With only 30 jobs available, someone who wants to manage in the major leagues, with rare exception, will take a job when it is offered, no matter how bad the team offering the job is. That’s why Tony DeFrancesco accepted the role of interim manager of the Houston Astros Aug. 19 when they had a 39-82 record, and that’s why Bo Porter accepted the job for 2013 despite the Astros’ major league-worst 55-107 record. If a guy wants to be a manager, he can ill afford to say, no thanks, you’re not good enough; I’ll wait for the next offer.

That’s why someone will take the Colorado Rockies’ job when it is offered despite the zany developments that prompted Jim Tracy to resign and walk away from a $1.4 million salary for next year. Tracy is a deeply experienced manager, but he has spent much of his career managing bad teams in Colorado and Pittsburgh, and he apparently didn’t see the sense of managing another bad Rockies team under the conditions created in the last several months.

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Even Bobby Valentine’s sincerest sycophants would be hard pressed to come up with a high rating in any category for Valentine and the Boston Red Sox this year, but they surely have earned designation as the No. 1 flop of the season. Certainly, there were other flops – the newly anointed Miami Marlins and the $160 million Anaheim Angels, for two, and as an individual, Theo Epstein, the exalted chief of the Chicago Cubs.

And in their own special category, the sad-sack Pittsburgh Pirates, who fooled their followers after 19 consecutive losing seasons by building a won-loss record 16 games over .500 (63-47) Aug. 8, then struggling with a 16-36 record the rest of the season, extending their futility to two decades.

But how could anyone top the embarrassment in Boston, where books used to be banned and now Valentine is?

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Don’t expect the Detroit Tigers to feel sorry for the Chicago White Sox, from whom they snatched the American League Central championship on the third-to-last day of the season after the White Sox had led the division for all but eight days since May 28. In 2009 the Tigers were in first place from May 10 until the next-to-last day of the season when the Minnesota Twins tied them. The teams remained tied by winning their last regularly scheduled games, and the Twins won a one-game playoff, 6-5 in 12 innings, two days later.

The Tigers’ triumph this season is notable for two primary reasons: they were favored to win the division title but had to rally late to do it, and they did it behind the awesome, rare performance of Miguel Cabrera, their third baseman, who became the first winner of the Triple Crown since Carl Yastrzemski of Boston in 1967.

Cabrera’s .330 batting average, 44 home runs and 139 runs batted in led the American League and should make him the A.L. most valuable player. His value to the Tigers was epitomized in the game in which they clinched the title. He collected four hits, including a home run, in the 6-3 victory over Kansas City.

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