Playing and Early Front Office Career
Fanning attended Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa. In his professional playing days, he was a catcher who played most of his career in the minor leagues. He spent the 1957 season and parts of three others with the Chicago Cubs between 1954 and 1957, compiling an anemic batting average of .170 with no home runs and 24 hits. He then became a manager in the minor leagues, eventually joining the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves organization, where in the middle of the 1960s he was promoted to the positions of Director of Minor League Operations and assistant general manager.
Fanning was briefly listed as a coach for the 1968 Braves, but before the season began he resigned to become the first director of the Central Scouting Bureau. Just months later, when his old Milwaukee boss, John McHale, became the first president of the expansion Expos, Fanning accompanied him to Canada as the Expos' general manager. Fanning and McHale built the Expos from scratch; in those days, prior to the era of free agency, newly-formed clubs could only rely on expansion and amateur drafts and trades to build their talent base.
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