In 2000, a gritty bunch of veterans, role players, and youngsters almost did the impossible – beat the New York Yankees in a World Series. Led by the mad genius of Bobby Valentine, the silver foxiness of Steve Phillips, and the support of a well-capitalized owner who gladly stayed out of the public eye (Fred Wilpon), the 2000 New York Mets were almost at the top of baseball’s pyramid.
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Sports play a sizable role in my life – in some ways healthy (excuse to talk and hang out with friends and family) and unhealthy (excuse to pore over stats and pundit POVs at the expense of talking and hanging out with friends and family).
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The worlds of baseball and business have many similarities – money, dealing with the press, pleasing customers, etc. – but few jobs translate as well between both as the role of Manager.
Bruce Bochy, one of the longest tenured baseball managers (entering his 16th year in 2010) and the career leader in home runs by a player born in France, understands these parallels and has partnered with Ray Kroc Jr.
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Fantasy baseball fans and bloggers (ourselves included) sometimes fail to appreciate the human toll that baseball takes on its participants. They are not just statistics, commodities, and tabloid stories. They are flesh and blood.
Joe Torre and SI’s Tom Verducci recently penned ‘The Yankee Years’, a book that provided a glimpse into the challenges that a manager on a high-profile team must endure – the pressure to succeed, the delicate balance of egos, the difficulties in finding relievers that can pitch 120 games a year and still perform in the postseason, etc.
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It’s been 5 years since Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball” hit the shelves – making Billy Beane, OBP, and Chad Bradford household names and challenging many of the long-held assumptions about baseball.
But the real game is played on the field and managed by those who wear the uniform.
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