So the Houston Astros have fired another manager for poor performance. Nothing unusual there; it happens every few years.
What is surprising about the canning of Cecil Cooper, however, is the timing.
The team pulled the plug on Monday, just 13 games before another miserable season staggered to a close. Why not wait until then, like virtually every other team that is going to change managers?
General Manager Ed Wade gave a completely ridiculous non-explanation: “I thought it was going to be awkward to go all the way to the end of the season, come back from New York and make a move. The practicality of it didn’t make sense and now we can put Dave (Clark) in place, we can have a different set of circumstances working here for two weeks.”
Read through that again and see if it “makes sense.” If you don’t want to waste the time, that’s understandable. It doesn’t have any logic, especially that convoluted line about how “the practicality of it didn’t make sense.”
The real reason the Astros fired Cooper on Monday is that after his latest loss, his career record stood at 171-170.
I really think they wanted to make sure he ended his career with a winning record — even by one game. It’s even possible that Coop was consulted on the timing and he agreed it was better to go out with a plus record.
Crazier things have happened in baseball.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The mystery behind Cooper’s canning
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3 comments:
Wade's manglification of the English language kind of reeks of GWB. Any relation? I haven't been treated to such tortured syntax in a while.
Wade must now be investigated for waterboarding sin tax. I have spoken. So let it be written. So let it be done.
"I was expected to model myself upon men who were disconcerted by the rebukes they received if they used outlandish words or strange idioms to tell of some quite harmless thing they might have done, but revelled in the applause they earned for the fine flow of well-ordered and nicely balanced phrases with which they described their own acts of indency."
-- St. Augustine of North Africa, CONFESSIONS, I.18.
G. W. was a bit too generous for the presidency, but he is honest, and I much prefer an honest man whose speech isn't polished to a smooth-as-polyester teleprompter reader.
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