Dumb & Dumber

I was a big baseball card guy back in the 80s. Every day that I could muster the change to buy a pack of Topps I'd hustle down to the corner store. If I was lucky, I'd get a Boggs, a Mattingly, a Pete Rose. If the stars were aligned, I might hit the jackpot with a Gooden or a Strawberry.

But what I'd normally end up with was a Terry Francona or a Clint Hurdle.

These two guys, the managers of the two World Series participants, both had journeyman careers as ballplayers. They both seem like gregarious fellows, good guys to knock back a pint with. And they're both dumber than a bag of hammers.

I've advanced the theory many times that baseball managers don't do a fucking thing. That's an oversimplification, of course, but their contribution is one of the most overrated aspects of baseball. Football coaches do something. Baseball managers chew shit and scratch nuts.

I'd say that the three best managers in the game today are Joe Torre, Tony La Russa and Jim Leyland. But none of them comes close to making the difference that Bill Belichick makes.

Torre is the best I've ever seen at steering a ship through the grind of a six-month regular season. He's been lousy in the playoffs this century, mostly because he never changes his script and falls asleep in the dugout. But the fact that he worked under Steinbrenner for 12 years shows you how solid he is.

La Russa is the anti-Torre. He's always looking to try some weird shit, and he's never afraid of any move. He's been brilliant in the postseason, winning World Series titles in both leagues with Oakland and St. Louis as well as taking the White Sox to the playoffs. There is no other manager that could have won a championship with that St. Louis club last year. Conversely, La Russa could never run the Yankees as effectively as Torre did, because he's a spaz.

The best overall manager is probably Leyland, but I'll hate that chain-smoking fuck until the day I die. Sure, he was great with the Pirates, great with the Marlins and he's been great with the Tigers, but in between those jobs he mailed in a short, ineffective stint with the Rockies. He admitted that he was burned out, and he set the franchise back several years. Great manager though.

Neither Francona nor Hurdle make that short list, but neither will make the difference in winning or losing this series either. Francona is more from the Torre school--he's fiercely loyal to his guys and will never show anybody up. Look at how long he took to swap Coco for Ellsbury, and how long he left Matsuzaka and Okajima in on Sunday night. Shades of Grady Little allowing Pedro to leave himself in in 2003.

Hurdle, like La Russa, tries to reinvent the wheel too often. He pulls cute, goofy strategic ploys that often backfire. During this playoff run, however, everything he's done has worked out flawlessly. During both of Franklin Morales' starts, one against the Phillies and one against the D'Bags, he pulled the young lefty early in the game for a pinch-hitter. Jackpot and jackpot. Every reliever he inserts gets the job done. Replacing Spilborghs in center with Tavares for the NLCS paid off immediately. This team has the magic, and Hurdle is on a roll.

There will certainly be spots in these games where Francona and Hurdle will make (or decline to make) ballsy moves, and those will be second-guessed forever. But the most important decisions will probably take place off the field, such as the switch in Game 4 starters. Instead of Tim Wakefield and Morales on Sunday, it looks as though we'll witness Jon Lester and Aaron Cook, neither of whom has started a game in more than a month.

Likewise, the divergent rules of the two leagues and the vast differences in the two ballparks will dictate other moves. I think that the Rockies should employ the DH not as an offensive position but a defensive one, replacing Brad Hawpe with Spilborghs in right field. Hawpe is not a bad outfielder, but Fenway's RF corner is tricky and Spilborgh would man it more deftly. Hawpe could then DH and focus on his ABs against Beckett and Schilling.

Francona, who loses his DH for games 3-5, will face a much more complex decision. He either pulls the most dangerous hitter in the Series, his DH David Ortiz, or he significantly downgrades his already disadvantaged defense by pulling Mike Lowell or Kevin Youkilis from the lineup.

Regardless, this Series will be decided by the players on the field, not these two bad baseball cards.