PRET A MANAGER: Gammons has a very good column this week on the NFL-like "managing carousel" going on in baseball right now, as several different managers have already or will be jumping straight from one team to another (something generally rare in baseball these days). The New York Mets wanted Lou Piniella but got Oakland's Art Howe, much to the consternation of Mets fans, who are seriously now starting to rival Red Sox fans when it comes to pessimism, Yankee-inferiority, and self-loathing. Much like every single Jets loss in the two years after Bill Parcells retired, Art Howe (a fine manager who took a horrible, low-budget Oakland team and made it into a perennial contender) won't be able to lose any games in 2003 without the Shea fans pining for Sweet Lou. 'Cause after all, a manager can't be good enough for the Mets unless he's been fired (twice) by the Yankees.
Piniella, meanwhile, opted to go back to his hometown of Tampa and take over as skipper of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a bad team that has a bad name, bad uniforms, a bad stadium, bad fans, bad management, bad ownership and bad players, and in five years of existance has had five losing seasons and has sniffed no glory whatsoever other than Wade Boggs' 3000th hit and the major league debut of former science teacher Jim Morris (as dramatized in the movie "The Rookie"). Piniella will have his work cut out for him, but if the 2002 season taught us anything it''s that baseball teams can come out of nowhere to win it all. Kind of like the Rams, Ravens, and Patriots.