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MSNBC.com baseball analyst Ted Robinson gives his take on the hits and misses by players, managers, umpires and owners in Major League Baseball.

Robinson has an extensive background in covering the sport. He called the play-by-play on NBC's Major League Baseball Game of the Week telecasts from 1986-89. Additionally, he has been the lead play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Twins, the television and radio play-by-play voice of the San Francisco Giants, and a member of the New York Mets broadcast team.



Managerial burnout part of the game

Posted: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 10:52 AM

Some thoughts on managing in the big leagues. Mike Hargrove quits the Mariners and Jerry Narron is fired by the Reds. Narron garners sympathy from many quarters while I read too many questions about Hargrove’s intentions and makeup. Narron is portrayed a victim, and Hargrove is questioned for leaving in mid-season with Seattle playing surprisingly well.

Here’s a thought, offered with absolutely no inside knowledge of the Hargrove affair but rooted in 22 years of broadcasting in the majors: Baseball is a game of volume. It is a daily game, not Monday through Friday, but every day for eight months. That volume is often cited as the foundation of the game’s grip on its fans. It is always there, like the morning paper, the drive-time radio show or the classic soap opera. But it never takes a day off. Never. And that volume can be suffocating. Let it be offered here that whoever thought up the 162-game schedule is not a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

None of this should be a surprise for we know many stories of the toll baseball life takes on families. Read about Tony LaRussa in the Buzz Bissinger book or his recent Sports Illustrated profile and you’ll get a contemporary take on the matter.

Here’s the point: Burnout is possible and very real in baseball. Someone like Hargrove who went from playing almost directly into the dugout with no break has been absorbed in this life for four decades. At some point, the volume of games, press conferences, player meetings, ego massages, etc. can not only wear one down and it can wear one out.

If that is what happened to Hargrove, I understand. And, by the way, this is no knock on Narron, a decent man who paid the same price as many a manager charged with leading a bad team. But I think it is important to recognize and understand the way baseball managing has changed over the years.

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Comments

Leave Hargrove alone, he quit, don't try to make something out of something, like the press usually does.

Jane Sander (Sent Friday, July 06, 2007 3:22 PM)

I do not know the inside scoop on Hargrove, either, but I have followed his career and he has always been a gamer. Once the inside story is revealed, we will see that he probably had a good reason for quitting. Often, when a manager resigns in the middle of a division race, or is fired after a good performance, like Joe Girardi was, it is because of serious personality conflicts with uppper management. I would not be surprised if that was the case with Hargrove.

Brad Dennison, Buford, Georgia (Sent Monday, July 09, 2007 2:25 PM)

I respect Hargrove for admitting that he lost the passion, but to say he will never coach again is going to far.  He has had passion for baseball his whole life, and that does not go away even though some burnout must be worked through at times.  He should have made up some temporary medical reason and sort of put himself on the DL for a while, then try to come back to finish the season and evaluate it all afterward.  Maybe he had thought it all through, but it seemed like a very snap decision that he will likely regret when he is rested and the pennant races take shape.

Ike Johnson, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Sent Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:25 AM)

I don't know if managers in MLB have the same level of burnout as an NFL coach. No question it exists in baseball, but I think in the NFL it is a whole lot worse.

Steve Adams, New Hope, MN (Sent Thursday, July 12, 2007 2:28 AM)



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