Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle has a wonderful column up about an all but extinct species: the volcanic, red-ass manager. The guys who barked at the press and the players and smoked and grunted and did all of those wonderful/awful things. Guys like Gene Mauch and Jim Fregosi and Ralph Houk and Billy Martin. Ostler shares some stories about these guys from his 30+ years on the beat:
Stuff like that.
Ostler is right that the culture has changed. And it makes sense. Managers are now smoother. CEO-types. Or, more often, delegates of the front office as opposed to generals or, in Houk’s case, majors. Frankly, that’s what their job demands and how most of us, if we ran a team, would want our managers to behave.
But boy, it’s way less fun for those of us not directly in their line of fire.
