 He hired Bob Whitlow, a former United States Air Force colonel with no baseball experience, to fill the post, although team vice president John Holland remained the club's nominal general manager.Whitlow was disliked by the players for a number of reasons.In a move that particularly rankled the players, he tried to improve the batters' background at Wrigley Field by constructing a fence atop the wall in straightaway center field and allowed the ivy to twine its way up, thus forming a solid background of ivy.