The good news is, the Phillies don't have to play the Mets tomorrow. The bad news is the Phillies play the Nationals on Wednesday. They have an undeserved day off. If Charlie Manuel does what he's supposed to do, he does not give this unmotivated team the day off, but instead chews them out for putting him on the hot seat.
It's too early to blame Gillick (his maneuvers still may work out), and even though we know it's the players' lack of performance that is causing this demise, we also know that it is the demeanor and the attitude of the manager that can make or break a ball club.
We've known for sometime that Charlie Manuel is not the best man for the job. That man is coaching 3rd base for the evil pinstriped team in the American League. Knowing that we can't get Larry back, I'd like to scour the planet for other possible candidates... real quickly here are some guys I'd like to bring in... just for a few days, to light a fire under this team...
I think Sgt. Slaughter might be just the guy to hold this team accountable. If you miss a sign, 10o pushups. If you make an error, 100 pushups. If you strikeout with men on base, 200 pushups.
Secondly, in taking an entirely different route, I think it might be interesting to try to motivate this team. Tony Robbins, the motivational guru with giant "banana fingers" is just the guy to convince this team that they can do anything. Tony Robbins helps fat people get skinny. He helps stupid people become rich. He helps smokers quit smoking. He can do anything. I challenge him to motivate this team to do well.And a 3rd candidate is the legendary inventor of "Shaw Ball", Mr. Robert "Buzz" Shaw. Buzzy was my travel team coach from age 11 until 17. He is the best baseball mind I know and he has motivated kids of all kinds to play to the best of their potential. We had some prima-donnas, tough guys, guys who had just come out of reform school, just plain stupid kids and kids who would rather be somewhere else.
But somehow, Buzzy would get as all to play together and we were successful. I know we won at least 2 championships in the 6 years we played and I know we competed for at least 2 more. We were undefeated one year in the Montco Travel league. (we tied Roslyn, but we won't mention that on our resumes... we were still not defeated, right?)
Long live Warminster. We'll take on Southampton any day... name the place.
3 comments:
This sucks so bad. 3-9? I can hardly believe it. Manuel isn't solely at fault, but someone needs to go and he's the first one on my list!
After last night's tantrum, Manuel has to go. He has lost control of this team and himself.
i just flew up to philly this morning to sign some paperwork for a house... and i'm at Fado (15th and Locust) with my parents and all I see is Eskin and Manuel shouting at each other in the locker room.. there was no sound so I couldn't tell what was going on...
manuel has to go... he obviously doesn't know how to deal with this situation
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