Thoughts on Bobby Cox

I realize that I’ve totally whiffed on the Bobby Cox story. It just fell through the cracks inasmuch as I was taken away from my computer yesterday afternoon and by the time I got to NBC this morning someone else had already hit it up. This being the Internet, it now kind of feels like old news. But you know how I feel by now. I’m happy that Bobby will be back. I’m also happy that there’s an actual end point so he doesn’t have a Torre-in-New York type of ending or die in the saddle or otherwise go out with something other than a standing ovation. I don’t believe that things like “Let’s win it for Bobby!” actually matter, but I’d still like to see the Braves win it for Bobby next year.

Other thoughts: I’d like to think that having a year to really think it over will cause the Braves to talk themselves out of Terry Pendleton as the next manager, but most people seem to think he’s the heir apparant. For my part, I think it would be a hell of a lot of fun to install Chipper Jones as a player-manager, but we don’t seem to do that sort of thing these days, do we? And to be honest, I have no reason to believe that Chipper would be better than Pendleton. Indeed, if I’m objective I have to admt that there are many reasons to think he’d be worse. I just happen to like the idea of player-managers and of not having Chipper just peter out like he seems to be doing now.

Maybe that’s what all of this about. Maybe all of my thinking on this kind of stuff — my thinking about Bobby, Chipper and before it Ernie Harwell and Skip Caray and Maddux and everyone else — is really about me feeling old. About the giants of my youth fading away. I don’t know that it had to do with the strike itself, but 1995 is really the first year I think of myself as being a genuine grownup baseball fan. I didn’t discover sabermetrics and stuff until a few years later, but by 1995 I truly started the process of becoming more objective about the game and less swayed by emotional appeals and fandom and all of that. I treat figures who were on the scene before 1995 differently than those who came after and pretty soon all of those pre-1995 guys will be gone. Very soon in terms of players, but eventually as managers and broadcasters too. Like the man sang: everyone I know goes away in the end.

So if it ends, I want it to end well. I want Bobby to go out with certainty and glory, and he seems like he will. I want Chipper to leave the game on his terms. Skip Caray dying when he did really hit me hard. Harwell leaving having attained old age and, more importantly, being possessed of a calm certainty and grace less so. I sometimes wish Maddux had left on top, but he was still useful and seemed to leave content from a sport that so often tells people they’re no longer wanted.

I want all of those pre-1995 guys to have nice little curtain calls and leave with smiles on their faces, not unlike stage players after a performance. Because to me they were performers in ways that more recent players never have been. I didn’t understand what made them tick when they burst on the scene so — unfair as it may be — I always held their accomplishments in a higher regard than I do for players I’ve seen come up and develop since then. Like they were magic in some strange way, even if I know better now.

Even Gary Sheffield.


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YankeesfanLen
14 years ago

Here’s where the end always become melancholy when I look upon Pettitte, Posada, Rivera, and ultimately, yes, ARod as it did with Tino, Bernie, and then even Giambi and Abreu and will come with Matsui and Damon before their time, but soon.
My “coming of age” as it be was with the 1980 Phillies and Mike Schmidt and the ten years (mostly pitiful) before.
And this becomes the most tangible connect between squabbling baseball fans and why they never give up on the game. There are countless super stars over the prized history and personal remembrances of each is part of an individual’s view of the magnificent game.  And they are completely unique which is what sparks such passion.
So when I hear about steroids ruining the game I can pass it off as merely a phase that has been resolved and won’t ever change things, just the way that night games, retro-stadiums, designated hitters, wild cards come and are accepted or rejected at the fans discretion through belabored management reaction.
So let’s hear it for baseball, indicative of the human condition.

Kevin S.
14 years ago

Craig, any idea if Maddux is still on good terms with the team?  Not only is he a baseball genius, his older brother is probably one of the top three pitching coaches in the game.  Think Braves fans would get geeked up about Maddux/Maddux ‘11?

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

I don’t think he’s on bad terms, but he lives in Las Vegas and seems to really want to stay out west, so I can’t see him taking that kind of a job. At least not in Atlanta.

Jick
14 years ago

I think he also said he’s going to wait until his kids graduate high school before he goes back into the game.

Chris H.
14 years ago

OK, so the first time I read “Terry Pendleton” I actually misread it as “Terry Bevington” and wondered WTF Atlanta was thinking.

Sorry, got nuthin’ else to add to this.

Motherscratcher
14 years ago

On a very loose tangent: “everyone I know goes away in the end”

Kermit covers Johnny covers Trent.  If you haven’t seen it you should.  Here’s a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57ta7mkgrOU

Carry on.

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

I’ve seen that MS. Died laughing.  In order from best to worst version of that song:

Cash > Frog > Reznor.

Mostly because I believe that Cash and the Frog convincingly imbue the lyrics with actual life experiences, whereas I’m pretty sure the worst thing that ever happened to Trent Reznor was when his dog fell off that ledge before NIN played a concert here in Columbus back in the 90s. Whiny little punk.

Kevin S.
14 years ago

I do believe it’s against the rules now.  Even if you assume he wasn’t gambling on any of the games he player-managed, Rose actively hurt his teams by inserting himself into the lineup to chase down Cobb long after he lost effectiveness as a hitter.

Gerry
14 years ago

There has only been one player-manager in the last 30 years, and he’s not a great precedent.