After the Boston Red Sox hired Dave Dombrowski as president of baseball operations last August, they announced that Ben Cherington had resigned as the team’s general manager. Skepticism greeted that characterization as baseball people scoffed at the idea that someone would willingly give up a job of which only 30 exist.

Vacancies in major league general managers’ offices sprouted as the season ended and the hiring season began. Cherington, 41, many thought, would be a prime candidate for some of those openings.

All but one of the jobs has been filled, and Cherington, whose 2013 Red Sox won the World Series, is not someone’s general manager. Instead he is a faculty member in Columbia University’s sports management program, scheduled to teach in the spring semester.

It is not for me to question Cherington’s motive for choosing academia over Major League Baseball, but I am questioning, or at least expressing skepticism over, Cherington’s choice.

General managers rarely walk away from their jobs willingly. The jobs are so coveted that it takes an unusual circumstance for someone to resign of his own free will. Bob Watson and Pat Gillick did it coincidentally in 1998, both because of the owners they worked for – Watson for George Steinbrenner with the Yankees and Gillick for Peter Angelos with the Orioles.

Watson and Gillick were both late in their careers. Cherington was early in his career. But just a week or so ago Alex Anthopoulos walked away from his job as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. Is this threatening to become an epidemic?

Cherington did not return my call to discuss his decision, but I spoke with Anthopoulos, who is as accessible and as responsive as any baseball executive I have ever covered. He said his departure was strictly his decision, though he offered no specific reasons for his departure.

“You don’t make decisions like this,” he acknowledged, then added, “I didn’t want to go, but I felt I had to. I’m my own individual. I had to make a personal decision for myself. I needed to be true to myself. It might be hard for people to understand, but I had to do what’s right for me. I just decided not to get into any specifics.”

Nor would Mark Shapiro, the Blue Jays’ new president and chief executive officer, discuss the surprising development, but he didn’t dispute reports in Canadian media. The reports offered two primary points: Anthopoulos rejected a five-year contract offer, and Shapiro declined to agree to Anthopoulos’ demand that he have complete authority over baseball matters.

Anthopoulos’ contract expired at the end of the season, and he was very likely in a precarious position until he made trading-deadline deals that brought the Blue Jays Troy Tulowitzki, David Price, Ben Revere and the American League East title.

The results made the 38-year-old Anthopoulos, a Canadian native, a Canadian hero and guaranteed a new long-term contract. The Canadian factor complicated matters.

Paul Beeston, the Blue Jays’ two-time president and C.E.O., who was the expansion organization’s first employee in 1976, was retiring, pushed out by the club’s owner, Rogers Communication Inc. Rogers actually wanted Beeston gone a year ago, but its executives, new to MLB protocol, ran afoul of the rules, contacting executives of other clubs without first getting permission of their employers and were forced to abandon their search for a Beeston replacement.

So the search was delayed a year, and Rogers brought in an impressive, talented American, Shapiro, who had been a long-time general manager in Cleveland before becoming the Indians’ president.

Shapiro was not going to come in and relinquish authority over all baseball operations to Anthopoulos or any other general manager. It was naïve of Anthopoulos to think otherwise no matter the autonomy he had under Beeston, whose expertise was in business not baseball.

“Obviously there’s some cultural sensitivity,” Shapiro said. “It exacerbated matters in the short term.”

Speaking of the Anthopoulos decision, Shapiro said, “I don’t know the explanation. It seemed strange to me. I looked forward to working with him. I am disappointed that it hasn’t gone the way I expected.”

Shapiro, however, offered no details of his talks with Anthopoulos. “I just decided not to get into any specifics,” he said.

A baseball executive said there was a feeling in baseball circles that Beeston was behind Anthopoulos’ decision, that he urged the general manager to reject Shapiro’s effort to induce him to stay with the Blue Jays as a way of retaliating for being pushed out. Anthopoulos, the theory went on, was loyal to Beeston because he had supported him in his role as general manager when his status became shaky.

Beeston did not return a call seeking comment on that suspicion, but Anthopoulos said there was no truth to it.

“Not at all,” he said, then added of Shapiro, “He gave me the opportunity. I appreciate that. I’m 38. I have a whole career to look forward to. I have a career and a life ahead of me. Paul’s affairs are his affairs. They don’t have anything to do with me.”

Anthopoulos had no complaints about his talks with Shapiro. “I was treated exceptionally well,” he said. “I was given every opportunity to come back. I just felt it was a necessary thing for me. It was my decision.”

Faced with that unexpected decision, Shapiro opted to go with an interim general manager, an Anthopoulos assistant, Tony LaCava, 54, who in 2011 had his own unusual G.M. experience. He was offered the Baltimore job but turned it down, saying he wanted to stay with the Blue Jays.

Reports at the time said LaCava said no to the Orioles because Angelos wouldn’t let him restructure the front office, but LaCava denied that was the reason. Despite the denial, it’s not easy to believe that a 50-year-old front-office official would turn down the chance to be a general manager for the first time to remain an assistant G.M.

Meanwhile, Anthopoulos said he wants to remain in baseball. He didn’t seem to have any thoughts of seeking a professorial position at the University of Toronto.

“Oh yeah, sure,” he said when I asked him about baseball being in his future. “I’ve had some phone calls. I’m going to take my time and consider things. I’m not in a hurry. I had to make a personal decision for myself. I’ve loved my job. I wish the organization the best. Everybody was great. I’m pretty cool with everything.”

LORIA WRONG ONE TO BE PICKING MARLINS’ MANAGER

In the 1970s and ‘80s, when I covered the New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner changed managers so often I got the idea that when an owner or general manager frequently changed managers the team should consider firing the person who is constantly firing managers.

The idea made sense to me then, and it still makes sense. If the owner or general manager keeps getting it wrong, find someone who can get it right. Of course, it would be difficult for a team to fire its owner, which is a good thing for Jeffrey Loria.

Owner of the Miami Marlins, Loria has changed managers more often than some people change spouses. When Loria recently hired Don Mattingly to manage the Marlins next season, he became the team’s seventh manager in six years, following Dan Jennings, Mike Redmond, Jack McKeon, Ozzie Guillen, Edwin Rodriguez and Fredi Gonzalez.

“Hiring a manager is one of the most important decisions a team can make, which is why it was so important for us to find the right long-term solution,” Loria said at the news conference announcing Mattingly’s hiring.

Had I been there, I would have asked a question that seems obvious to me: If it’s so important, why did you do the hiring?

Loria went on to extol Mattingly’s virtues as a player and a manager. There are two problems here. Loria extols anything Yankees, and Mattingly’s success as a manager in Los Angeles came with a team that had the highest payrolls in the majors and didn’t reach the World Series, losing in the division series two of the three years.

In assessing Mattingly’s success as a manager, Loria may want to consider that the Dodgers combined payrolls in those three years totaled $724 million while Loria’s payrolls in Miami totaled $156 million. As if that figure needs to be put in perspective, the three-year total was $60 million below the smallest of the three payrolls with which Mattingly’s teams played those seasons.

Calling Mattingly a living legend, Loria said, “He brings a storied life in baseball to our ballclub…. His experience as an All-Star, former MVP and accomplished manager of a team that won the NL West title three years running will be incredibly valuable to our organization. In addition to being a great baseball mind, he’s also a wonderful person.

“Don’s brand of strong and focused leadership is exactly what this team of talented players needs to help us compete at the highest level.”

Mattingly had hardly left the Dodgers when Loria pounced. I smelled tampering, but commissioners ignore tampering. Bud Selig said he investigated tampering only if a club lodged a complaint. Rob Manfred appears to have the same position.

Clubs don’t complain about tampering because they don’t want anyone filing a tampering complaint against them. In the Mattingly case, it’s very likely that he was willing to walk away from the last year of his contract because the Marlins had leaked word to him that they had a four-year contract waiting for him if he became free.

The Dodgers didn’t care if the Marlins tampered because they didn’t want Mattingly back and don’t have to pay him for the last year of his contract.

BAKER GETS JOB, MANFRED GETS AN *

Commissioner Rob Manfred cautioned reporters a few weeks ago not to jump to the conclusion that Major League Baseball would not have a black manager next season. None was in sight at the time, but Manfred got lucky when Bud Black and the Washington Nationals were unable to agree on a contract.

That left a spot open for the Nationals’ other leading candidate, Dusty Baker, who was out of baseball the past two seasons after managing for 20 years with three teams. Now Baker is back with an asterisk on Manfred’s skimpy list of minority managers and general managers. He is the lone black manager; Fredi Gonzalez of Atlanta is the lone Latino manager.

Manfred continues to proclaim his interest in enhancing minority hiring, but results don’t support his claim.

“I couldn’t get any calls back before now,” Baker, 66, said on the telephone last week, the day after he learned he, and not Black, had the Nationals job.

“It looked like it to me,” he replied when I asked him if he thought he had been passed over again. I had said I gotta deal with another disappointment. What pissed me off was I wasn’t called and told I didn’t get this job. Now I see why.”

Baker has long been outspoken, even when he had a managing job, about the difficulty minorities have getting jobs.

“I’m tired of talking about it,” he said. “I’ve been talking about it for four years. You get labeled as a malcontent just for telling the truth. I’m a big boy. I was upstairs in the tower for a long time. I know what’s going on. I know what goes on up there. I’m not a naive dude. I’m pretty astute in most subjects.”

Baker recalled that he was in Washington for President Obama’s inauguration “and I’m back here for the last year.”

Although contract terms weren’t disclosed, they presumably played a part in the team’s managerial decision. Initial reports said Black, whom the San Diego Padres, fired during last season, was the Nationals’ first choice but was offended by their offer of $1.6 million for one year.

Subsequent reports quoted Mike Rizzo, the team’s president of baseball operations, as saying he negotiated simultaneously with Black and Baker and settled on Baker as his choice, giving him what is believed to be a two-year contract.

“I’m making half of what I was making,” Baker said without saying what he was making. “I know what I’m worth.”

For Baker, it was a matter of take it or leave it, take it and manage again or give up the thought of managing again.

“I came into this game to take care of my family,” he said. “I fell in love with the game. My wife told me ‘you’re the most competitive person I know.’ Sitting outside in the cold showed her I still had the passion for the game.”

He referred to his post-season post-game television analyst’s work that required him to sit outside late at night in post-midnight weather.

If there’s more of a consolation to the job beyond taking it for less than market value, Baker said, “This is the best team I’ve inherited since I’ve been managing. Other teams I had to build. I’m way ahead.”