Wednesday, November 09, 2005

While I'm At It...

While I'm at it, I may as well rip the baseball writers that voted for the Manager of the Year awards. I have no problem with Ozzie Guillen winning the award. The White Sox finishing the 2005 season with the AL's best record came completely out of left field so, sure, throw Ozzie the carrot (and hope he chokes on it). I have no beef with the NL winner being Bobby Cox. He took a team with more rookies than the Devil Rays and only won his 14th straight division title. Kudos to Bobby.

No, my beef is with Tony LaRussa taking second place in the National League. What on earth did he do this year? What adversity did his team face? They were wire-to-wire NL Central champs. They had the third-highest payroll in the National League and the highest payroll in their division. They were expected to win the NL pennant and, possibly, the World Series. How did Tony LaRussa do the second best job in the NL? How could the voters give Frank Robinson, the manager of the Montreal Expos playing in Washington, D.C., only a fourth-place finish? That the Expos/Nationals contended at all this year should tell you how great a job Bowden (GM) and Robinson did in 2005 (and with the NL's fourth-lowest payroll at $48M). Someone explain this. I'd chalk it up to Peter Gammons being an idiot but he only has one vote so there are several other bozos out there.

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