Bowden out

Everyone figured Jim Bowden wasn’t long for this world, and as you probably saw, over the weekend he resigned. Tom Boswell comes to bury Caesar, not to praise him:

Jim Bowden was never going to be the Nationals’ ultimate general manager, the man who, the franchise hoped, would oversee a potential champion. His methods were too suspect, his moods too unpredictable, his reputation too checkered, his enemies in the game too numerous. But he was useful. He worked like a dog. He sold the game. He was colorful and controversial. He took tiny budgets and, sometimes, made something of them. Or else, like last year, all the baling wire snapped. Given few chips, he couldn’t blow a big pot. And he landed castoffs and malcontents, occasionally for peanuts.

If being called a shoddy, moody, hated GM enamored with toolsy players of questionable attitude is the best someone can say of you in your professional obituary, one wonders why this was a resignation rather than a termination.