Jorge Arangure of Sports on Earth caught up with Jim Riggleman recently. Riggleman is entering his second straight season as a minor league manager. And the reason he’s in the minor leagues is because he quit on the Washington Nationals in 2011, and as Arangure notes, baseball will forgive anything but someone who just ups and quits. Ask Mike Hargrove.
Riggleman, however, doesn’t sound like he regrets much:
I wonder if Riggleman’s fate would have been all that different if he had done the smart thing and let his contract run out with the Nationals where, no, I don’t think anyone was going to renew it. As the article notes, Riggleman was never seen by anyone as the guy to take a team to the next level. And while he has always done admirable service as a guy to take a team that is down its luck and be, well, a placeholder until it is better, those jobs don’t keep coming forever. How many managers who fill that role get more than four chances to do it? We’re in an age now where teams are taking chances on ex-players with virtually no high-level managing or coaching experience like Mike Redmond and Walt Weiss. It’s possible that Riggleman’s path would have played out exactly like this had he not quit.
All that aside, it’s a good article about a -- by all reports -- good guy who made one strange and unexpected decision a couple of years ago.
