports history should be a surprise.
As the Phillies put it in the press release, “Ed’s contributions to the Phillies were game-changing, as he developed most of our core players from the teams that won five straight NL East championship titles from 2007 to 2011, including the 2008 World Series champions.”
To make the point, the Phillies listed names of players acquired during Wade’s tenure as GM, many of whom are or will likely be similarly honored: Burrell, Madson, Ruiz, Utley, Howard, Hamels, Thome, Millwood, Bell, Wagner and Victorino.
And don’t forget that Wade promoted Jimmy Rollins and hired Charlie Manuel.
When you look at it all, it seems like a no-brainer. But it’s nice to see the man get his due, even if Wade’s contribution to the team got a nod from Pat Gillick.
So, congratulations Mr. Wade. Well deserved.
