Not too long ago Major League Baseball managers were the faces of their teams. There are still a few like Terry Francona, Mike Scoiscia, Bill Madden, Bruce Bochy, etc.
However these types of managers appear to be on their way to extinction. A manager cannot impact wins and losses the way a football coach can, but the way he handles himself, the media, his players and the game itself can contribute to the team’s personality.
It seems most managers today are just company yes men acting as an extension of the front office. Teams appear reluctant to hire independent thinkers with charismatic personalities because they become very popular with fans and can be tougher to manipulate.
The days of Billy Martin, Earl Weaver and Tommy Lasorda types are a thing of the past. General managers today feel threatened by these types.
They want everyone to completely buy into sabermetrics and managing “by the book”. Lou Piniella points out in his recently released book, Lou: Fifty Years of Kicking Dirt, Playing Hard, and Winning Big in the Sweet Spot of Baseball that while stats and metrics can be terrific tools, they are not infallible.
The game is still played by humans who have to execute. Sometimes the eb-and-flow of a game calls for a button to be pushed based on a gut feeling that may not be in Joe Girardi’s binder.
It seems today’s managers have been neutered in more ways than one. Replay has taken much of the entertainment of manager-umpire arguments away.
Outrageous player salaries have made the players far more powerful than their managers. Think Terry Collins would have the balls to yank Yoenis Cespedes’ ass off the field mid-inning or even between innings the way Billy Martin did Reggie Jackson on national television in 1977 for dogging it?
Hell, most managers today don’t even have the balls to chastise a talented youngster like Gary Sanchez for lack of hustle or showboating. As Phil Musnick (http://www.nypost.com) often points out, today’s manager has to resign himself to the fact that “the game has changed” in fear of being labeled out-of-touch or pushing for his team to play “the white way”.
That’s right, chastising a non-white player for disrespecting the opponent and the game (not that white players are innocent of this) is now considered borderline-racist. I guess Derek Jeter who’s calling card was always doing things “the right way” in this regard (along with a laundry list of black and Latin hall of famers) was actually doing things “the white way”. I wonder what Bob Gibson thinks of that.
The lack of balls of today’s managers has allowed players to decide they don’t need to take infield anymore. This has resulted in abominable fundamentals in the field even by winning teams.
Hitters have been given the luxury of being unable to bunt. How in the world can a major league hitter be completely incapable of executing a bunt?
Pitchers are given the right to know exactly which inning and which days they will be called upon. Of course Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona thought outside the box in last year’s postseason when he used his best relievers in the most crucial situations regardless of which inning they were generally designated to.
The result? Cleveland got to the 7th game of the World Series despite being hard-hit by injuries.
Major league managers today would rather tow the company line and be wrong by the book than dare to be questioned off a gut feeling. The result has been a more scripted game for the fans.
On top of that, today’s manager enables the best players in the world to do the exact opposite of what your local Little League coach is trying to teach your son. Talk soon.
-Marksman
PS: I have seen some clips of the Mayweather-McGreggor press tour. It looks more like and episode of Piper’s Pit than a boxing press conference. The Creed-Drago presser looked less scripted.