Bring back Tommy Lasorda and Joe Torre!

As I watched last night’s baseball marathon that lasted longer than the Godfather Part I and II combined, I was shocked by the ineptness of these new age managers. The great Phil Mushnick of the NY Post has been pointing this out to deaf ears for the last five years and last night was a perfect example of today’s managers wrecking a game. Dodger pitcher Ferris Bueller was dominating and could not be hit by the Red Sox. 7 innings, no runs and 7 strikeouts in a crucial game so naturally the manager pulls him in the 8th because why leave a pitcher in who the other team cannot hit? Within a few pitches the 1-0 game became a 1-1 game.  I cannot imagine Tommy Lasorda pulling Orel “bulldog” Hersheiser out of the game after 7 scoreless innings and 7 K’s.  Today however these young managers all think they can emulate Joe Torre’s dynasty in the 90’s and 2000’s with the Yankees. There was a big difference in his decision making versus today. He had the most dominant closer in history in Mario “enter the sandman” Rivera. These other teams have a couple clowns who are not good enough to be a starter nor a closer so they stick them in the game in between and hope for the best.

Baseball is the only sport that tries to find ways to lose rather than win a game. Last night in the NBA, Kevin Durant started raining down three’s on the Knicks at the start of the 4th quarter. If it was baseball, the manager would pull him for a defensive replacement after his fifth 3, instead Steve Kerr left in the hot hand and KD had 25 in the 4th alone and single handily outscored the Knicks in a pull away romp.  In football if a running back has 10 carries for 125 yards and 2 TDs in the first half, they don’t put him on the bench, they feed him the ball until the defense can stop him. They abandon the pass and make the other team show they can stop him. Why take the risk?  In baseball, we routinely see a “defensive replacement” late in a game and an outfielder who was 3 for 4 with 2 HRs is replaced by a weak hitting bench player who may or may not even get a ball hit to him, let alone a base hit the rest of the game.

The Dodgers reward for pulling him was a 17  inning 8 hour game that EXHAUSTED their team and their bullpen, all because the manager didn’t think 7 scoreless innings warranted a shot at the 8th. I blame the great Joe Torre for this because all these managers thought that the secret to the Yanks success was to get a lead, hold it to the 7th, bring in a setup man and then enter the sandman for the 9th to close it out. But you need to have THE SANDMAN for this to work. We see this in the NBA as well, with teams thinking that if they just take lots of 3 point shots they can be like the Warriors, while neglecting to notice the Warriors have 3 of the top 5 all-time shooters firing away!

Tonight’s game 4 will be interesting to say the least. Rumor has it that the Dodgers may activate Fernando Valenzuela from in active Taco eating list and have him available. He is only 50lbs above his playing weight of 280 lbs. due a regimen of only eating glutton free pizza and burritos. Baseball continues to be the one sport where lately teams win in SPITE of their manager not because of them.

-BSB