Where's the hot seat?

I’m not going to pretend to be a football expert or even someone who knows anything about football aside from what was learned at J.P. McCaskey High School in the late 1980s. So with that in mind please excuse me if the next question is… well, dumb. Anyway, here it comes:

Why is Andy Reid still the coach of the Eagles? Or, at the very least why isn’t he at least sitting on the ol’ hot seat?

Is this not a fair question?

Perhaps Joe Torre’s “firing” means any coach or manager – no matter how successful – is fair game. In that regard maybe Andy Reid’s biggest crime is the same as Torre’s in that they were too successful. Torre, of course, managed the New York Yankees for 12 seasons and took them to the playoffs for an unprecedented 12 straight years. He won the World Series four times, lost it twice and racked up 1,173 regular-season victories.

But, Torre did not win the World Series since 2000 and was not able to take the Yankees back to the Series since losing to the Marlins in 2003. Clearly, such a long drought was unacceptable to the Yankees’ new bumbling and egomaniacal bosses.

Never mind the fact that the egomania was built on the back of Torre’s success.

Football, of course, is a different animal than baseball. There are many more players and coaches and much more specialization. They have meetings about having meetings in football and truth be told, almost all meetings are a waste of time. Worse, they have meetings on the field before every single play. Baseball, it sometimes seems, is also becoming far too specialized, which makes for a less-interesting game to watch. Even worse, the coach actually walks onto the field to discuss strategy, which seems really odd.

Is there another sport that allows the coach to go onto the field during the middle of the game? Hell, tennis doesn’t even allow coaches to sit on the sidelines.

Anyway, the only reason I ask about Reid and his future with the Eagles is more because of Charlie Manuel than Joe Torre. After all, for three seasons Charlie Manuel was scrutinized over the tiniest bit of minutia regarding his job performance and his personality. Fans and media called for Manuel’s head because, as they pointed out, he wasn’t smart enough. They based this on the notion that he couldn’t pull off a double-switch and because he was from Virginia and talked funny.

You know, because the double-switch is the most important move a baseball manager ever makes and because that Philly accent sounds so intelligent. And yes, I was using the sarcasm font.

So if Charlie Manuel can win more games in his first three seasons than any other manager in franchise history save for the guy who had Grover Cleveland Alexander pitching for him, and get the team to the playoffs for the first time in a decade-and-a-half while some folks are genuinely upset over his two-year contract extension, why isn’t Andy Reid feeling the heat?

Look, I know the Eagles just passed through the most successful era in franchise history and that they got to the NFC Championship for four seasons in a row. But it’s over. According to people that know better, the Eagles do not have the players needed to fit into their schemes. Even with the pass-happy offense, Reid’s Eagles don’t seem to have the receivers they need to make now immobile quarterback Donovan McNabb more effective. Actually, the Eagles did have the receiver they needed to make the rather pedantic offense good, but they ran that guy out of town because he was a diva.

Seriously, how does a coach help run the best player on the team out of town and still keep his job? Lawyers are always looking for a precedent when contemplating trying a case – is there a previous instance of a coach “firing” the best and most effective player on the team and staying on the job?

Again, I’m no expert on the NFL or the Eagles so excuse my ignorance. But as an outsider looking in from a cursory view I don’t understand why Reid isn’t feeling more pressure. Or maybe he is and I just don’t know enough to make a more intelligent point. But how come it’s OK for him to continuously take the “responsibility” for a bad game, or to tell the press that he/we “must do a better job?” He did it again after the loss to the Bears yesterday when quarterback Brian Griese marched his team 97 yards with less than two minutes to go for the winning touchdown.

He does this ad nauseam to the point that it should make one nauseous.

It seems that he has used the “responsibility” and “better job” edict so much that there ought to be consequences by now. Worse, the mistakes that necessitate such excuses are chronic and have been for a long time.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue with the track record no matter how angry fans seem to be after watching the games on Sunday. The Inquirer notes these facts in the Oct. 14, 2007 issues:

Since Reid took over as the Eagles' coach in 1999, the 31 other teams have combined to fire and hire a total of 91 coaches. Discounting rookie head coaches, 36 of the 91 never made a playoff appearance with the team they coached. Nine others failed to win a playoff game.

Under Reid the Eagles have been really good. But it doesn’t seem as if the Eagles are going to win their first title since 1960 any time in the near future. This idea would remain unchanged even if the Eagles were 3-3 instead of 2-4.

Anyway, I’m not one of those guys who profess to know everything. That’s why I ask… maybe I just don’t get Andy Reid.

Am I the only one?

Other observations

• There was no way that Manny Ramirez would have thrown out Kenny Lofton at the plate during the seventh inning of last night’s ALCS Game 7. But Lofton not scoring the run that would have tied the game at 3 is not why the Indians lost the game… but it didn’t help.

• It’s official: The Red Sox and Yankees have traded places. The Red Sox are the big-monied team that is maniacally organized and always seems to have the means to get the right player to step in at the perfect time, while the Yankees are the team that replaces the manager despite going to the playoffs year after year.

• Is there a more entertaining/maddening player than Manny Ramirez?

• Terry Francona is heading to his second World Series in four seasons with Boston… how come the Phillies can’t get a guy like that?

Oh yeah… never mind.

• Finally, the Phillies released their schedule for 2008. They open the season against the Nationals on March 31 after another one of those exhibition two-game series on March 28 and 29 against Toronto.

Other highlights include a two-game series in Colorado on April 21 and 22 before the return matchup at the Bank on May 26, 27 and 28. Interleague-wise the Phillies host the Red Sox and Angels starting June 16.

For the rest of the schedule, click here.

Good move, Joe

Just last night I was reading about the Yankees’ executives meetings in Tampa. It all seemed so odd – the execs were holed up in one of the Steinbrenner family compounds, only surfacing to tip the Domino’s man (I figure the Yankees would eat Domino’s… that just seems to fit) and perhaps even to breathe unrecycled air before diving back underground. Meanwhile, outside the self-important NYC media gathered to delve so deeply into the most important story involving The Empire, watching from just off the Steinbrenner property line as if they were witnessing the election of a pope.

If the White House press corps worked half as hard as the Yankees beat writers, who knows how the world situation might be right now. But I know one thing for certain – President Gore would have his hands for with those Yankees scribes, that’s for sure.

But in going through the frantic and breathless dispatches from Tampa as if it were Ed Murrow describing the “orchestrated hell” of the English Lancasters’ raid on Berlin in December of 1943, I thought to myself, “Geez, what an awful thing to do to yourself.”

And I wasn’t just thinking about the NYC media staked out in Tampa. Nope, those jackals can take care of themselves. Instead, I was thinking about Joe Torre.

What did Joe Torre do to be treated this way? Was winning all of those baseball games and going to the playoffs all of those years really so bad?

Answer: Yes.

After 12 seasons with the Yankees in which every single one of them ended in the playoffs, including four World Series victories and six American League pennants, Torre was being dangled for the sharks by the team’s brass as if he were chum at the bottom of a metal bucket. Apparently that’s what 12 straight playoff appearances and a 1,173-767 regular-season record gets a guy like Torre.

Guys with half the accomplishments but 10 times the ego get to strut around like models on the runway. Only instead of thin and stylish women, we get to watch tired, frumpy and pasty middle-aged white guys bluster on using words like “tradition” and “history.”

What, they just can’t say, “Thank you… ” and leave Torre the hell alone?

Obviously not. Instead, Steinbrenner and his minions held meetings about having meetings that were followed up with the meetings in Tampa. All the while Torre was left to twist in the wind.

That is until today. Finally, Torre did the admirable thing and told the Yanks to take their managerial job and the 12 consecutive playoff appearances – a run that neither Miller Huggins, Joe McCarthy nor Casey Stengel could touch – and stick it.

Oh, the Yankees wanted Torre back for 2008. At least that’s what they will say of the one-year, $5 million deal Torre was offered. To “motivate” Torre, team president Randy Levine explained that the one-year deal was loaded with incentives contingent upon a World Series appearance.

“We thought that we need to go to a performance-based model, having nothing to do with Joe Torre's character, integrity or ability,” Levine. “We just think it's important to motivate people.”

Yes, because a grown man who was paid $2.5 million more than the offer in 2007 who has been in the Major Leagues since turning 19 in 1960 needs motivation. Yes, thank Randy Levine for being the one to make that slacker Joe Torre to see things the proper way. Heck, if Torre would have done things Levine’s way they would have won the World Series twice in 1998.

Geez…

Obviously, the Yankees made Torre and offer he had to refuse. Clearly they want to go in another direction, which is the team’s prerogative. After all, Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi, Tony La Russa and Bobby Valentine are circling like buzzards to pick at Torre’s carcass. But Torre’s departure likely means the official end of the Yankees’ more –than-a-decade long run at the top of baseball. Alex Rodriguez, the likely MVP of the American League, will probably opt out of his contract with Torre gone. It’s also likely that others will follow A-Rod out the door, like top closer Mariano Rivera, catcher Jorge Posada and lefty starting pitcher Andy Pettitte.

But Scott Boras, the agent for Rodriguez says Torre had to turn down the deal lest the remaining players think of him as “weak.”

“It is difficult, near impossible, to accept a salary cut,” Boras told the Associated Press. “Successful people can afford their principles. They understand if they accept the position, there is a great risk the message to all under him is dissatisfaction.”

Then there is that whole fired-for-winning chestnut. It’s doubtful that DreamWorks Studios could have conjured up the special affects to make Torre’s situation even halfway believable. Better yet, maybe Spielberg and the gang can figure out a scenario in which Larry Bowa takes over as manager of the Yankees.

Please, please, please, please, please...

One man's ceiling is another man's floor

The thing about being a Major League manager is that it rarely ends well. For instance, take the situation in the South Bronx where Joe Torre is reportedly on the way out as the Yankees’ skipper. Even though Torre has guided the Yanks to the playoffs in every single one of his 12 years at the helm and has won the World Series four times, it doesn’t seem to be good enough. The fact is that Torre has won 1,173 regular-season games for a .605 winning percentage with the Yankees, and has gone 77-48 in the post-season. But Torre and the Yanks haven’t advanced past the ALDS since 2004 and they haven’t won the World Series since 2000.

Torre, it appears, made the mistake of successful managing a club too well for too long. He set the bar way too high because in the end, it always ends badly.

But the New York Yankees sure are different than the Philadelphia Phillies.

Yes, that really is an ambiguous statement, but when comparing the Yankees and the Phillies, grand, open-ended ambiguity is the safest bet.

For the Phillies, the “Golden Age” of the franchise started in the mid-1970s and lasted until the early 1980s. For about a decade, the Phillies were about as good as a team could be in the Major Leagues. They were so good, in fact, that in 1979 Danny Ozark was fired as the manager of the team because he didn’t win the World Series after winning 101 games in 1976 and 1977 and a 90-win NL East title in 1978.

It wasn’t enough to get it done.

In 1983, general manager Paul Owens bounced Pat Corrales from the managerial seat even though he had the Phillies in first place with 76 games remaining in the season. Owens came down from the front office and kept the Phillies right where Corrales left them before the collapse in the World Series against the Orioles.

Those were the days when it was either the World Series or failure for the Phillies, and it’s safe to say that a similar mentality never really occurred in the team’s 124-season history.

It would be interesting to see what fate would beset Charlie Manuel if he stumbled the way Ozark and the Phillies did in 1979. Or what would happen to Manuel if he were the skipper in 1983 when Corrales’ first-place Phillies were doing something wrong 86 games in to the season.

How can a team fire the manager when his team is in first place?

Make no mistake; there are a lot of people who don’t want Manuel to return to the bench for 2008 after three seasons in which he won more games than all but one manager in team history through this point in his tenure. With the Phillies, 262 victories in three seasons in which the team was eliminated from the NLDS in a three-game sweep is borderline historic. Actually, it’s more than remarkable – it’s unprecedented.

This is a franchise, after all, where only two (two!) managers have taken the team to more than one postseason. It’s a franchise that has been to the playoffs just 10 times in 124 seasons. For comparisons sake, look at the Atlanta Braves who… wait, nevermind. It just isn’t fair to compare the Phillies to any other franchise.

Anyway, one of those dynamic duo of managers was Ozark, who won the NL East three years in a row but was axed when he couldn’t do it for a fourth. The other manager was Ozark’s replacement, Dallas Green, who delivered the franchise’s only title in 1980 only to lose to Montreal in the 1981 NLDS.

That loss was enough to send Green on his way to Chicago where he thought he could break the Cubs’ losing curse. But Green quickly learned that even he isn’t that good. Sure, historically things are really bad for the Phillies, but even they don’t compare to the futility of the Cubs.

Can Charlie Manuel join the ranks of Ozark and Green? Well, we’re going to find out. After his first, three-year contract ran out when Shane Victorino grounded out in Game 3 of the NLDS on Saturday night at Coors Field, the Phillies quickly re-signed Manuel to a new, two-year pact with a club option for a third year. The deal was wrapped up on Tuesday night and then leaked out to the press. In fact, the staff writer for the team’s Web site had to learn about the news from a release on that very site.

Maybe Joe Torre is the manager the Cubs need to help them end 98 straight seasons without a World Series? After all, it appeared as if Torre was going to be out of a job after 12 seasons as the manager of the New York Yankees.

Torre apparently is headed for the same fate as Danny Ozark in 1979. But unlike Ozark, Torre didn’t miss the playoffs this year. Actually, Torre averaged close to 100 victories per season, won the World Series four times, including three years in a row, figured out how to charm the fickle New York media and even more, the erratic owner George Steinbrenner.

There is no way to categorize Torre’s time with the Yankees as anything other than wildly successful. In fact, there are some of those fickle and hyperbolic New York-media types who have deemed Torre’s Yankees’ career as Hall-of-Fame worthy alongside the all-time greats like Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel and Miller Huggins. Add Torre to that tribunal and get 21 of the Yankees’ 26 World Series titles, and 30 American League pennants.

In other words, Joe Torre has done a lot better than Charlie Manuel, but only one of them was truly on the proverbial hot seat for returning to the same team in 2008.

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. Obviously, making it through Game 165 with a fighting chance is not a good season in the South Bronx. Steinbrenner, unlike David Montgomery and the Phillies, does not celebrate moral victories or potential. Because of that, Torre and his failure to deliver a World Series title since 2000, ends the season as a “sad disappointment,” as his boss stated. Those 1,173 victories, not including the 77 more in the playoffs, ring a bit hollow.

Torre, it seems, built expectations so high that anything less than perfection was not good enough. Is it his fault that his hitters picked a really bad time to stop being the best offense in baseball, or that the pitching staff he was handed didn’t live up to its old press clipping s anymore?

Of course not. But Torre made the mistake of having high standards.

We don’t have that problem here.

Instead, Charlie Manuel’s run in Philadelphia is still littered with hope and promise. For the Phillies, 262 victories in three seasons is nothing to sneeze at.

Better yet, it’s nearly a record.

Not good enough?

New York sure is different than Philadelphia.

Yes, that really is an ambiguous statement, but when comparing the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, grand, open-ended ambiguity is the safest bet.

For the Phillies, the “Golden Age” of the franchise started in the mid-1970s and lasted until the early 1980s. For about a decade, the Phillies were about as good as a team could be in the Major Leagues. They were so good, in fact, that in 1979 Danny Ozark was fired as the manager of the team because he didn’t win the World Series after winning 101 games in 1976 and 1977 and a 90-win NL East title in 1978.

It wasn’t enough to get it done.

In 1983, general manager Paul Owens bounced Pat Corrales from the managerial seat even though he had the Phillies in first place with 76 games remaining in the season. Owens came down from the front office and kept the Phillies right where Corrales left them before the collapse in the World Series against the Orioles.

Those were the days when it was either the World Series or failure for the Phillies, and it’s safe to say that a similar mentality never really occurred in the team’s 123-season history.

It would be interesting to see what fate would beset Charlie Manuel if he stumbled the way Ozark and the Phillies did in 1979. Or what would happen to Manuel if he were the skipper in 1983 when Corrales’ first-place Phillies were doing something wrong 86 games in to the season.

How can a team fire the manager when his team is in first place?

Make no mistake; there are a lot of people who don’t want Manuel to return to the bench for 2007 after two seasons in which he won more games than all but one manager in team history through this point in his tenure. With the Phillies, 173 victories in two seasons in which the team was eliminated from wild-card playoff contention at game Nos. 162 and 161 is borderline historic. Actually, it’s more than remarkable – it’s unprecedented.

This is a franchise, after all, where only two (two!) managers have taken the team to more than one postseason. It’s a franchise that has been to the playoffs just nine times in 123 seasons. For comparisons sake, look at the Atlanta Braves who… wait, nevermind. It just isn’t fair to compare the Phillies to any other franchise.

Anyway, one of those dynamic duo of managers was Ozark, who won the NL East three years in a row but was axed when he couldn’t do it for a fourth, and the other was Ozark’s replacement, Dallas Green, who delivered the franchise’s only title in 1980 only to lose to Montreal in the 1981 NLDS.

That loss was enough to send Green on his way to Chicago where he thought he could break the Cubs’ losing curse. But Green quickly learned that even he isn’t that good. Sure, historically things are really bad for the Phillies, but even they don’t compare to the futility of the Cubs.

Maybe Joe Torre is the manager the Cubs need to help them end 98 straight seasons without a World Series? After all, it appeared as if Torre was going to be out of a job after 11 seasons as the manager of the New York Yankees.

Torre apparently was headed for the same fate as Danny Ozark in 1979 before general manager Brian Cashman and the Yankees players interceded. But unlike Ozark, Torre didn’t miss the playoffs this year. Actually, Torre made it to the playoffs in every season he was the manager for the Yankees. He averaged close to 100 victories per season, won the World Series four times, including three years in a row, figured out how to charm the fickle New York media and even more erratic, owner George Steinbrenner.

There is no way to categorize Torre’s time with the Yankees as anything other than wildly successful. In fact, there are some of those fickle and hyperbolic New York-media types who have deemed Torre’s Yankees’ career as Hall-of-Fame worthy alongside the all-time greats like Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel and Miller Huggins. Add Torre to that tribunal and get 21 of the Yankees’ 26 World Series titles, and 30 American League pennants.

In other words, Joe Torre has done a lot better than Charlie Manuel, but only one of them was truly on the proverbial hot seat for returning to the same team in 2007.

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. Obviously, making it through Game 161 with a fighting chance is not a good season in the South Bronx. Steinbrenner, unlike David Montgomery and the Phillies, does not celebrate moral victories or potential. Because of that, Torre and his failure to deliver a World Series title since 2000, ends the season as a “sad disappointment,” as his boss stated. Those 1,079 victories, not including the 75 more in the playoffs, ring a bit hollow.

Torre, it seems, built expectations so high that anything less than perfection was not good enough. Is it his fault that his hitters picked a really bad time to stop being the best offense in baseball, or that the pitching staff he was handed didn’t live up to its old press clipping s anymore?

Of course not. But Torre made the mistake of having high standards.

We don’t have that problem here.

Instead, Charlie Manuel’s run in Philadelphia is still littered with hope and promise. For the Phillies, 173 victories in two seasons is nothing to sneeze at.