Furthermore, many smart baseball players, even BRILLIANT ones make lousy managers.

Ty Cobb, at the end of his career, played for the Philadelphia Athletics and Connie Mack.  Cobb LOVED Mack because Mack made him a far better fielder. Mack knew EXACTLY how each pitcher pitched, how each hitter hit, and how the winds in each stadium affected the batted ball!  His positioning of players to maximize their defensive capability astonished and delighted Cobb, who was, by his own admission, a mediocre fielder who needed and WANTED every edge.  Contrast this with Darryl Strawberry’s refusal to move around int he Mets’ outfield, killing the grass in what was called the “Strawberry Patch”.

Yet Cobb as a manager was feared and hated, and never loved.  And he never won a pennant.  Ted Williams was a terrible manager.  Tommy LaSorda, who never made it out of the minor leagues as a pitcher, had remarkable success as a manager.  Frank Robinson, a HOF player, was never more than a mediocre manager.

Curiously, Rogers Hornsby, (described by some of his fellows as “a prick”) won one WS as player-manager for the Cardinals.  But as a manager never achieved that success again.

What Fischer doesn’t know about baseball, Joe Torre, the Yankees, or the New York pressure-cooker is endless.

Joe Torre was seen as a manager with limited, at best, success.  He was the 4th pick for the Yankees. Fischer misses JUST how significant an opening statement that is.  Also he misses that the NY tabs, (Daily News and NY Post) deplored the pick of “Clueless Joe” (as the banner headlines read at the time).  NOBODY expected him to be successful, and expected Steinbrenner to fire him as soon as someone “better” showed up—like Lou Pinella, a former Yankee star.

Fischer’s comments on managers being insecure is simply a reflection that ALL coaches are hired to be fired—in ALL sports.  Walter Alston suffered season after season as Walter O’Malley’s manager with never more than a 1 year contract—so he KNEW he could NEVER count on “wait till next year”.

Fischer also misses that Ted Williams’s “Get a good pitch to hit” wasn’t Williams’s insight: It was the advice he was given by Rogers Hornsby, perhaps the greatest pure hitter (and total @$$hole) in baseball’s history—the man who batter .424 for a single season.

One can get FAR better insight into a manager’s difficulties from Jim Bouton’s hilarious book “I Managed Good, They Just Played Bad”.  A baseball manager IS a manager, just like a project manager or a sales manager.  You can’t succeed with bad people, unless you turn them into good people.  And you can still fail with good people.

A sports manager has multiple jobs. College football/basketball coaches see it even more:
1) Recruitment
2) Training and teaching skills
3) Incorporating those skills into the team system
4) Managing personalities and conflicts
5) “Growing” the skills and talents of your personnel.
6) Setting long-term strategies
7) Setting short-term, “game day” strategies
8) Bench-managing, ie, coaching the game as events occur
9) Dealing with the GM and owners
10) Dealing with the press.

And probably a dozen things I missed as well—much of this is clearly the same as any manager.

Torre was, I believe, the third most successful manager the Yankees ever had, after Casey Stengel and Joe McCarthy (NOT the infamous Senator).  I don’t think Ralph Houk did better (I could be wrong) and I KNOW Billy Martin did worse.

The fascinating thing about baseball is that it is all a sequence of individual plays.  Even on a double play, each player has a series of independent individual acts to perform.  For instance, the shortstop would field a bouncing ground ball headed his direction. Then he gets the ball out of his glove and makes a throw towards second base, attempting to place the ball in the perfect position over the bag for the second baseman to easily catch the ball and continue the double play.

None of that has anything to do with any other player.  Its entirely up to the shortstop to execute his part of the play perfectly.  A double play only results when the three players all do their individual acts correctly.  Or four players if you include the pitcher who threw the pitch that induced the hitter to hit the ground ball to begin with.

Baseball is full of these larger constructs.  Double plays, scoring rallies and the such that actually put points on the scoreboard. Which combine into larger constructs like wins and losses and standings and pennant races.  Or the even larger statistical constructs like home run tallies, batting averages, earned run averages and the such. 

But, the key to playing baseball is to put all of that out of your mind, and instead focus your concentration entirely on that bouncing ball heading towards you so you can correctly catch the ball and throw it like you are supposed to do.  You have to forget that its the ninth inning of the seventh game of the world series. You have to forget that the sportswriters are touting you for going 71 post-season innings without an error.  You have to forget all of the larger constructs, and instead just focus entirely on that bouncing ball.

Some managers seem to have a knack for both picking the players who can do this, and then putting them into the right frame of mind where they can do this.  I watched Joe Torre take a always-losing Atlanta Braves team to the playoffs in the early 80’s.  He was a good manager before he went to the Yankees, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job since in LA.  Managing is a subtle thing in itself, and Joe Torre has a long record of being rather good at it.

Even though a baseball game can be slumberous, it is a complicated thinking man’s game.  The rule book is a tome when compared to lets say socker, whch has a manual a little less than two pages long.  Also, baseball is unique in a fascinating way——it is the only team game made up of individual play——except during a double play each team member plays for himself.  Also it is the only game, like cricket, where the offense never physically touches the ball.  Baseball is a great game to watch and play——and though it may appear to be slow. there is a lot of strategy going on between the pitches!  And as Soupy Sales would say, “Baseball is a game where he would kiss his girl friend between the strikes and she would kiss him between the balls!”  Yes, baseball is that great a game.