By Matt Rappa, Sports Talk Philly editor 
This Friday will mark three years since Philadelphia Phillies Managing Partner John Middleton introduced Andy MacPhail as the team's next president to succeed Pat Gillick following the 2015 season.
On the day of the press conference, the Phillies had the worst record in baseball — 27-51 (.346) — sat 24 games under .500, and were 16 games behind the division-leading Washington Nationals. During his introduction, MacPhail said he was "extremely flattered" and "a little bit surprised" the Phillies considered him for the position. "I think this is the first time that you've ever gone outside your organization to put somebody in a position like this," MacPhail said.
Fast-forwarding to 2018, the Phillies are right in the mix of the postseason contention for the first time since 2011. On MLB.com's "Executive Access" with Mark Feinsand, MacPhail said he is "still" surprised the club hired him, despite being out of baseball since leaving the Baltimore Orioles after the 2011 season, following a four-and-a-half-year stint as its president of baseball operations.
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"I would have thought that maybe after a year-and-a-half something would come, but if you sit out of this game for three-and-a-half years, that is out-of-sight, out-of-mind," said MacPhail. "I was surprised [the Phillies] reached back that far and found [me] to fill that position."
MacPhail has said his main reason for parting ways with the Orioles — a team in which he was instrumental in acquiring Adam Jones, J.J. Hardy, Mark Reynolds, Chris Davis, Matt Wieters and Manny Machado, among others — was that he was no longer having "fun" anymore. He desired to rather spend time with family and "travel across the world."
"By the end of that four-and-a-half-year period, I was cooked. … I had had enough," MacPhail said. "There were so many things that I wanted to do, that I hadn't been able to do that I just had enough."
MacPhail said he did not know whether the Orioles would be his last job with a major league club, having also previously worked in various roles for the Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins since 1976.
"I didn't know, but I did know this — if you leave, this game is going to march on very nicely without you. … You have to be prepared that that's the end," MacPhail said. "If something comes up that intrigues you, that's one thing, but you can't walk away thinking, 'oh, well they're going to line up and try to hire me.' That would be a mistake, which I didn't make. I was prepared for it to be the end if that's the way fate would take it."
As fate would turn out, the Phillies were there to offer MacPhail another chance at filling an executive role within the majors. MacPhail and the rest of the Phillies brass have significantly turned around the franchise, mostly since last season after the hiring of Gabe Kapler to replace Pete Mackanin as manager.
MacPhail said the Phillies were "pretty far advanced" in his view, which likely made his decision to return, after finding a new love for the game, far easier.
"Of all the places I have encountered … everything was kind of a significant rebuild," MacPhail said. "In Philly, a lot of this stuff is in place. They're just going through the down cycle."
"Coming in there was very different from any other place I had come in."
