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 …

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In Major League Baseball, as in other sports, unsuccessful teams like to copy successful teams, thinking if they do it the way of winners, they, too could become winners.

The Kansas City Royals have played in the last two World Series, winning one of them. Is any team prepared to copy the Royals? There are 29 teams that could do worse. Two of them are the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Although the Dodgers have won three consecutive division titles, they have not sniffed the World Series. The Yankees have reached the post-season only once in the last three years and then spent only one game there.

Both teams could benefit from a change in strategy. They have squandered a lot of money and fan loyalty in their impotent efforts.

While the Dodgers were spending …

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Of such events baseball history is altered:

It was 1976, and John Schuerholz was farm director of the Kansas City Royals. Joe Burke was the general manager, and Dayton Moore was a 9-year-old Royals fan in Wichita, Kan.

“A couple years before that, I was an assistant to Lou Gorman,” Schuerholz said, referring to a club executive. “We were at a meeting in Chicago. I had been given permission to talk to the Yankees. They called. It was Cedric Tallis, who had been hired by Gabe Paul.”

Schuerholz knew Tallis from their time together in Kansas City, where Tallis had been the first general manager of the 1969 expansion franchise.

“Pat Gillick left the Yankees and Cedric recommended me to take that job” – coordinator of player development and scouting. “They called to ask permission. Joe asked me if I wanted to interview. In Chicago I got on the phone with Cedric and Gabe and they offered me a job that blew my socks off.

“I accepted that position and came back to Kansas City. I went into Joe and said …

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