THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Since this is the internet and everything you say here gets written in stone, I’ll say this anyways:

I live in Portage, MI, which is like 15 mins from downtown Kalamazoo, MI—home town of Derek Jeter (obviously) and Adam Hall, who is playing in Tampa this year. My Brother went out to have some drinks this past friday and he was out with a few friends of his that are involved in hockey (my brother’s an assistant coach for our old high school team, and has participated in USA hockey clinics in northern MI and Buffalo and whatnot, to be certified). Anyways (I’m rambling), Adam’s brother, Mike Hall, used to work at this hockey pro-shop here in town that my brother worked at for like 8 years. Mike came out with them and he said that Adam told him that the entire Lightning roster told Melrose that they didn’t want to see him again and that no one respected him at all. He (Melrose) then, the next day, didn’t show up to practice and that had a big swirl from the media pick it up and whatnot. Adam apparently told Mike Hall that Tocchet is the only one that the players would even respond to and it was just a whole bunch of ugliness.

Ahh, the joys of professional sports.

How does a team hire a head coach or manager that is a complete disaster, which it sounds like Melrose turned out to be (at least from the players’ perspective)?  Isn’t there any kind of vetting process?

That being said, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:  Managers and coaches don’t get “fired.” They get a very long paid vacation.  Certainly it is a blow to their ego or what have you, and many, if not most, of them would prefer to be “working” while collecting their paychecks.  But…

I have zero sympathy for a person that gets “fired” from a job that pays anywhere from several thousand to several million dollars a year and they still get to keep the money.  Zero.  How many of you would shed any tears if you got “fired” from your jobs and still collected your full salary for a year or two?  Even if you liked your job.

Plus, a team has to be pretty stupid to give someone a 1,2, or 3-year contract for a lot of money (in normal person’s terms) and then “fire” but still pay them.  Either you likely didn’t do a very good job in hiring them or you are not “firing” them for a good reason.

I don’t follow hockey that closely any more, but if I remember correctly, the current GM was just hired himself, and he didn’t hire Melrose, which was the root of the problem.

On the bright side, at least we get Barry back on ESPN. Well hopefully anyway…

This is not an isolated incident. I believe that I read the Lightning now are paying 3 separate coaches to not coach their team.

I have zero sympathy for coaches, or anyone involved in the highest level of professional sports that get fired/cut/whatever and still have large portions of their contracts guaranteed (signing bonuses in the NFL) or their entire contracts guaranteed (NBA, right?).

I would have to look it up, but I’m like 90% sure that the GM is the same guy, however, Tampa Bay was purchased this summer by a young movie director. The old owner was Bill Davidson who owns the Detroit Pistons.

I forgot to add this to my first post, but, Mike Hall said that in a game this year the owner came down in between periods, wrote new power play units on the board and said “so and so” will be starting the next period and then walked out. So, this was dysfunctional from the beginning. No sympathy for Melrose, but I do hate seeing players running things rather than management. Such is the nature of the beast, I suppose, when players make double, triple, or quadruple what their “bosses” make.

That’s good stuff.

We need that hot chick to get back to the Tampa beat and give us the stories here…

Quasi-confirmation that the owner puts plays on the board:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/allan_muir/11/14/melrose.firing.reaction/index.html?eref=T1

Also a history lesson about NBA’s Cavaliers…

Ahh, I was wrong, they did bring in a new GM. But that situation is clearly worse than “dysfunctional” can imply.

As bad as your readership probably thinks some MLB teams are run, the NHL has some absolute circuses.  Per capita, there are way more moves made that seem to have zero chance of success and then proceed to turn out that way.  Tampa was a disaster that everybody in the world could see coming.

Owners respond:

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/nov/18/sp-a-qa-session-with-oren-koules/sports/

Not really worth reading, other than their claim that the players did not specifically talk to them…