The Pecan Park Eagle

“When it comes to firing baseball team managers, there’s a lot you can learn by observing.” – Yogi Berra (by parenthetical attribution)

The first problem I had with this column was the title. It belongs to Yogi Berra by cliché deflection.However, the sudden news that the Astros had fired Manager Brad Mills and two of his coaches after last night’s most recent bug-squashing 12-4 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks was just to big to ignore – almost as big as the news that third string Houston Texans QB got off a pretty good placement pass on his first try late in the 4th quarter of the NFL boys’ 20-9 win over the San Francisco 49ers.

The next problem I had was “why Millsie? Why now? And why, in particular, did they fire those two assistants, hitting coach Mike Barnett and first base coach Bobby Meacham?”

The coaching terminations were the easiest to decipher, Take Barnett, for example. The guy couldn’t take a team full of AA and AAA batters and turn them into real major league hitters. Of course, you fire him. – As for the first base coach, that’s fairly basic too. The guy’s not Jose Cruz. It’s probably time to put Jose back down there on the field. He’s got to be antsy to get out there again and serve as the reminder in these troubling times that the Astros were once a respected winning ball club.  At 7 AM this Sunday morning, we don’t know if you’re coming back the field, Jose Cruz, but we hope that you are.

Then I got to the question about Brad Mills and I realized the problem. I had already written that column back on July 27, 2012:

https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/how-to-lose-your-job-as-manager-of-the-bakery/

It was called, “How to Lose Your Job as Manager of the Bakery.”

The Astros are going to sort all of this stuff out at a 10 AM CDT press conference later this morning.

Have a nice Sunday, everybody! You too, Masseurs. Mills, Barnett, and Meacham. What happened to you is just part of baseball, right? It really has nothing to with bakeries, correct?