“Cal Ripken oughta manage the Orioles. They can make Jim Palmer his pitching coach.”
“Hey, how ‘bout Brady Anderson. He played hard. He should be manager.”
Listen to Baltimore sports talk radio and fans who still follow the Orioles are quick with ideas who should manage the Orioles. Invariably, it’s almost always a former Oriole from their winning days. The fan sentiment is understandable. In uncertain times, it’s nice to have someone familiar to cling to; however, the truth is such speculation is absolutely ridiculous.
If the Orioles return to the playoffs in the not too distant future, the team that takes the field will have about as much to do with the Orioles of yesteryear as the Ravens team that won the Super Bowl had anything to do with the Colts who won Super Bowl III with Johnny Unitas.
Reality check, there is no way in hell Cal Ripken will ever manage a major league baseball team. He’s done his time in the trenches, the same goes for Jim Palmer.
The Orioles need a proven, experienced major league manager who knows how to work with today’s players. Finding such a person will be a daunting task for Andy McPhail and Peter Angelos given the Orioles thirteen years of futility, but if they are serious about being able to contend with the filthy rich Yankees and Red Sox, nothing less than the best field general available will do.
The one name that comes up frequently from the Orioles’ past who might be intriguing is that of Rick Dempsey. Dempsey managed AAA baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers, a strong organization, taking them to a Pacific League Championship. Dempsey, however, has been interviewed for the position in the past going back to the 1995 vacancy that resulted in the ill-fated hiring of Phil Regan. Rick Dempsey has the perfect personality to win over Baltimore fans – what they would like to call a genuine “blue collar” type of guy. Naturally, the expectations would be sky high with Dempsey. Could he provide the leadership and assemble a coaching staff that could take the current team from their retched state to being a winning franchise?
Perhaps the stakes are too high to offer up someone with Dempsey’s place in Orioles’ history as a sacrificial lamb.
Bobby Valentine and Eric Wedge have been interviewed. There might be some logic to staying put until the end of the season when more talent is available and make a clean start with the beginning of Spring Training in February, 2011.
The argument for an immediate change is the fate of the young players who have deteriorated noticeably this year. If they are to be the future of the franchise, they must led and developed properly or it will be much, much longer before any hopes of winning will return to Baltimore baseball.
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