Sports follies

[cactuswatcher]

George Steinbrenner apparently was afraid that he'd lose his title of "pro sports' biggest cry baby" to Kobe Bryant. How else do you figure that your manager with 13 straight playoff appearances should be rewarded with a pay cut?

Alex Rodriguez and his agent Scott "I'm the greediest man alive" Boras may know what they are doing by threatening to walk away from umpty guaranteed million dollars to try for more. But you'd have to call any team that would pay him more plain foolish. The Yankees have said they won't renegotiate. If so, the Red Sox, the second most spend happy team, could care less where he plays. The Cubs are in the process of being sold and a big new contract might actually lower their value. I guess the Dodgers have been spending money very unwisely lately. They might bite. The biggest winner if Rodriquez walks would certainly be the Texas Rangers who would finally be out from under the stupid 10-year contract they are responsible for in the first place.

In college football, South Florida got beat last night as everyone had been predicting they would since before the season started. The folks who voted for USF as #1 in the polls must be Big East fans. Otherwise voting a team from the Big Joke that high is hard to understand.

The last big-time undefeated teams Kansas, Arizona State, Ohio State and Boston College don't exactly have an easy road to the end of the season. Parity is fine in theory, but the old guard schools certainly never like it. I wouldn't be too surprised if there are rule changes for next year to slow down the high-flying offenses that have upset things this year.

Comments

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

1. I don't see anything wrong with Firing Joe Torre. He was never in the Top 25 reasons they were winning World Series, and he's not been in the Top 25 reasons they didn't. Spending $7.5 Million for a spokesman is kind of silly.

The baseball manager, these days, has far less impact on day-to-day performance and winning records than managers/coaches in other sports do. The scheme/planning work that coaches in football do, is done by the front office.

There's some in-game/line-up management role, but picking who to play and what relievers to use was never Torre's strongest suit anyway.

If a manager is going to live and die on his ability to manage egos and such, I'm not sure Torre was having particularly great success with this crop anyway. And it's not like he'd ever had much success in his previous stops.

2.I wouldn't call a team foolish for signing A-Rod to a $30 Million dollar deal. If you have a cable network and a somewhat empty stadium, Alex Rodriguez will easily generate far more than $30 Million in revenue for your franchise. He may not be enough to win you a world series - though the Angels would desperately need his bat and glove - but it's a sound business decision.

3. South Florida got it's ranking because they hadn't lost, because they shut down an otherwise unstoppable West Virginia defense, and because they won on the road at Auburn - which is a good team. They'd certainly done more this year than Ohio State or Boston College to that point. And that loss at Rutgers isn't bad - they're certainly not a #1 team, but they are very legit.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I agree firing Joe Torre would have been fine. Instead insisting he take a major pay cut unless they made the World Series next year was pretty bush league.

Joe did nothing in St. Louis. He did get Atlanta to the playoffs in 1982 after they'd been awful for several years running, inspite of Ted Turner's generous purse.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

It's the old... instead of saying we fired him, offer him a contract he won't take. I think they should have just said "we won't re-up".

For the most part, as long as the manager's job is to implement front office directives (which it is for most teams) their success is going to be pretty much in-line with on-field talent. Unless they provoke a player revolt.

That said, my friends who are Cubs fans still hate Dusty Baker for (1) refusing to bench washed-up veterans in favor of young players who needed to play and (2) destroying Mark Prior and Kerry Wood by ignoring science on pitch counts.