Red Sox Expanding Managerial Search. Finally the Ownership is doing Something Right.

Please raise your hands if you found yourself pounding your fist on the table because we lost out on Dale Sveum.  I thought so.  Dead silence.  Have any of these potential replacements for Terry Francona’s slot thrilled you?  I certainly haven’t been pumping my fist with joy when the list came out.  Now the Sox want a person with Managerial experience.  Suddenly, Bobby Valentine’s name gets pulled out of a hat.  Bravo!!!!  You may or may not like Bobby Valentine, but at least it is a step in the right direction.  A person with character and experience.

Was it a coincidence that the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs interviewed the same exact people for the job?  Of course not.  Theo Epstein and Ben Cherington were working close together when Francona departed identifying suitable candidates.  Then Theo jumps ship to Chicago and voila, both teams have the exact same list.  So who was plagiarizing who here?  I would say these were Theo’s first choices and Ben Cherington went along with it.  That is until; Red Sox ownership sat down with Sveum over lunch and wasn’t overly impressed.  They may have undermined Ben Cherington in the process but who cares.  They own the team and they will be judged on how this team performs based on this decision.  If you owned the team, would you be more like Jerry Jones of the Cowboys or someone who delegates all of the responsibility to your General Manager?  I’m not a fan of Jerry Jones or Papa Steinbrenner, but what they did worked.  This ownership team has done a tremendous job up to this point.  They have won two championships after an 86 year drought.  They have reconstructed Fenway Park so we fans have a great experience every time out.  But, I think they let the “Team” slip thru their fingertips a little and now they are trying to get a grip back on things.

The Red Sox do need an experienced manager.  So why not bring in a Bobby Valentine.  There are plenty of good unemployed managers out there.  Why not look at people like Eric Wedge; he had success with Cleveland for awhile.  Where is Willie Randolph theses days, call him up and bring him in.  Is Lou Pinella happy in retirement?  Lou Pinella had a fist fight as manager with Cincinnati Reds with closer Rob Dibble, can you imagine him with Josh Beckett.  Beckett wouldn’t even utter the word beer, never mind drink one.

No offense to any of the candidates they have interviewed already.  They may turn out to be great managers someday and maybe we will find ourselves pounding our fist on the table in the future.  But as the old saying goes, “the future is now.”  We can ill afford to be experimenting with inexperience.  Bring in the old dogs that still have some bite left in them and get this house back in order.

I tip my hat to the ownership team on this one.  You can’t worry about hard feelings when you have a team with this much talent lacking leadership.  The funny thing about all of this is the best available unemployed manager out there is none other than; Terry Francona.  Odd isn’t it?  Sometimes you don’t know how good you had it.

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