….Baseball Managers are Goofy
1. Why is baseball the only sport where the manager such as the Boston Red Sox’s Terry Francona (left) and coaches wear the same uniforms as their players. Basketball? No. Hockey? No. Football? No. I mean, do you think the always-dapper Sam Mitchell would be seen wearing a leisure suit on the sidelines? Gaslamp Ball wonders about what baseball managers wear as well.
2. Baseball is the only sport where the manager is allowed to venture on to the playing field to argue about a bad/controversial call. You do that during a hockey game, and you’d be lucky if an opposing player didn’t accidently knock the coach to the ice.
3. For a team with 25 players, it’s odd - and expensive - that there’s a manager, a bench coach, a bullpen coach, a pitching coach, a first base coach and a third base coach. Six coaches for 25 players seems completely excessive.
4. Once a baseball manager is fired, it’s not long before he’s hired somewhere else. It’s the same guys getting recycled again and again - and few of them are under the age of 40.
According to the Straight Dope, the tradition of baseball managers wearing a uniform didn’t start until about a 100 years ago when players who had been the captain of their teams started to “manage”. The only notable exception since then was the Philadelphia Phillies’ Connie Mack. In 1957, baseball passed a rule that required coaches to be in uniform, specifically first and third-base coaches.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am
[...] wrote an interesting post today on â?¦.Baseball Managers are GoofyHere’s a quick [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
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October 31st, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Please!. Connie Mack detested the Phillies. He was the A’s manager right from the beginning 1900 until the 1950s. His uniform? a stiff suit, a stiff collar and tie, a straw hat, and a program with which he positioned his players around the field.
Not much personality or colour, but he knew how to win (and how to lose).
Never called anything but Mr. Mack by his players or coaches. He holds every record in the books for a manager, but then he took his time. His players adored him, but it was a very different era.