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I don’t get it, either

Okay, so the big sports news of yesterday was that Mike Hargrove unexpectedly resigned. This is a sports post today, so for those of you not interested in baseball, scroll on down for the part of the post about the kids.

Y’know, I’ve never been a huge Hargrove fan, but I do believe that he was a fair and decent manager with a proven track record. I’m not quite sure why he’d announce his resignation in the middle of a very hot winning streak – 8 games right now – because it definitely made more sense when he first approached the general manager about it last month when the team was in a 6-game losing slump. It’s not even the All-Star break yet!

For the team’s sake, even if you’ve got no “drive” left, I think you owe it to them to finish out the season. If you want to announce that you’re not coming back next season, fine, but to bail out mid-season looks weird and smells worse. I have no reason to disbelieve his reasons given, and I do think that he is suffering from some kind of big-time burnout, but when you sign a contract, you have obligations, and I think he failed in that regard.

Doc was clamoring months ago for the front office to fire Hargrove after some shaky pitching decisions early in the season, but it seemed that everything was clicking recently. And no one go hounding Ichiro about it, either. That is one of the craziest theories I’ve ever heard.

Anyway, surprised as I am, I’m pleased that the Mariners promptly made John McLaren the new manager. He is familiar to the fans and the players, being the bench coach, and is a link to the glory days of Sweet Lou, having been Piniella’s bench coach for years. The only thing that would sweeten this even more? Bring on Jay Buhner or Edgar Martinez as the new bench coach, and you will have the fans screaming their blessings down from center field. Unlikely – I think Edgar should be the next hitting coach, actually – but stranger things have happened.

But on to kid-related things… for the Webmaster’s birthday, we attended our local Class “A” baseball team’s game – the Everett AquaSox. It was fun, though the game went 11 innings (the Sox won!) and the kids were beat. We were beat, too. I must have gone to the bathroom six or seven times in 11 innings, and only once for myself. There was a fireworks show after the game, set up from center field, and the kids absolutely LOVED that. The Webmaster joked that “Tad now knows what he wants to do with his life,” judging by the boy’s awe at things blowing up. Ane kept saying that it was just like Olivia. We got home two hours past bedtime, but the kids slept in the next morning for us, which was very nice.

How was everyone else’s weekend? How many of your baseball players got named to the All-Star team? Ichiro and JJ Putz will be going for the Mariners, and they deserve it. I promise I’ll go back to our normally scheduled programming tomorrow. 🙂

One Response to “I don’t get it, either”

  1. Doc
    July 5th, 2007 08:47
    1

    An additional irony is that Hargrove has been making better (e.g., normal) pitching decisions over the past few months. Things like bringing JJ in, in a tie game at home, or managing the bullpen well, etc. He did have a tendency to bring Baek in too much and not realize just how good Sherrill is, but those are normal kinds of things to do.

    Well, I’m not sure if changing managers really means as much as we think it does … maybe this is a way to find out. I think at least Ichiro should be happier now.