Baseball Managers

For such a small country, Cuba sure can cause a lot of angst in the United States. Just ask Ozzie Guillen. Guillen expressed admiration for Cuban leader Fidel Castro in a recent Time magazine article.  For that, he was suspended from his job. Who is Guillen? A diplomat? An elected official? Naw, he's a baseball manager, of the Miami Marlins.  And for his sins, he was suspended five games by his own team. And you thought Al Gore got jobbed in Florida. On Tuesday, Guillen walked the plank at a news conference: "I was thinking in Spanish and I said it wrong in English," said Guillen, who answered questions in both his native Spanish and English during the press conference.

It's a developer's dream - nearly 300 empty acres above downtown Los Angeles, close to three major freeways and visited by millions each year. Could Chavez Ravine be the next big real estate play in town? The new owner of the Dodgers, Guggenheim Baseball Management, is keeping tight-lipped about its plans for the parking lots and hillsides surrounding Dodger Stadium, which it will own jointly with departing team owner Frank McCourt if the sale closes as expected April 30. INTERACTIVE: Breakdown of Dodger property The Dodgers disclosed some details of the McCourt-Guggenheim land partnership in the team's bankruptcy case, but those documents were under seal - and the team quickly withdrew them after The Times asked the bankruptcy judge to release them publicly.

In his 12 seasons managing four major league teams, including the Angels, Buck Rodgers was never short on candor. So it's no surprise that, with the third Western Baseball League season approaching for the Vigilantes (formerly the Long Beach Barricuda and Riptide), Rodgers doesn't flinch in his assessment of the two-time single-A independent league champions. "I've had to lower my standards a bit," Rodgers said. "I can't look at them as everyday major leaguers.

For such a small country, Cuba sure can cause a lot of angst in the United States. Just ask Ozzie Guillen. Guillen expressed admiration for Cuban leader Fidel Castro in a recent Time magazine article.  For that, he was suspended from his job. Who is Guillen? A diplomat? An elected official? Naw, he's a baseball manager, of the Miami Marlins.  And for his sins, he was suspended five games by his own team. And you thought Al Gore got jobbed in Florida. On Tuesday, Guillen walked the plank at a news conference: "I was thinking in Spanish and I said it wrong in English," said Guillen, who answered questions in both his native Spanish and English during the press conference.

Most of all, Buck Rodgers savored the small pleasures Friday, upon his return to managing the Angels, the sounds and atmosphere he missed so keenly during his absence. "I was walking in through left field, through Luis Polonia's position, and (trainer) Rick Smith came up to me and I knew I was back," Rodgers said. "Just getting here, saying hello to somebody, smelling the grass, the simple things. Those told me I was back."

It could be the final weekend of his final year as the respected manager of the Montreal Expos. Felipe Alou could be managing the Dodgers next year. "I hear they're going to ask permission to talk to me and that it's also possible the Expos will grant me permission to talk," Alou said Thursday as his team prepared to begin a four-game series against Mark McGwire and the St. Louis Cardinals. Will he talk?

While the Dodgers are moving to complete their managerial search, Dusty Baker took himself off the market. Baker, who will probably be named manager of the year for the third time, reached an agreement with the San Francisco Giants on a two-year extension Thursday. Meanwhile, Dodger President Bob Graziano and General Manager Kevin Malone plan to interview New York Yankee coaches Willie Randolph and Chris Chambliss during the World Series, which begins Saturday at Yankee Stadium.

Changes all around. That should be the unofficial slogan of the Vigilantes, who begin their second season of minor league baseball in Mission Viejo on Saturday night at Saddleback College against the Chico Heat, the defending Western Baseball League champion. The Vigilantes, who won Western League titles in 1995 and '96 while in Long Beach, finished 39-51 last season. So Manager Buck Rodgers, who became a minority owner in the off-season, and the front office, got busy.

Pittsburgh Manager Jim Leyland, frustrated by the cash-strapped franchise's cost-cutting moves, Tuesday announced his resignation effective at the end of the season. Leyland said he will seek a position with a team that has an interim manager and doesn't face a long rebuilding process, leaving the Angels and the Florida Marlins as favorites. Leyland, 51, is a two-time National League manager of the year who led the Pirates to three consecutive Eastern Division championships from 1990-92.

In the entire history of Hollywood, there has probably never been a movie that was such a total creative failure--so badly conceived, written, cast and directed--that it didn't have at least one rabid fan. What makes the nearly universally panned "The Bonfire of the Vanities" special is that its most ardent booster has just been put in charge of a major studio. "This is the best movie I've been involved with in the history of my administration," former Warner Bros.

Neither Major League Baseball nor Fox Sports plans to try to stop the sale of the Dodgers, virtually ensuring that the deal will receive court approval Friday. MLB and Fox, the Dodgers' two most formidable combatants in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, expressed relatively minor concerns Tuesday, the deadline for parties to object to the sale. Frank McCourt, the Dodgers' outgoing owner, agreed last month to sell the team to Guggenheim Baseball Management for $2.15 billion. MLB has been frustrated by what it considers a lack of information about that transaction — and a separate one in which McCourt and Guggenheim will jointly own the Dodger Stadium parking lots.

Bud Black hung on to win this race. Ron Gardenhire became a first-time Manager of the Year, too, after so many near misses. A month after his San Diego Padres were knocked out of the playoff chase on the final day, Black edged the Cincinnati Reds' Dusty Baker by one point for the National League award Wednesday. "I guess this vote was sort of like our season, it came down to the wire," Black said. Gardenhire was the clear choice in the American League, earning the honor after five times as the runner-up.

Dodger Stadium was the place to be last October. The Dodgers won the most games of any team in the National League. With a charismatic braided slugger and a Hall of Fame-worthy manager leading the way, the Dodgers delighted sellout crowds and finished three victories shy of the World Series. Dodger Stadium will sit empty this October. While the owners battle in divorce court over who owns the Dodgers, the team has lost more games than it has won. The crowds are gone. So is the slugger, Manny Ramirez.

The questions come at Joe Torre every day, sometimes as fiercely as a Clayton Kershaw fastball, sometimes with the trickiness of a backdoor slider. Will he return to manage the Dodgers next season? If he's not sure, which way is he leaning? Will his choice be influenced by the Dodgers' likely failure to make the playoffs, which would be his first experience as a spectator after 12 straight postseason appearances with the New York Yankees and two with the Dodgers? Torre, who in March ended negotiations to extend his three-year, $13-million contract, said last month he would make a decision by Labor Day. The holiday will arrive Monday with the Dodgers eight games behind the stumbling San Diego Padres after a 3-0 loss to the San Francisco Giants, but without an announcement from Torre.

Jim Tracy, whom the Colorado Rockies promoted to manager from bench coach after Clint Hurdle was fired in late May, was selected National League manager of the year Wednesday. Less than an hour after the announcement, the Rockies rewarded Tracy with a three-year contract. The Rockies were 74-42 under Tracy and won the NL wild-card spot. Colorado lost to Philadelphia in the playoffs. "What we're talking about this afternoon, it's probably as flattering an experience as I've come to realize during the course of my professional career in athletics," Tracy said.

Mike Scioscia joked that his hamburger did not taste very good the other night, on the long flight home from New York. Arte Moreno ought to have ordered Scioscia a juicy filet mignon Monday night, in tribute to the way his manager carved up the New York Yankees. Seldom does a manager have this much impact on a playoff game. While the Yankees' Joe Girardi was pushing every button he could find, including the lose-the-designated-hitter button and the overmanage-the-bullpen button, Scioscia hit just the right amount of buttons, all just right.

It could be the final weekend of his final year as the respected manager of the Montreal Expos. Felipe Alou could be managing the Dodgers next year. "I hear they're going to ask permission to talk to me and that it's also possible the Expos will grant me permission to talk," Alou said Thursday as his team prepared to begin a four-game series against Mark McGwire and the St. Louis Cardinals. Will he talk?

Although his injury-riddled team is still alive in the division and wild-card races, it was not a surprise when Jimy Williams was fired as Boston Red Sox manager Thursday and replaced by pitching coach Joe Kerrigan.

A series like this one, a sloggy stretch of season like this one, is precisely when you need Joe Torre. Why paying him all those millions to come west made sense. Why, even after a heartbreaking, sweep-denying loss against the Giants on Wednesday afternoon, there's no reason for fear and loathing in Dodgersland. Torre has been there, done that. He has always kept his head. Always, since the mid-1990s and New York at least, had a knack for keeping matters clear and simple during times like these.

That the Colorado Rockies are on a big roll, at this juncture, cannot be questioned. But the question is, how? Did firing manager Clint Hurdle and replacing him with bench coach Jim Tracy really spark that much of a turnaround? Or was the clubhouse in such a funk that a change, any change, would have been positive? Some suggest the answer is this: Guilt. "We know we messed up, we basically got Hurdle fired, and we have to turn this thing around," shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said.