In what's clearly the most entertaining Philadelphia sports story of the new year, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel got into an altercation last night with local sports radio host Howard Eskin. It began during the post-game press conference after the Phillies' 8-1 loss to the Mets, when Eskin asked if a clubhouse tirade might help the Phils to improve on their 3-9 start- and a tirade was exactly what Eskin got:
Manuel blew his top in his office, letting loose with a profane tirade and challenging WIP-AM talk show host Howard Eskin, a longtime critic of Manuel, to a fight. Later, in the team clubhouse, he had to be restrained from going after Eskin by two Phillies coaches.You know, Charlie's reputation is that he's not tough enough, especially compared to his two-fisted predecessor, Larry Bowa. But this is Charlie's second near-fight in three years, after he nearly came to blows on the field last year with team official Dallas Green (At the time I dubbed the fight, between the then-62-year-old Manuel and the 72-year-old Green, "Age in the Cage.")
Manuel's not the best manager in the world, and I'm the first to admit that. But I've always maintained that he's better than most Philly fans give him credit for- they have had winning records the last two years, after all- and Philly fans' impressions of him have a lot more to do with the way he looks and talks than anything having to do with his performance as manager. And all this time, he's had no tougher critic than Eskin, who has referred to Manuel multiple times as the worst manager in the history of the game.
Either Charlie's getting passionate will spur the Phils to play harder for him (I seem to remember his fight with Green leading to a winning streak), or this will be his version of Rick Pitino's "negativity sucks" speech, and he'll be out the door by the end of April. I'd bet on the latter. Should make an interesting broadcast for Eskin today; the last two weeks were all-Imus, all the time, while yesterday's show was all about gun control.
But of course, the part of all is that SportsCenter tonight will do what they always do when there's a coaching meltdown: They'll air the highlight reel of Jim Mora, Hal McRae, Lee Elia, Chaney/Calipari, and all the others.
Another interesting observation- both Marcus Hayes and Sam Donnellon of the Daily News write up the incident without mentioning Eskin by name, referring to him several times only as "a local radio personality," the way they dance around the names of Middle Eastern countries on "24." Has Eskin, who briefly wrote a DN column in the '80s, been blacklisted by the paper? Maybe they have a Star Tribune/"Cleveland Baseball Team" thing going.
And finally, I agree with Tom:
If ever there was a time to question Charlie Manuel's judgment, it was last evening. He should have punched Eskin in the nose.Posted by Stephen Silver at April 18, 2007 04:34 PM
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