The Tigers suffered the same sweeping fate as the Rays over the weekend, getting brushed aside by a suprising Twins team. The Rays saw the same stinking feeling at the hands of the not-suprising-at-all Red Sox – a team that is quickly eliminating considerable amounts of hope in the AL East.
The dread Sox continued rolling on Monday, handing the Tigers their fourth loss in a row.
Tigers’ skipper and three time Manager of the Year winner, Jim Leyland’s ominous postgame quote:
“I’m not talking about that. There will be changes,” he said.
Soon thereafter, Jacque Jones was out of a job and the batting order went through a top-to-bottom shakeup.
Rays’ skip Joe Maddon, a five-time Coffee-Getter of the Year Award winner within the Angels organization, addressing getting swept:
“This is not devastating for this group,” Maddon said. “Sometimes people tend to get overwhelmingly negative, but we will rebound from this. When you play the Red Sox, things are going to happen in a negative way sometimes.”
(Warnings: The following is nothing new, and cell phones might cause brain tumors.)
It certainly would (still) be nice for Joe Maddon to remove the dandelion he has tucked behind each ear and walk, not skip, up to a press conference and spout some Leyland-esque horror. Coddling and babying ain’t doing the trick, there Joe Glow. And I can only assume that as sick as it makes me, the players can’t like being treated like a group of overly sensitive folks recovering from a divorce.
He seems to talk tough when the team is winning, and then revert to Happy Land when the team returns to its usual self. Perhaps he should switch this around.
Am I really still writing about this? I hope they don’t renew Maddon’s contract. Oh wait…
Jim Leyland quotes Maddon should steal:
“I don’t have starters or nonstarters. I have 25 players, and every one of them has to be ready to make some kind of contribution to a winning cause…”
“I’m going to treat them like men. But they have to accept the responsibility to act like a man. It’s that simple.”
“It’s not about showing somebody how hard you can throw, it’s about getting people out. You have to learn how to pitch.”
“If your style gets production, keep your style. If it doesn’t, you might want to change your style. … I want results. I don’t care how you do it.”
May 6th, 2008 at 7:21 am
BobR’s rant against wanting manager tirades in 5…4…3…2…1…go
May 6th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
haha
Good to see you posting again Jon, your posts always give me a good laugh
Aaron
May 7th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Great to see you’re still reading! It’s nice to finally have a real, live baseball team to write about. I definitely plan on posting on a more regular basis later in the season. And hopefully doing Rays’game recaps in October.