Will Kuntz’s life changed with a letter.
He was a small-college basketball player at Williams College, an even smaller liberal arts college in Massachusetts, when he found himself alone in a dorm room flipping through the school’s alumni directory out of sheer boredom. On that list of former Purple Cows — that’s the school’s mascot, not a description of the alumni — was George Steinbrenner, then owner of the New York Yankees.
A lightbulb went on.
“I wrote this cheesy letter, introduced myself and asked to be considered for an internship,” Kuntz remembered over a cup of tea 22 years later.
Read more: Galaxy’s new direction has them on target to host MLS Cup with one more win
By his own admission, it was a bold, brash and possibly stupid move for someone who barely knew the difference between a spitball and a spitwad. Yet five months later, Steinbrenner personally signed off on a summer internship in baseball operations.
“That Purple Cow mafia must work,” Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ longtime general manager, said last week.
If Kuntz was a made man though, it was Cashman who benefited, because once Kuntz got through the door, he never looked back. In 10 seasons with the Yankees, he went from running errands to running the pro scouting department, helping the team win a World Series.
Now, a decade after leaving the Yankees, he’s proven to be an even quicker study as an MLS general manager. In less than 19 months in charge of player personnel for the Galaxy, he’s taken them from near the bottom of the table to the Western Conference final, where a win over the Seattle Sounders on Saturday would give the team its first spot in the MLS Cup since 2014.
“We’re obviously very pleased with where we are but the job’s not done yet. We still have two games ahead of us to reach our ultimate goal,” said Dan Beckerman, the president and CEO of AEG, the Galaxy’s parent company, and the man who hired Kuntz.
“But yeah, it’s been an incredible season. He’s done an outstanding job. Everything that we hoped he could do, he’s done.”
When Kuntz, 40, was hired early last year, the Galaxy were on their way to missing the playoffs for the fifth time in seven years. They would finish with eight wins, matching the franchise low for a full season, and allow 67 goals,…