The news of the Phils decision to fire three members of the coaching staff, but to retain good ol' Uncle Cholly Manuel was greeted slightly better than the reception T.O. can expect to receive this Sunday at the Linc. After a season full of dubious decisions and managerial blunders, who can blame the masses of post season starved Phils phans for not getting the warm and fuzzies over the prospects of another year of Cholly at the helm?
Initially, I was a also pretty upset with the move as would have liked the Phils to bring in a strong leader like Lou Piniella, but the more I watched the interaction between the players and Manuel, I realize that the young, heart of this team will play all out for this guy and they really respect him. As any Phils phan can tell you, it was the heartless pricks like Burrell, Abreu, Bell and Lidle that killed this team, half of them are already gone and Pat the Former Bat will hopefully join them.
I believe that if they can fill this team out with a few more gamers and surround Cholly with an extremely strong bench coach to in effect turn him into a CEO (think Dick Vermeil with the 1999 Rams) instead of the play to play decision maker, I think this team CAN make the postseason next year. They also need to surround Cholly with a coaching staff that will whip these boys into shape so they come out of the shute ready to play in April. All this being said, here's the one caveat....While I believe Cholly can get you into postseason, if we somehow get there, he has HUGE potential to pull a Grady Little like meltdown. Sorry, I just had to throw that out there for posterity's sake.
I have to agree with everyone else, the man is devoid of any and all intelle ctual ability. One night during the Wild Card chase, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to his pre game interview with Wheels. After listening to the interview, I had one question....how in the world could someone hire this guy after sitting through a job interview where he bumbled through one grammatically incorrect sentence after another. Last time I checked, the manager is one of the faces of your organization. One would think that one of the job qualifications would be to communicate simple coherent messages to his staff, players and the press. I guess this is one of the bright side of him coming back...another whole season of his unintentionally funny pregame and post game interviews.
Let's hope its not the only bright side, because it's been WAY too long since we reached the postseason. I'm sitting here watching the Tigers fans go nuts watching postseason ball for the first time since 1984. Frankly, I'm extremely jealous. Gillick, Cholly and Co. have to find a way to make this happen next year.
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Speaking of Uncle Cholly, in the process of writing this entry, I came across the following picture:
Can you imagine this goober in Japan? If you think he's a fish out of water here in Philly, can you imagine how funny it would have been to see him in Japan? I need to check Youtube to see if I can find footage of him. This story has way TOO much potential.
2 comments:
Why do they let hitters wear those gigantic plates of plastic armor on their arms? They just stand there when the pitch comes inside and let it hit them on the arm. It is annoying. I watched Alex Rodriguez do it again last night.
Japan was the only place Charlie of Mayberry could be a marginal hitter. He was a poor hitter here in the majors. How he became a hitting coach and then went on to manage is beyond me.
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