Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Stupid Firing

Lloyd McClendon was fired today as manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The official reason is that the team is one loss away from their 13th consecutive losing season. What I don’t understand is why the Pirates would fire their manager with only 26 games left in the season. Why put the team through the upheaval and change? Why not just go into the off-season and take care of all business decisions then? Furthermore, why should the team, which has the league’s third-lowed payroll ($38.13M) fire a manager due to performance issues? How would a manager like McClendon have any reasonable expectation of competing with the Cardinals, Cubs and Astros who all have payrolls twice as large as the Pirates? I’ve never understood the purpose of firing a manager when the season’s expectation was not to be a winner but simply to play respectably (meaning with honor, not meaning play .500). Will the next manager be any better off? Will the Pirates benefit from the change of field management? Of course not.

This is just baseball being baseball – inherently racist to the few blacks they give the opportunity to manage a major league club. Why isn’t Lou Piniella being fired today? Last I checked, the D-Rays have had exactly ZERO winning seasons under Sweet Lou.

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