When Fortune magazine unveiled its annual ranking of the world’s greatest leaders last month, there was a surprise at the top of the list: Theo Epstein, the president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs. “Some people never heard of him,” Fortune’s Geoff Colvin said in a video introducing Epstein. (Pope Francis, a previous holder of the top spot, was third). But, Colvin added, “Baseball fans really know him well because he has done the impossible.” Indeed. In 2004, Epstein, then the 30-year-old general manager of the Boston Red Sox, presided over the team’s first championship in 86 years. Seven years—and two more titles—later, he decamped to Chicago, where he engineered the remaking of the long-suffering Cubs, and ended an impossibly longer drought, 108 years, with a World Series win last fall. (Time added to Epstein’s résumé last week when it named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people).

As Epstein has made his mark on baseball he has also been a visible figure in Democratic political circles. In 2004, he stumped for John Kerry, getting in a dig at President George W. Bush on the campaign trail. “It’s only been four years, but it sure feels like 86,” he told a crowd. Last year, Epstein attended a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in Chicago just before the playoffs started. It is no wonder then that when the Cubs visited the White House on January 16, President Barack Obama joked of Epstein, “He takes the reins of an organization that’s wandering in the wilderness and he delivers them to the promised land. I’ve talked to him about being [Democratic National Committee] chair.”