May 24, 1993
Off day
26-19
2nd place
4 games behind
REDS FIRE TONY PEREZ AS MANAGER AFTER ONLY 44 GAMES
Well, this will certainly help the image of the Cincinnati Reds with minority communities, won't it?
Tony Perez, a Cincinnati legend and member of the adored Big Red Machine, answered his telephone this morning and was fired by Reds General Manager Jim Bowden after a mere 44 games in his rookie year as skipper. Prison inmates running a team of convicts have longer tenures in charge than Perez was given. But the team involved makes the story all the more sinister as well as ironic. Perez is one of six minority managers in the big leagues (Cuban-American), a personal favorite of Reds owner Marge Schott, and oh yeah, Schott is suspended this season for making...insensitive racial remarks. In a twisted irony, if Schott were still owning the Reds, the minority hired for the job likely would not have been fired. Bowden was hired last October and had Perez imposed on him, yes, but...44 games as a manager and you throw him overboard? The optics on this are terrible save for the replacement, Davey Johnson, who was in the running last fall and hired as a consultant to keep him from going elsewhere. Johnson is clearly a good manager with pedigree, and if the Reds win soon, all will be forgiven and forgotten, but he's also the kind of manager who seems to enjoy an inflated reputation based upon a World Series win where it took him 7 games to beat an overmatched foe and required a monumental collapse by the opponent to enable it. Johnson's team was a favorite to win the World Series every year from 1985 to 1990, and he only made it once. He even blew an NLCS against a Dodger team his team had beaten 11 of 12 times in the season. But he does have a stellar reputation, earned or not, so his hiring will not raise quite the hackles it would if, say, Jeff Torborg (fired five days ago by the Mets) was hired for another chance to fail as manager.
Minority hiring in baseball has undoubtedly improved, and one can even argue that the usually cited statistic of "X% of players are black but they're only Y% of coaches" is flawed as a misuse of data. However, the advocates of minority hiring and advancement are given legitimate points when things like this happen. Perez was not Maury Wills, the Seattle manager hired largely on the basis of his name and skin color, who had a cocaine-induced fit and demanded his grounds crew design an illegal batter's box to stifle a tough hitter on the opposition. True, Perez had minimal experience (one year as the Reds hitting coach last year), but once you hired him, doesn't he deserve at least a full season's chance to see how he adjusts to situations? The issue with hiring - and for that matter firing - Perez isn't this job, it's the next job he likely will never get. The issue with minority hiring is NOT that minorities do not get opportunities (although it's obvious they don't get as many as their white contemporaries), it's the fact that if they fail, they do not get second chances. Consider Torborg as a prime example. He got hired by a Cleveland franchise in a thirty-year slumber and was given 2 1/2 seasons to try to succeed. He failed, but hey, it was Cleveland. So in 1989, the White Sox fired Jim Fregosi - who by the way is now manager of the first-place Phillies and after about the same number of games as Cleveland fired Torborg - and hired Torborg. After a one-year dip, the White Sox finished second twice, so naturally, they fired Torborg. Okay, one can argue he succeeded enough with Chicago another chance was possible, but Torborg then flamed out with the Mets. Guess whose name will be on the hiring list for the next few years? But if Torborg had been a black manager who failed in Cleveland, he probably never gets the second chance. (And before you say, "but Torborg replaced Frank Robinson, who got a second chance," well, Frank Robinson is a Hall of Famer player as Perez might be, and timing was right). That's the issue, not the first chance but the second chance. After all, very few GOOD teams are firing their manager, meaning any managerial hire tends to be on a poor team that needs to improve. And 44 games as a chance to win is an absolute joke.
I don't for one second think Bowden did this in a smarmy racist way, but I also think he at least should have given Perez a fair chance. It's difficult to look at this and not think his entire motivation was to do this while Schott couldn't stop him - because if he waited and she came back, it was too late - and he might lose Johnson.
The Braves continue their road trip by heading to - can you believe this - Cincinnati.
PROJECTED STARTERS:
Game 1 - Tom Glavine vs Tom Browning
Game 2 - Greg Maddux vs Tim Belcher
Game 3 - John Smoltz vs Jose Rijo
Off day
26-19
2nd place
4 games behind
REDS FIRE TONY PEREZ AS MANAGER AFTER ONLY 44 GAMES
Well, this will certainly help the image of the Cincinnati Reds with minority communities, won't it?
Tony Perez, a Cincinnati legend and member of the adored Big Red Machine, answered his telephone this morning and was fired by Reds General Manager Jim Bowden after a mere 44 games in his rookie year as skipper. Prison inmates running a team of convicts have longer tenures in charge than Perez was given. But the team involved makes the story all the more sinister as well as ironic. Perez is one of six minority managers in the big leagues (Cuban-American), a personal favorite of Reds owner Marge Schott, and oh yeah, Schott is suspended this season for making...insensitive racial remarks. In a twisted irony, if Schott were still owning the Reds, the minority hired for the job likely would not have been fired. Bowden was hired last October and had Perez imposed on him, yes, but...44 games as a manager and you throw him overboard? The optics on this are terrible save for the replacement, Davey Johnson, who was in the running last fall and hired as a consultant to keep him from going elsewhere. Johnson is clearly a good manager with pedigree, and if the Reds win soon, all will be forgiven and forgotten, but he's also the kind of manager who seems to enjoy an inflated reputation based upon a World Series win where it took him 7 games to beat an overmatched foe and required a monumental collapse by the opponent to enable it. Johnson's team was a favorite to win the World Series every year from 1985 to 1990, and he only made it once. He even blew an NLCS against a Dodger team his team had beaten 11 of 12 times in the season. But he does have a stellar reputation, earned or not, so his hiring will not raise quite the hackles it would if, say, Jeff Torborg (fired five days ago by the Mets) was hired for another chance to fail as manager.
Minority hiring in baseball has undoubtedly improved, and one can even argue that the usually cited statistic of "X% of players are black but they're only Y% of coaches" is flawed as a misuse of data. However, the advocates of minority hiring and advancement are given legitimate points when things like this happen. Perez was not Maury Wills, the Seattle manager hired largely on the basis of his name and skin color, who had a cocaine-induced fit and demanded his grounds crew design an illegal batter's box to stifle a tough hitter on the opposition. True, Perez had minimal experience (one year as the Reds hitting coach last year), but once you hired him, doesn't he deserve at least a full season's chance to see how he adjusts to situations? The issue with hiring - and for that matter firing - Perez isn't this job, it's the next job he likely will never get. The issue with minority hiring is NOT that minorities do not get opportunities (although it's obvious they don't get as many as their white contemporaries), it's the fact that if they fail, they do not get second chances. Consider Torborg as a prime example. He got hired by a Cleveland franchise in a thirty-year slumber and was given 2 1/2 seasons to try to succeed. He failed, but hey, it was Cleveland. So in 1989, the White Sox fired Jim Fregosi - who by the way is now manager of the first-place Phillies and after about the same number of games as Cleveland fired Torborg - and hired Torborg. After a one-year dip, the White Sox finished second twice, so naturally, they fired Torborg. Okay, one can argue he succeeded enough with Chicago another chance was possible, but Torborg then flamed out with the Mets. Guess whose name will be on the hiring list for the next few years? But if Torborg had been a black manager who failed in Cleveland, he probably never gets the second chance. (And before you say, "but Torborg replaced Frank Robinson, who got a second chance," well, Frank Robinson is a Hall of Famer player as Perez might be, and timing was right). That's the issue, not the first chance but the second chance. After all, very few GOOD teams are firing their manager, meaning any managerial hire tends to be on a poor team that needs to improve. And 44 games as a chance to win is an absolute joke.
I don't for one second think Bowden did this in a smarmy racist way, but I also think he at least should have given Perez a fair chance. It's difficult to look at this and not think his entire motivation was to do this while Schott couldn't stop him - because if he waited and she came back, it was too late - and he might lose Johnson.
The Braves continue their road trip by heading to - can you believe this - Cincinnati.
PROJECTED STARTERS:
Game 1 - Tom Glavine vs Tom Browning
Game 2 - Greg Maddux vs Tim Belcher
Game 3 - John Smoltz vs Jose Rijo
