BY MARC LEEPSON

Richard L. “Sandy” Alderson, the team president of the New York Mets, will receive the VVA Lifetime Achievement Award at the Convention’s Saturday Night Banquet. Alderson—best known for leading the Oakland Athletics as general manager to the 1989 World Series championship—served a tour of duty in the Vietnam War as a Marine Corps infantry officer in 1970-71.

He had graduated from Dartmouth College in 1969, having gone through Navy ROTC, and then went on active duty in the Marines. He studied Vietnamese at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey in California, and went on to serve in Vietnam with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. In a rarity, he met up with his father, John Lester Alderson, a USAF pilot, in country while both were serving in the war.

Following his tour of duty, Sandy Alderson spent two years at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., including commanding the famed Marine Corps Silent Drill Team for a year.

He then went to Harvard Law School, graduating in 1976, and practiced law in San Francisco. In 1981, he became the Oakland A’s general counsel; two years later, he was named the team’s head of baseball operations.

In baseball circles he is renowned for pioneering the concept of sabermetrics—incorporating advanced statistics into building a team and managing games, which was made famous in the book (and movie) Moneyball. During his 16-year tenure, the small-market A’s won four division titles, three pennants, and that 1989 World Series against the crosstown rival San Francisco Giants. Alderson went on to work in the MLB’s commissioner’s office, as chief executive of the San Diego Padres, and as general manager—and now president—of the Mets. He was inducted into the Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.

“I’m honored to receive the VVA Lifetime Achievement Award,” Alderson said, “and I look forward to being a part of the Convention in Greensboro.”

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