Screw 758 home runs. Screw 2632 straight games played. Screw 4256 hits. Screw 56 games in a row with a hit. Screw a single season batting average of .424. Screw 5714 career strikeouts. Screw 511 career wins. Screw, coincidentally as of right now, 511 career saves. Screw 14 straight division titles (as much as I love that record).
None of these are major league baseball’s greatest record. None of them can compare to the record that was broken tonight at a game where the Braves beat the Giants 5-4. Energy was in the air. Everyone knew that something special would happen tonight. History was in the making.
Then it happened. In the fifth inning, a record was shattered. Chipper Jones argued with a 3rd strike. Being the certain hall of fame manager that he is, Bobby Cox took one for the team and argued on behalf of Chipper.
For the 132nd time in his career, Bobby Cox has been ejected from a baseball game. He ended his 7 and a half week long tie with Jim McGraw, and I daresay the pressure of chasing the record was starting to get to him. Truly this record, whatever number it may end at, will stand the test of time. He did not get this record with fifteen minute long blow ups. He did not get it with steroids. All it took was yelling in an umpire’s face.
Congratulations, Bobby. You deserved it. And how fitting it came from arguing balls and strikes.
On the contrary, often times Managers will pick a fight with an umpire and sacrifice themselves (for the rest of the game, anyway) as a motivational tactic; hoping that their display of fury will fire up their team and get them to start playing better.
Also, as a general rule Managers, while technically “out of the game” often find ways of “standing in the hallway” or relaying instructions to the assistant coaches who take over from the clubhouse. Because of this and the fact they don’t actually play, the Manager is the guy the team can most afford to have get kicked out of the game; hence what 984 was talking about. Cox basically went out there to take over the argument and get himself ejected before the player, Chipper Jones, got ejected.
When a player is ejected he has to be replaced in the lineup by somebody on the bench; that’s the penalty paid in such a case.
I was thinking of a basketball coach in Europe who would get heated up and give the other team the benefit of (sometimes multiple) technical fouls. Perhaps that’s why he always stopped short of getting the cup.
It it’s scot free it all makes sense; thanks for explaining.
Yeah. To make it as a manager you’d have to be retired from managing for at least five years. Although, it’s a little different with managers and coaches since the demands of their position are no longer physical, they could “retire” for 5 years or more and then come out of retirement and start doing this. Whereas once a player is retired for five years or more, its a cinch he’s not coming back to play anymore. Since managers can come back I think they wait longer (though perhaps not officially) to induct a retired manager, because they generally would not like to have a “Hall of Famer” resume active participation in the game and start sucking, tarnishing his Hall of Fame reputation by a later, inferior tour of duty.
[To switch up sports for an example, John Madden only very recently made the NFL hall of fame because people long assumed he would some day come back to active coaching, because he was so successful and retired from it so young; even as his run as one of the signature voices of NFL broadcasts became longer and longer than his coaching career, people figured he’d come back, because successful coaches “always” come back eventually, even the ones who say they never will. Like Dick Vermiel. Although oddly enough, Joe Gibbs said he’d never be back, and everyone figured he was right, and he made the hall of fame, but has since been convinced to return to coaching, with the same team he used to coach no less. And it is perhaps worth noting that he has not been nearly so successful thus far this time around].
And of course, a player turned manager could make the hall of fame for his playing accomplishments while he is currently active as a manager.
I am not sure what is the “normal” delay between the retirement and the Hall of Fame induction for baseball managers/coaches; but Tommmy Lasorda was inducted one year after his retirement. That could have been an exception though.
As a side note, Tommy got a heart attack the day after his final game.
The Veteran’s Committee inducted Lasorda. They’re not bound to the same rules, which is not without any controversy, that the normal HoF induction committee must abide by.