Angry Manager, Managing Angry

Look at what happened back in 1993:



Well, now all you need to do is multiply this by about 15 and convert it to 2008 standards. You see, Rick Churches, my manager (who is a bit high-strung), went completely over-the-top nuts last night in the clubhouse. I haven't seen any video of it yet anywhere - it happened right before the press came down after last night's game - but maybe one of the guys here caught it on his cell phone and will upload it in the near future. Anyway, it was nothing like this:



First of all, when Rick went nuts, it didn't take place in the shower. He was sort of half in his office and half out. And he wasn't really yelling at the team. He was just sort of yelling overall at the state of the world. I turned away when he began to bring world affairs into his rant for fear he'd make eye contact with me and I'd start to laugh. I wouldn't have been laughing at him. Well, yes, I would have been laughing at him. And that's just something a player shouldn't do to his manager, especially when his manager is going on a tirade.

It started somewhere in the 8th inning when Rick got thrown out of the game for arguing balls and strikes. You can't do that with umpires. While the majority of umpires are good men who are doing a professional job, some are terrible. Some have giant egos, larger than the egos of people like me, and you can't get past those egos for a second. Rick argued with an umpire's ego and got tossed. We were soundly trounced in a one-game rainout makeup, 10-2, our two runs scoring in the first inning. I think Rick was more upset that we were no-hit the rest of the night. Take away our first three batters and they pitched a perfect game against us.

Nobody likes to be beaten like that. Especially a manager. So Rick went nuts. Kookoo. Over the rainbow. Crackers.

Oh, I wish I had video for you. The papers had a few sentences about it in today's editions, but since Rick was done early, it's all hearsay. None of us (or is it we?) players would be directly quoted as to the full content of his anger. Even here, I'm not going to give you every last detail. Not today. I want to see what the team does in response. Or what Rick does before I spill all the beans and get lambasted for it from everyone I know. So, I'll just confirm that Rick was engaged in fury last evening and we deserved every word he said.

Nearly every word. I'm not completely bald just yet.