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Managers Manage, Teams Lose by Greg Dobbs This is about managers and coaches of major league teams in Denver, which sports publications have called the best sports town in America. Read it and think about it; things probably aren't much different where you are!
Why not? Because managers and coaches never touch the ball. Or the puck. They don’t hit it, they don’t catch it, they don’t kick it, they don’t throw it. They don’t run, or jump, or dive, or score. And they don’t do much to keep the other side from scoring either. A team’s athletes win or lose a game. Managers just manage, coaches just coach.
Oh sure, it’s the manager’s job to "out-think" the other side ... or at least the other side’s manager. But there are limits to how effective "out-thinking" can be. Baseball fanatics in Denver remember 1995 when the Rockies made the playoffs, and in a critical game had the tying run on base, and manager Don Baylor "out-thought" himself clear out of capable pinch hitters and had to bring a relief pitcher in -- not to the mound, but to the plate! He out-thought the Rockies right out of the playoffs. The man who replaced him, by reputation and by record, was supposed to be a far better thinker -- or "out-thinker." Did you see the Rockies in the '99 playoffs ?!? Nope. They were watching on TV, like the rest of us. And since a coach or a manager at the highest levels of competition may help refine a player’s skills but doesn’t have to teach fundamentals -- if the athletes didn’t already know the fundamentals of the game, they wouldn’t be there -- all that’s left is to inspire. No doubt, some managers and coaches are more inspirational than others. Who sooner comes to mind than the gentle soul named Bill McCartney? I mean, the man went from creating collegiate national football champions just a few years ago at the University of Colorado to creating the religious organization called "Promise Keepers." If he couldn’t inspire athletes, who in the world could? But Billy Martin must have been an awfully inspirational manager too, taking his Yankees to the World Series year after year after year. Yet Billy, when he wasn’t way too drunk to rant and rave, ranted and raved like no one before in professional sports and few who came after him. The team won anyway.
As fans, we have expectations. If a coach or a manager has presided over a championship season somewhere else, we expect him to bring home the trophy when he comes to our town. But that really doesn’t make much sense. If he wears a championship ring, it’s because his players won it for him. If he inherits a new team (or gets new players on his old team) without superior skills, the best managing ever seen -- whatever that is -- won’t put another ring on his finger. Anyway, favored to win or not, a coach or a manager can’t give his players qualities that they just don’t possess. To butcher an otherwise adequate cliché, managers and coaches can’t make a silk score out of a sow’s skin. Maybe, when a team fails, it ought to look in its own mirror. And if it needs inspiration, it ought to look to its best players (see "John Elway", or "Michael Jordan!"). Doesn’t it stand to reason that the teams with the best "best" players are going to triumph? And that once those players are gone, those triumphs will be harder to achieve (see, again, "Elway", or "Jordan")? The players win or lose the games. The managers just manage, the coaches just coach.
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After
taking lowly baseball teams from Pittsburgh, then from Miami to the World
Series, Jim Leyland was hailed as the best manager in baseball and hired
to move to Denver to lead the Colorado Rockies. He led them straight
to the basement, then quit. The Denver Broncos' Mike Shanahan, said
by some to be the best coach in NFL history (that was last season) hasn’t
quit ... but his season started with a humiliating four straight defeats
(that is this season), and no one’s predicting a dramatic
turnaround. Hall of Famer Dan Issel decided in late 1999 to go back
to coaching the Denver Nuggets, where he produced great results just a few
years ago. But is this a guarantee of great things to come?
Not at all.
That’s
why, when a treasured team flops, it’s disconcerting to hear fans
admonish the man in charge. Once play begins -- in football,
baseball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, hockey, rugby, croquet, cricket,
badminton, and just about every other imaginable team sport -- the whole
point of the exercise is to do a better job than the other side does at
maneuvering the ball ... or the puck, or the birdie. Once play
begins, the best darned manager or coach in the world can’t do a darned
thing except watch.
True,
there is one more thing a manager or a coach does: he decides who plays,
and who doesn’t. The Broncos’ Mike Shanahan made a big-time
decision along those lines when he replaced one field general who was past
his prime (John Elway heir Bubby Brister) with another (recent college
star quarterback Brian Griese) who has "prime" written all over
him. Then he replaced Griese with Brister (who got replaced in the
very next game by .. you got it, Griese! Is this a model of good
management? Is it a guarantee of anything good at all? Let me
answer this way: John Elway didn’t retire because he was pretty sure
Shanahan couldn’t win another Super Bowl; he retired because he was
pretty sure he couldn’t.