Decades before Fortune magazine called John F. “Jack” Welch Jr. the “manager of the century” and “the ultimate manager,” he was laying the foundation of his no-nonsense leadership style in a gravel pit in his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. The place doubled as an impromptu baseball field where Welch and other kids from the neighborhood would play ball after school. “There was a fight almost every day,” Larry McIntire, who used to play in the pit and later became Salem’s parks superintendent, told The New York Times. “I can still picture him jawing with a guy one and a half times his size.
