Selecting the managers of the year doesn’t seem to be as glamorous or as challenging as deciding the most valuable players and the Cy Young award winners. But somebody has to do it, and members of the Baseball Writers Association have been doing the job every year since 1983.

But there is a new kid on the block, and unlike the BBWAA award, which goes to a manager in each league, the Chuck Tanner manager of the year award goes to only one recipient. Unlike the BBWAA awards, too, this new award “emphasizes a combination of total career managerial achievements and current successes.”

Keep reading...

When Willie Randolph was trying to get a major league managing job back when the best he could do was be a major league coach, he stubbornly resisted advice that he get managerial experience in the minor leagues. Randolph cited white managers who got major league jobs without having had minor league experience so if it was good enough for them it should be good enough for a black guy, he reasoned.

Too many years later, after a dozen unsuccessful interviews, Randolph got his chance, but he has already been fired from his first major league managerial job, and Chris Chambliss, his old teammate and coaching colleague, still waits for the chance to be fired from his first major league managing job. Why, I asked Chambliss at the recent Yankees’ old-timers game, did he think he had been shunned for 20 years.

Keep reading...

Scott Boras and the Boston Red Sox can’t seem to be involved in the same transaction without raising suspicion. Two years ago it was J.D. Drew. Now it’s Manny Ramirez.

Did the Red Sox tamper with Drew to induce him to opt out of his contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers? Though they never filed a complaint with the commissioner’s office, Dodgers officials privately believed that the Red Sox did. Red Sox officials and Boras said they did not.

Keep reading...