LOS ANGELES –They are baseball’s version of the Rat Pack, the game’s coolest, and perhaps shrewdest, front office.

Theo Epstein, president of the Chicago Cubs’ baseball operations, is a combination of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., with his looks, charisma and musical talents.

Jed Hoyer, the Cubs general manager, is Dean Martin, the calm one, teased for his expensive taste in clothes and gourmet food, and the only one of the three who can’t sing or play the guitar.

Jason McLeod, their senior vice president, scouting/player development, is Peter Lawford, the biggest of the three with his 6-5 frame and also the most gentle, with his laid-back demeanor, getting riled up only when Epstein and Hoyer argue politics with him, attacking his conservative views.

They have known one another for their entire adult lives, working together with the San Diego Padres when they were kids out of college, spending their bachelor days in Boston when they weren’t working until 2 in the morning and winning the Red Sox’s first World Series championship in 86 years.

Now, family men with children of their own, they are reunited in Chicago, trying to capture what has become the Holy Grail of sports.

The Cubs are three wins away from their first pennant since 1945 — and seven from their first World Series title in 108 years.

“I think we all felt like after the experience we had in Boston,” Epstein tells USA TODAY Sports, “that would be it. That would be our college experience. Doing something special with your best friends, where you could always look back on.

“Life gets more complicated the older you get, and we assumed we would never have a chance to do something like that all over again, at least not with each other.

“Now, to have this again, to be part of this special journey in such a great place, it feels like a gift.”

The members of baseball’s Rat Pack might be in their early 40s, but even with their hair slowly graying and now spending more time at their kids’ games than at the gym, they haven’t changed.

If you don’t see them together at their office in Wrigleyville or grabbing a couple of cold ones after work, they’ll be at their homes, texting one another on their group string at all hours, talking shop or anything but.

“It drives our wives crazy,” Epstein says, laughing. “They’re always telling us that we’re one another’s baseball spouses. It’s like, ‘Why you always texting each other? You just saw each other in the office?’

“It’s like, ‘Well, there’s a game going on.’ Even when we’re together at games, someone will start talking about a player, and the other guy will finish the sentence, knowing that’s what we’re thinking.”

No wonder McLeod’s fiancée and the wives of Epstein and Hoyer weren’t surprised in the least when they found out that their men were spending an afternoon in the center-field bleachers, eating hot dogs and pounding beers, the day after the Cubs clinched the NL Central.

They have been sitting alongside one another at every playoff game, and before the first pitch, they have a ritual. They’ll stretch out their arms, as if they’re about to play a flag football game at the frat house, slam their fists together, and then tensely watch nine innings, muttering under their breaths in times of trouble.

“Those two,” McLeod says, laughing, “can be nine innings of negativity.”

When the games end and the Cubs come out on top, as they did in Game 4 in their wild division series-clinching game against the San Francisco Giants, you’ll see them unleash a flurry of elation.

“Whenever we win something,” Hoyer says, “we always turn and hug each other first. And our wives after. When it happened in San Francisco, people started texting me, ‘Hey, how can you hug Theo before your wife?’

“Our wives kind of expect it now.”

The rest of baseball certainly has taken notice, too, with this front office taking the Cubs to unprecedented heights, winning 200 regular-season games over the last two seasons and now tied at 1-1 in the best-of-seven NL Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

If the Cubs can knock off the Dodgers for the pennant and win again in the World Series, the celebration in Chicago will make Mardi Gras look like a church bingo party.

“When I was driving here,” McLeod was saying before Game 1 of the NLCS, “I was actually thinking about the parade, what it would be like.

“It was such different times in Boston. We were young. We worked hard. We played hard. We were idiots at the same time and tore up the town when we could. And we are still idiots, but just older now with more responsibility.

“It’s kind of weird. We’re all still young. So I don’t want to say winning it here would be the high point of our careers.

“But, come on, I don’t know how it wouldn’t be? How could you top that?”

It was 21 years ago that Epstein and McLeod met as kids in the Padres offices. Epstein was an assistant in the public relations department under Glenn Geffner, now a Miami Marlins broadcaster. McLeod was working in stadium operations, doing everything from working the ticket windows to setting up traffic barricades in the parking lot to picking up players from the airport.

“I remember hearing there was a new kid working in media relations,” McLeod said, “who was supposed to be really smart. I don’t recall our first introduction, but for whatever reason, a Jewish kid from Boston and a Polynesian kid from San Diego, with not much in common, hit it off.

“We started hanging out, talking baseball, and the more we got to know each other, we shared a similar passion for players, evaluations and how to make things better.

“I recall one night in particular, over many beers at his place in Pacific Beach, he said, ‘If I ever become GM, you’re going to become my scouting director.’”

Kevin Towers, the Padres general manager, and scouting director Brad Sloan realized they had two kids who wanted to be involved in a lot more than writing news releases and handing out parking passes. They sent them out to scout local college players. They gave them projects. Epstein’s first big job was taking radar gun readings.

“You could tell he had it even from a young age,” Towers said of Epstein, who went to law school and received his degree in his spare time. “Really, he’s the smartest guy I’ve ever been around.

“The way his mind works, things like trends and statistical information in the industry that we are doing now, he was talking about 20 years ago.”

Epstein got his opportunity in March 2002 when Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino hired him to be their assistant GM under interim Mike Port. He was one step away from his dream job, growing up in the shadows of Fenway Park.

“Before he left town,” McLeod said, “I told him, ‘Theo, in five months, you’re going to be the GM of the Red Sox.’ He said, “Why would you say that?’ I said, ‘I know Larry Lucchino. He’s grooming you to be the next GM.’ I also said, ‘You’re going to meet your wife within the first five months you’re there.’ He was like, ‘I’m a bachelor. No way.’”

Epstein, at the age of 28, became the youngest GM in baseball history Nov. 25, 2002. Epstein and his wife, Marie, celebrated their 10-year anniversary in August.

This is where Epstein also met Hoyer, who went to Wesleyan University with Epstein’s twin brother, Paul, and had just joined the Red Sox baseball operations department. They immediately hit it off. Epstein loved his work ethic. They shared the same ideas of restructuring the organization. Hoyer, like Epstein, now 42, became his right-hand man.

“We did everything together,” Hoyer said. “We were at that stage in our lives where we weren’t married, didn’t have any outside responsibilities, so we threw ourselves in that job. That was our culture.”

One year later, with two years of experience as a full-time scout, McLeod was hired as the Red Sox’s scouting director.

The Rat Pack was born.

They won two World Series together in Boston and laid the groundwork for another. They cleaned up in the draft. No one was going to outwork them, even if it meant arguing until the wee hours of the morning until they reached a consensus.

“One of the things we talked about when we first got here,” Hoyer said, “is that if we’re going to do this right and be a partnership, once we make a deal, it has got to be a group decision. There are plenty of moves we disagreed on at the start, but we always got on the same page.

“But in the end, has to be a group decision. We’re not lone wolves.”

It was this philosophy that led the Red Sox to draft pitcher Clay Buchholz. He got into trouble in high school with the theft of computers. McLeod loved the kid and told Epstein they had to draft him. Epstein refused.

“Jason was just obsessed with him,” Hoyer said. “They had great arguments on him, and Jason, to his credit, stuck up for him.”

Said Epstein: “Jason kept fighting for him.”

Epstein, after telling McLeod he was crazy, met with Buchholz, and finally consented. Two starts into his major league career, Buchholz pitched a no-hitter.

“We were just going nuts when he did that,” McLeod said. “Jed looks at me and says, ‘I’m so glad you’re freaking crazy.’”

The Rat Pack was momentarily broken up when Hoyer was hired away to be GM of the Padres, taking McLeod with him. Two years later, Epstein resigned as GM of the Red Sox, joined the Cubs and one of the first calls he made was to the Padres. Ten days later, the band was back together.

And now, five years after their arrival — building a juggernaut that could be an NL dynasty — they could be around for at least another five years. Epstein signed a five-year deal for about $50 million, making him the highest-paid executive in baseball history. It didn’t become official until Epstein made sure Hoyer and McLeod were signing extensions to keep them with him through 2021, too.

“I wasn’t going to just accept a contract for myself,” Epstein said, “and not take care of Jed and Jason, too. It was the right thing to do, and also the right thing for the Cubs.”

So they’ll keep celebrating the wins, screaming at the losses and debating players and personnel as if they were interns again dreaming of being big-league executives.

Who knows how long they’ll actually stay together? McLeod, 44, has emerged as one of baseball’s leading GM candidates. Hoyer has attracted the attention of teams seeking a president. The more the Cubs win, the shorter their tenure together might be.

“I know Jason is going to run his own team one day,” Epstein said. “I know Jed is going to run his own team again someday. If you don’t take time to appreciate the setups you have and the relationships you have, with the chance to work closely with good friends, it will be gone before you know it.

“I just want to appreciate it while it’s here, and I think we’ve all done that, having some fun along the way. And we’re hoping the best is yet to come.”

“To be part of this special journey in such a great place, it feels like a gift.”

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Gallery: Cubs, Dodgers battle in NLCS