Ned Colletti

Ned Louis Colletti Jr. is an American sports executive with 40 years experience in Major League Baseball and nearly 50 seasons in professional sports, including the last eight years in the National Hockey League with the San Jose Sharks. Colletti is a four-time Emmy Award-winning baseball analyst, a professor of Sports Administration at Pepperdine University and the author of the best-selling book The Big Chair. He was general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2006 through 2014. Before moving to the Dodgers, he was assistant general manager of the San Francisco Giants. Colletti is one of very few American sports executives to work in two major sports: Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.

In January, 2025, he was named General Manager of Team Italy for the 2026 World Baseball Classic. Team Italy

Colletti graduated from East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, Illinois, and attended Triton College before graduating from Northern Illinois University. He was inducted into the Triton College Sports Hall of Fame in 1993, the same year as Major League players Kirby Puckett, Lance Johnson, and Jeff Reboulet. In 2015, he was inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. In 2021, he was inducted into the Chicago Sports Hall of Fame.

In 1982, Colletti began his Major League career with the Chicago Cubs. He was a member of the front office when the Cubs won the National League East in 1984 and 1989. Colletti was honored with Major League Baseball's Robert O. Fishel Award for Public Relations Excellence in 1990.

Colletti left the Cubs and joined the front office of the San Francisco Giants in 1994 as director of baseball operations. He was promoted to assistant general manager in October 1996. During his tenure, the Giants had an 813–644 overall record (.558), winning an average of 90.3 games per season. He was hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005.

Colletti became the 10th general manager in Los Angeles Dodgers history and the fifth in eight years when he was hired on November 16, 2005.

The Dodgers made the playoffs in five of his nine seasons from 2006–14. Only once in Colletti's nine seasons did the Dodgers have a losing record. Los Angeles went to the NL Division Series in Colletti's first season in 2006 and reached the National League Championship Series in 2008, 2009, and 2013. The back-to-back appearances in 2008–09 marked the first time the Dodgers had reached the NLCS in consecutive years since 1977–78. The Dodgers won 15 playoff games from 1989–2014. Fourteen of those playoff wins came under Colletti. The only other Dodger postseason win in that period came in the 2004 NL Division Series under then-GM Paul DePodesta.

During six of Colletti's nine seasons, the Dodgers set home attendance records. The Dodgers averaged 3,606,151 fans per season in Colletti's nine seasons with the Dodgers. The Dodgers led all of Major League Baseball in home and road attendance in 2013 and led, again, in home attendance in 2014 with 3,782,337 fans.