Managers Gone Wild

Some people have given up on baseball entirely. Those people we like to call "communists."

Fact is, baseball only stopped being awesome for a few years in the ('20s, late '80s '90s, early '00s) when every utility second baseman was hitting 35 homers and .345. Now, utility second basemen are back to being unappreciated, sub-Mendoza scrubs and all is right in the horsehide multiverse.

Proof? Here you go: the two greatest manager tirades of the last few years--with one notable exception--happened today.

The gag isn't that the managers (Lou Piniella, whom Ol' No. 7 and I once drunkenly harassed following a three-hour rainout to no visible effect, and some portly gent from Double A) made a scene in the first place; everyone remotely familiar with the sport knows baseball managers do that for various reasons, usually to light the proverbial fire beneath an underachieving squad's collective keisters. That wasn't it at all.

It's the fact that the umps let it go on for as long as they did in each case, clearing the way for managerial pyrotechnics. They were also sending the unmistakable signal that they, too, knew what was going to happen and gave it their tacit blessing--to be followed, of course, by an ejection, but still. Even umps know that sometimes the skipper's just gotta go fucking moonbat.

Piniella's was good, no lie. Lotsa pointed dirt kicking, a face-to-face dance with Blue. It was almost like chess. And then Bruce Froemming waddled into the picture, grabbed Sweet Lou's arm, and for a second you thought it was Pine Tar George redux. Quality, friends. Quality.

But the dude in the minors, who looks kinda like a thyroidal Cal Ripken--man, that was awesome. Not only did he mound up dirt on home plate, but he took the time to cut fucking base-shaped edges in the dirt. (Very "Close Encounters of the Third Kind.") He threw a base, then crawled in from the outfield on his belly like a Navy SEAL and lobbed the rosin bag homeward with a Dutch Leonard-style knuckler. I didn't see him chuck any bats, but even so, that was legend.

You just can't get that confluence of tradition, self-absorbed petulance and showmanship in any other sport. Long live Major (and Minor) League Baseball.