D-Backs’ 1st 10 years made history

Shortly after the Diamondbacks’ entourage returned to the Valley after being awarded a major league franchise in 1995, president Rich Dozer asked team officers to compile a to-do list.

SLIDESHOW: A look back at 10 years with the Arizona Diamondbacks

In the beginning, D-Backs scuffled

Big spending leads to playoffs in Year 2

Bordow: Colangelo's dilemma: Give in or get out in '95

Showalter fired after late collapse

Earliest expansion team to win Series

Injuries, playoff loss mark end of run

New philosophy begins to take hold

Colangelo’s ouster, 111 losses low point

Melvin, Byrnes begin turnaround

D-Backs turn page; Gonzo bids farewell

Kids grow up fast in playoff season

General manager Joe Garagiola Jr.’s docket included “win the World Series.”

It sounded simple enough.

And it does happen to someone every year — just not expansion teams in their formative years.

Of the 14 expansion franchises added to the major leagues since the owners began to understand the cash-flow ramifications of accruing additional partners, only six have won a World Series.

Only four had done it when Garagiola made his list, and none in its first five seasons.

To understand the magnitude of what the D-Backs have accomplished in their wonder years — and the breadth of Garagiola’s dream — is to understand that.

No new team won a World Series quicker than the D-Backs, whose 2001 victory over the New York Yankees came in one of the most spectacular Series in history.

No team had more winning seasons in their first decade than the D-Backs.

No team had more postseason participation.

And no team more revolutionized the concept of building a winner.

Managing partner Jerry Colangelo set that plan in motion when he sought a way to combat a 20 to 25 percent loss in the season-ticket base after a typical expansion team’s first season — which, in the D-Backs’ case, included 97 losses and limited hope heading into the 1998 season.

The D-Backs fast-forwarded through the building process by buying free agents, although their immediate spending raised the wrath of the major league establishment (and also caused a clause to be inserted in the most recent collective bargaining agreement that stipulates no team’s debts can exceed its franchise value, a line the D-Backs skirted along the way.)

They rewrote history and caused the gate-keepers to rewrite rules in the process.

“That is setting the bar pretty high for an expansion team,” said D-Backs general manager Josh Byrnes, who watched the franchise grow from afar while in Cleveland, Colorado and Boston.

“Obviously it was a different way, more of a commitment to win early. Everyone knows Arizona is a baseball area. A lot of players live here. The amateur baseball, college baseball. Everyone was extra intrigued as to how a major league team would do here in an area of baseball culture.”

The D-Backs have won five Cy Young awards between Randy Johnson and Brandon Webb, and they have had two almost-MVPs, Matt Williams (1999) and Luis Gonzalez (2001), each of whom finished third in the voting.

Bob Melvin was the NL manager of the year last season, and the young nucleus is providing a reason to believe as the D-Backs turn a precocious 11.

Coming out on the other side of their first decade, the D-Backs may not do it exactly the same again, but they will take the outcome.

“If you told me 10 years out that you are going to have a number of big games in the ballpark, including the Big One, and have players that do a lot of things in the community and are held in high esteem, I would have said that would be just what we wanted,” said Garagiola, the D-Backs’ general manager for 10 years (he was hired three years before the D-Backs played a game) before joining the major league office in 2005.

“I think that’s what happened. Whether it was Luis Gonzalez or Craig Counsell, or guys like Eric Byrnes and Orlando Hudson and the other new guys coming along, we had a lot of success on the field and were successful in making the franchise an important part of the community.

“It’s definitely a source of pride, to see a lot of players now who are products of our farm system. That was forgotten in the analysis of the D-Backs early, when they said it was checkbook baseball at its best.”

By some measures, the D-Backs are not the No. 1 expansion team after 10 seasons in baseball history.

Kansas City, where the Royals got their start in 1969, had a slightly better winning percentage in its first 10 seasons, and both the Royals and D-Backs had six winning seasons.

Even at 10, however, the D-Backs have a more established resume than, say, Milwaukee, which spent a season in Seattle in 1969 before moving east and now has only two division titles on its resume and no World Series pennants.

Fellow 1998 expansion team Tampa Bay has never won more than 70 games and has finished out of last place in the AL East only once.

“The Diamondbacks set a winning standard early, and we hope to continue,” Byrnes said.