PEORIA, Ariz. — When Justin Hollander entered the Petco Park press box a few summers ago, the awesome reality of his career path gobsmacked him in the face.
“It was a full-circle moment,” he recalled.
In the same press box where he’d earned $100 per Padres game two decades ago as a part-time stats stringer, Hollander had returned as general manager of the Seattle Mariners.
Chatting on a recent morning at the team’s spring training complex in Arizona, four months after the Mariners drew to within eight outs of their first World Series berth, the former Pacific Beach and Point Loma rental resident said the career lessons he learned might benefit job-seekers in all fields.
But Hollander, 47, attached a disclaimer: good luck, he said, surely boosted his career several times.
A few highlights:
The kindness of several Padres employees Hollander came to know while working at Petco Park boosted his ability to learn about a key job opening and succeed in interviews and in several jobs.
“I owe them,” he said of Padree staffers past and present who worked in San Diego’s baseball operations and media relations departments between 2005 and 2007.
A thirst to learn about baseball and succeed in the sport defined Hollander, said the GM and others who worked with him in San Diego and with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
“What stood out was how serious he was about getting into baseball,” said Mike Wickham, who worked nine years for the Padres in scouting and minor league operations and held full-time jobs with five other big league clubs.
Wickham added: “He had good people skills and a strong work ethic, and it was clear he was willing to put in the time to learn the game and earn the opportunity.”
Seattle Mariners general manager Justin Hollander, right, watches as catcher Cal Raleigh works in the bullpen during spring training baseball practice at the team’s training facility Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025, in Peoria, Ariz. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Hollander said his love of baseball drove him.
He’d wanted to become a baseball GM since he was a boy in Dayton, Ohio.
His desire to get a toehold in Major League Baseball was stoked further when, after he graduated from Ohio State’s school of business administration and moved to San Diego to attend the University of San Diego’s law school in 2001, he took a full-time job as a civil litigation attorney in Hillcrest.
Lawyering wasn’t for him, he found out. “I was bored,” said Hollander, who studied for his bar exam between innings of Padres games he attended as a fan.
Obsessed by now with landing a baseball job, he saw an online ad in 2005 for part-time work with Major League Baseball Advanced Media.
He reacted to the low-pay gig as an aspiring judge would react to a potential Supreme Court clerkship.
MLB’s Cory Schwartz hired him, landing Hollander in front of the East Village ballpark’s press box, where he would type in play-by-play data for online feeds.
Viewing the job as a ticket to an invaluable baseball education, Hollander discussed tactics as each game unfolded. He had a great seat, located between the official scorer and beat writers. He sought out, and learned from, numerous professionals with MLB clubs.
“I probably abused the privileges that the (MLB) pass granted me by going and sitting there on days when I wasn’t supposed to be working and just watching the game, trying to talk to as many people as I could, going down for batting practice, which I definitely wasn’t supposed to be doing, and finding scouts, finding media people,” he said.
“I’d find anyone that I thought that I could glean something from, and just try to ask as many questions, show them how passionate I was about baseball, and how much I wanted to do this for a job instead of being a lawyer.”
In 2008 came a breakthrough: a Padres media relations staffer told Hollander the Angels were looking for an intern for their baseball front office.
Hollander got the job after the Angels’ first choice turned it down.
He knew his income would plummet, creating debt, but he headed to Anaheim with confidence. And a clear plan.
“The biggest thing is, once you get in, don’t let someone push you out,” he said. “Do as many thankless jobs as you can do. Show everyone that you’re passionate, that you care, that you want to be helpful, that you’ll do anything to help the team win, to make someone else’s job easier.”
Crucially, he impressed Jerry Dipoto, his boss of the past 15 years.
A former big league pitcher, Dipoto became the Angels’ GM in 2011. He retained Hollander, one of the few front-office staffers who’d survived an overhaul after the season. After leaving for the Mariners, Dipoto hired Hollander as director of baseball operations in 2016. Hollander was named assistant GM two years later. In October 2022, one month after the Mariners ended the sport’s longest active playoff drought, he was promoted to general manager.
“His passion, intelligence, people skills and creativity show up every day,” Dipoto said, praising Hollander’s work as a contract negotiator and trade facilitator. “Moving forward, the Mariners are simply a better organization with Justin in this role.”
Another former Angels front-office staffer described Hollander as someone who was level-headed and bright, and loved baseball.
Looking back, Hollander said his ears have served him well.
As have patience and a collaborative spirit.
“The No. 1 thing you have to be good at is, you have to be a good listener,” he said. “The job is so hard, I don’t really believe that any of the people in these roles are like the super executive who can just identify talent better than everybody, who can negotiate better than everybody, like they’re the super executive, and they’re going to solve all the problems of an organization, just through their own unique scouting eye and negotiating mastery.”
“If you do try to do if all yourself,” he added, “you will make terrible decisions. If you hire well and listen to the very smart people you hire, you will be right more than you are wrong.”
The relentless collaboration has helped keep the GM sane.
“They’re really hard jobs, they’re really hard,” he said. “And you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. The truth is, it feels less of a weight if you’re doing it with people as opposed to trying to solve all the world’s problems by yourself.”
The journey has enriched his personal life, too.
In Anaheim, Hollander met his wife, Whitney, who was doing a fellowship at UC Irvine to become an eye surgeon. They have two children, Elliot, 10, and Lucy, 9.
He’s learned a lot about scouting. And about advanced statistics from in-house experts who aren’t put off that he’s admittedly “terrible at math.”
Despite baseball’s inevitable cruelties — “if you have an ego and you don’t have humility in baseball, you will get flattened very quickly,” he said — he seems to be having a blast.
“Have you ever seen the movie ‘Almost Famous?’” he said of the Cameron Crowe movie whose protagonist is a teen reporter for Rolling Stone in 1973.
“So,” he explained, “there’s a scene at the end of the movie where the reporter sits down with the guitarist to finally get the interview he wanted to get to do. He said, ‘What do you like about being a musician?’ And the guitarist says, “To begin with, everything.’
“What do I like about my job? To begin with, everything.”