Cherington and Lucchino (Credit: Jim Rogash/Getty Images)
‘We’re going to take a breather,’ said Boston Red Sox GM Ben Cherington about the team’s recent managerial search. Truth be told, the Red Sox aren’t the only people who need one.
Red Sox Nation needs to calm down. Big time.
To be honest, this whole process is beginning to hurt my skull. Not because of the Red Sox, but because of the media and fans. I’m so wiped out by it all, that it’s pretty much impossible for me to coherently scribble out some lavish soliloquy as to why the coverage of this managerial search sucks, so I’m just going to bullet this stuff out and hope for the best.
- Why was the team not offering Dale Sveum the job over lunch on Wednesday taken as Ben Cherington being ‘overruled’ and ‘undercut’? First of all, Cherington had said on Tuesday that the team was likely going to be bringing in other people for a second interview. Known. F-ing. Fact. Right? So then wouldn’t logic dictate that they probably wouldn’t offer Sveum the job on the spot, or has the media just been overcome with the sheer number of ants in their pants? I know ‘team sources’ (there they are again… they say the darndest things) kept saying that Sveum was the front-runner, but other than these shadows lurking in the periphery, who ever even remotely suggested it publicly?
- Who said the Red Sox didn’t like Sveum? Could it ever occur to people that maybe the Red Sox did like him, but the Cubs liked him more?
- The hemming and hawing over Bobby Valentine is also kind of silly. He’s one of four publicly known candidates. And no, this isn’t Darth Lucchino whipping out his light saber to teach young Jedi Cherington a lesson in ‘I AM IN CHARGE, SON’. Managerial candidates frequently apply for positions under the condition that their candidacy be kept a secret. Why? Because losing out on a position early on in the process can be potentially damaging to their reputations. In their view at least. So anyway – it’s often a common courtesy extended from teams to candidates. Valentine has been known to have been on Lucchino’s list of favorite people in baseball and Cherington liked him too. I’d be shocked to find out that Cherington wasn’t in the mix on Valentine from the beginning.
- Also according to another UNNAMED SOURCE~!, Michael Silverman is reporting there is a second unknown, super top-secret candidate. I’d certainly be excited to find out who that might be, too.
- And for the love of all this is holy, can we please just drop the ‘no one wants to manage the Red Sox because they are EVIL~!’ clap trap? Please? These people have heinously short memories that apparently don’t date as far back as George Steinbrenner calling his manager a drunkard in public, or the other 12 million souls Boy George would roast on the fire during his tenure as the owner of the Yankees. Even in spite of all that, George almost always had the pick of the litter. Why? Because the Yankees were and have always been viewed as one of the premier managerial jobs to have in baseball. Same for the Red Sox. Just because this wasn’t a good fit for Mike Maddux or Dale Sveum (assuming that was why he signed with the Cubs – was because he didn’t want to be here), doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of good candidates who wouldn’t burn their mother’s bodies to manage this team. Just sayin’.
And last of all – let’s not forget this: From the moment this started, Cherington has been up front about how this process is going to be a ‘collaborative’ one. In fact, he said this last week:
“I feel my job is to identify a very small, short list of people that I think could be a fit for us – and I may have a personal preference on who the next manager is – then I give as much information as I can to ownership. They clearly have an important voice in this decision, and they need to be comfortable with the decision as much as I am. In the end, when we start to narrow the list down, I think it’ll be more collaborative at that point. To this point, it’s been more my effort on getting to know the candidates. As we get to the next level, they will get more involved.”
They’ve been saying this stuff from the beginning. It’s time to just let it play out.
So let’s take the ole’ GM’s advice and take a breather this weekend. We’ll have a manager soon enough.
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