Some people collect baseball cards. Others collect coins. Still others collect stamps. The Los Angeles Dodgers are unique collectors. They collect general managers.

The Dodgers, whose front office overflows with former general managers, hired yet another one last week. The Dodgers, in fact, have so many general managers on their payroll they should assign them numbers so everyone can identify them. I mean if you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, they should provide a scorecard to determine who is who among the general managers.

And if the Dodgers don’t want to give out numbers, as they do with players, they could put names on the backs of their suit jackets (titles would be nice but would probably be too unwieldy).

Leaving those decisions to the Dodgers, let’s run down the lineup and identify the front-office players by name and title:

• Josh Byrnes, senior vice president baseball operations, supervising scouting and player development. Hired Nov. 6, 2014. General manager, Arizona Diamondbacks October 2005 to July 2010, San Diego Padres October 2011 to June 2014.
• Gerry Hunsicker, senior adviser baseball operations, hired Oct. 18, 2012. General manager , Houston Astros 1996-2004.
• Ned Colletti, named senior adviser to President Stan Kasten Oct. 10, 2014. Dodgers general manager 2006-2014.
• Alex Anthopoulos hired Jan. 12, 2016 as vice president baseball operations. General manager Toronto Blue Jays Oct. 3, 2009 through 2015 season.
• Tommy Lasorda, special advisor to chairman Mark Walter. Dodgers interim general manager June 22, 1998 to Sept. 11, 1998.

The Dodgers have an executive with the title of general manager. He is Farhan Zaidi, whom they hired Nov. 6, 2014. In reality, though, Zaidi is the assistant general manager.

In recent years, a new title has emerged in baseball front offices. It’s called president of baseball operations and the man who holds it performs the duties previously assigned to the general manager. Those teams still hire someone they call general manager, but he really is an assistant general manager.

The Dodgers are one of those teams. They created the title of president of baseball operations to help lure Andrew Friedman, Tampa Bay’s general manager, to Los Angeles (a $35 million contract also helped).

Friedman, who moved west two weeks after the 2014 season, didn’t respond to a telephone call – he never does – but he obviously has no fear of having so many experienced general managers on hand should the Dodgers one day decide a change is necessary.

Hunsicker, who played a critical role in Friedman’s development as a general manager in Tampa Bay, cited the “importance of surrounding yourself with people you trust and can rely on,” adding, “I started teaching Andrew that in Tampa and I think he took that to heart.”

I asked Hunsicker if the front office could be too crowded. “Do we have too many people? I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll have to see. This is about checking your ego at the door, working together and not getting credit for a move.”

What’s an extra executive or two when you spend nearly $550 million on player payrolls the past two years?

“When we have an opportunity to add someone who is bright and talented we take advantage of that opportunity,” Stan Kasten, the club president, said. “All the people here are engaged in trying to build a championship team. We have a lot going on domestically and internationally. There’s plenty to do.”

Zaidi and Barnes, Kasten said, “have divided up duties. They’re on the same level.” Anthopoulos has just joined the team.

“We’re lucky to have him,” Kasten said.

The Anthopoulos story is probably the most interesting. General manager of the Blue Jays for six years, the Canadian native was on the verge of losing his job when he made a series of trades last July that propelled Toronto to the American League East title.

Having traded last winter for Josh Donaldson, who would become the American League most valuable player, Anthopoulos added Troy Tulowitzki and David Price, among others, in trade-deadline deals.

He was named executive of the year, but he became caught up in a major executive change in Toronto as Mark Shapiro replaced Paul Beeston as club president. Shapiro offered the 38-year-old general manager a new contract, only to have him reject it.

People in Toronto suspected that Anthopoulos said thanks but no thanks because he would not have final-say authority on trades. In a telephone conversation late Saturday, Anthopoulos declined to comment on that suspicion or say exactly why he opted to leave the Blue Jays.

“I didn’t feel it was the right fit for me,” he said. “It was my decision. My contract was expiring. If I had years left I would have honored it. I was grateful I was given the opportunity to stay, but I didn’t think for me it was going to be the right fit. It’s a private decision I made.”

Anthopoulos also decided to join an already crowded front office despite the opportunity to go elsewhere.

“It’s a good group,” he said of the Dodgers. “That was the appeal and part of the decision-making. In the end it came down to two clubs, both good opportunities. I could’ve gone both ways. I would have been thrilled with either one.”

He declined to identify the team he didn’t choose, but another baseball executive said it was the Houston Astros, whose front office isn’t crammed with former general managers.

“It was nice to have options,” Anthopoulos said. “I still feel I’m young in my career. I’m 38. I can get better. The more people with experience and knowledge the better off I’ll be. The Dodgers have a good group of individuals and I wanted to improve and get better.”

Unlike some of his colleagues, Anthopoulos plans to be a regular in the offices at 1000 Elysian Park Avenue. Byrnes lives in San Diego and Hunsicker in Houston.

“I know from a day-to-day standpoint Farhan and Andrew will be in the office every day,” Anthopoulos said. “I’ll work alongside them in the office and share the load. I won’t be overseeing anything. I was in last week. Josh was there but he’s in and out.”

Had he seen Lasorda, the legendary Dodgers’ manager? “I got to meet him in the office,” he said. “It’s fun. I’m really excited.”

Colletti, the team’s most recent former general manager, apparently isn’t involved much with personnel. “Ned spends more and more time with broadcasting,” a club official said. “It’s not like he’s in the middle of the think tank.”

Hunsicker isn’t there much either.

“I’ve been stepping back the last couple of years,” he said last week. “I’m in a support role. I’m not in the middle of every trade discussion. I’m not an inner circle guy. If Andrew wants to pick my brain, wants my opinion, I’m here. This is by design. I started doing this in Tampa.”

“I’m here to build,” he added. “I know Kasten wants to build the premier baseball organization. He’s trying to build the best organization we can. There are things in my life more important than baseball.

“I’m 65. Not that that’s old. But I’ve accomplished a fair amount in baseball. I’m happy to be involved here. I’m happy to be in a support role.”

Kasten is pleased with the front office and doesn’t see conflicts arising from the status of the individuals.

“It’s very, very collegial here and collaborative,” he said, “so there are many conversations among everyone. I also don’t think the caliber of people we have will be here for a long time. Any time there’s an opening for a general manager’s job, these guys will be looked at. I don’t think they’ll be here for a long time.”

WHERE HAVE ALL THE G.M.’S GONE?

In a speech to a joint session of Congress April 19, 1951, Gen. Douglas MacArthur regenerated and made famous a line from an old British military ballad: “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

I’m not going to put this to music, but I’ll paraphrase that sentiment and say former general managers don’t fade away; they just take other, lesser jobs in baseball.

With the research assistance of some sharp staff members of the public relations department in the commissioner’s office, I have found 53 former general managers who still work in baseball. Thirteen of the 53 have positions of equal or higher status than they has as general managers. Forty work in lesser positions.

Unique among the latter group is Ruben Amaro Jr., recently deposed general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. He has another job in baseball but not in some team’s front office. When the 2016 season begins, Amaro will be the Boston Red Sox first base coach.

Two other former general managers are in unique positions, holding jobs never before manned by former general managers.

Paul DePodesta, once the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was recently named chief strategy officer of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League.

Omar Minaya, who served as general manager of the Montreal Expos and the New York Mets, left the San Diego Padres a year ago to join the Major League Baseball Players Association as special adviser to Tony Clark, the union’s executive director.

BUMBLING THROUGH THE WINTER

As a graduate of Northwestern University, a major league catcher for 15 years and a major league manager for nine years, Joe Girardi should be smart enough not to make two mistakes that he made earlier this month when he announced that newcomer Aroldis Chapman would be the New York Yankees closer this coming season.

Mistake No. 1: Girardi might not have heard this at Northwestern, but he surely has heard it somewhere since: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The Yankees had a superb closer last season in Andrew Miller. He converted 36 of 38 save situations and was named the American League reliever of the year. Can Chapman perform as nearly perfect as Miller? Most likely, yes.

But as good as Chapman is and as hard as he throws, what did Miller do to lose his job in December? Could Girardi have waited at least a couple of weeks into the spring exhibition schedule to make the announcement even if he had already made the decision? Doesn’t Miller deserve that much consideration from the manager for the job he did for him last season?

Mistake No. 2: Chapman faces possible legal action and Major League Baseball discipline in a domestic violence case in which police say Chapman fired eight gunshots into a garage after having an argument with his girlfriend at their home in Davie, Fla.

Maybe no legal action or discipline will result from the case, but MLB has a new domestic violence policy and Chapman could be the first or one of the first to incur a penalty, a suspension. Domestic violence experts say the presence of a gun in an incident makes a case far more serious because of what harm could result from it.

Police and MLB are investigating the incident. What happens to the Yankees’ newly named closer if Commissioner Rob Manfred finds that the incident was serious enough to warrant a suspension?

Knowing Chapman’s circumstance, wouldn’t Girardi have been smart to wait for a couple of months to learn the outcome of the investigations? If he had waited, the manager might have avoided the embarrassment of looking dumb.

Apparently how to avoid looking dumb wasn’t one of the courses offered by Northwestern when Girardi was a student there.