Sometimes things don’t always work out the way you’d like them to. I’m not talking about a team winning the World Series or a pitcher winning 20 games. I’m talking about the status of an individual.

Jim Bowden is the person I have in mind. The recently resigned general manager of the Washington Nationals, Bowden is not the most liked executive in baseball. When he was named interim general manager in November 2004, executives of other clubs raised questions with the commissioner’s office, which was responsible for the appointment.

There was one question in particular: How can you do that?

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Baseball writers spend a lot of time in press boxes together, and the close and frequent proximity does not always foster positive relationships. For example, Joel Sherman of the New York Post and I do not have any kind of relationship. We have not talked for years. There’s no need to bore you with the reasons why. But the other day his column caught my attention. Not many of his columns do. He writes them, after all, for the New York Post.

But this was a column about Mike Piazza and the suspicion that he used steroids. As I read it, I was thinking I have to send Sherman an e-mail commending and congratulating him for raising the issue with Piazza. It’s a subject that was long overdue.

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The four-man pitching rotation became extinct a long time ago. Teams began adding a fifth starter to their rotations in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and the four-man rotation was basically gone by the ’80s. Three decades later even the occasional pitcher starting on three days of rest instead of four has become virtually extinct.

According to research by Elias Sports Bureau, less than one percent of last season’s games were started by pitchers on fewer than four days of rest. Elias traced the decline:

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