The business with Florida Manager Joe Girardi

[POJO_Risin]

Okay...he was fired and rehired the same day?

WTF is going on here?

Loria is a fucking Steinbrenner wannabe...and he's going to can the best young manager in the game...

nicely done...

[POJO_Risin]

It is interesting however...I wonder how Steinbrenner will perceive his relationship with Loria when he offers him the job in a couple of years when Torre retires...

[POJO_Risin]

Marlins owner 'doesn't want to talk about' Girardi
Aug. 26, 2006
CBS SportsLine.com wire reports

MIAMI -- Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria offered a curt assessment of his strained relationship with manager Joe Girardi, which may mean they'll soon part company.

"Everything is, you know, it's fine," Loria said Saturday. "But I don't want to talk about it."

Addressing his rift with Girardi for the first time since it became public three weeks ago, Loria repeatedly tried to steer the conversation away from the subject. He declined to endorse the job Girardi has done in his first year as manager, even though baseball's youngest team has far exceeded expectations.

"Managers obviously have some input during the course of the season," Loria said. "But what's important is the product that's put on the field by the baseball department as well. An amazing job was done by our organization before we started this season."

When told his comments might fuel the perception Girardi won't return next season, Loria told reporters: "If you guys want to come to those conclusions, OK. As far as I'm concerned, the only focus for me and the fans should be what's on the field, personalities aside."


Loria sort of addresses his rift with Girardi. (Getty Images)
The rift erupted at a game Aug. 6, when Loria berated an umpire while sitting behind the plate. From the dugout, Girardi told or asked the owner to stop, witnesses said. Loria angrily left his seat and confronted Girardi after the game during a 90-minute clubhouse meeting.

Loria has declined to comment on the episode or respond to published reports that he fired Girardi, then changed his mind.

"I don't want to talk about ancient history," Loria said shortly before Saturday's game against Milwaukee. "These kids deserve the opportunity to finish out the season unencumbered by peripheral issues like who said what or who did what."

Girardi, under contract through 2008, has repeatedly declined to discuss the matter or his future.

"I just talk about the guys on the field," he said after the Marlins won their sixth game in a row Saturday, 7-2 over the Brewers. "I just talk about baseball."

With the lowest payroll in the major leagues, the Marlins were widely projected to lose more than 100 games, but instead they're only four games behind NL wild-card leader Cincinnati.

AP NEWS
The Associated Press News Service

[POJO_Risin]

Man...Lorie is a fucking prick...

he thought THAT team could be doing what it is doing without Girardi?

lmfao...

what a fucking moron...

[POJO_Risin]

Girardi's side of it...

Marlins' Girardi says he's living the dream
Aug. 27, 2006
Chicago Tribune




MIAMI - It is August in South Florida, and thus it has just finished raining. The humidity clings like a woolen blanket dipped in honey, and as the Florida Marlins run through batting practice, the only thing more oppressive than the weather is the sight of the empty stadium in which they play.

This is not the way major league baseball was supposed to be exhibited - in rain-forest conditions on a football field before such a small fan base that the team considers its average attendance of 13,244 acceptable.

On this night, 9,316 show up to see the Marlins defeat the Washington Nationals, 3-1, in -what else? - a rain-delayed game. Florida would go on to sweep the three-game series and win four straight, closing within six games of .500 and staying in the National League wild-card hunt, six games back of St. Louis and Cincinnati.

This from a team many predicted would drop 100 or more games.

This is why many consider Joe Girardi a leading contender as NL Manager of the Year. If you ask his players, he ought to be running for governor. And since he still speaks optimistically about his future despite what he has endured the last three weeks, the Nobel Peace Prize might be in the offing.

Girardi, the pride of Peoria, Ill., Northwestern graduate, former Chicago Cubs catcher and three-time World Series ring-winner with the New York Yankees, is larger than life on the most obscure stage in baseball.

"I think I've lived a dream life," Girardi says. And this is after just 41 years, which makes him the second-youngest manager in the majors.

Much ado about nothing

That he is riding so high in his first year as a manager after retiring as a player two years ago is impressive enough. Considering that his name has already surfaced as a possible replacement for still-employed Cubs manager Dusty Baker, the phenom tag is apt.

Temporarily accelerating such speculation was his apparent dust-up with Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria three weeks ago after the boss began riding the umpires from his front-row seat. Girardi, still in the dugout, exchanged words with Loria.

Speculation was that Loria was giving Girardi a hard time for not challenging the calls or Girardi was telling the owner in no uncertain terms to shut up.

A closed-door meeting involving Loria, Girardi and general manager Larry Beinfest followed the game. At one point the team began setting up a news conference, presumably to announce Girardi's dismissal or resignation.

But no announcement came, and since then Girardi and Loria have downplayed the incident. Girardi has reiterated that he has no out-clause or handshake agreement allowing him to leave to manage another team.

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But Girardi says he can see where the conjecture comes from.

"People know I grew up a Cub fan and I played for the Cubs, went to Northwestern, that my wife is a Chicago girl," he says. "I understand why people mention it.

"It is (flattering), but people always ask me about my job, and I say I don't worry much past tomorrow because we don't really know what life holds for us. I worry about my kids' future, but I don't really worry about mine."

A Florida guy, for now

Girardi makes no attempt to downplay his love for his boyhood team.

"My dream as a little boy was to play for the Chicago Cubs, and I got to do it twice," he says. "To me the second time was better than the first time because sometimes the first time you don't realize how special it is and you always think you're going to be there."

Asked for his most memorable experience in baseball, it's not the World Series but the first time he walked onto Wrigley Field. His coach at Northwestern, Ron Wellman, remembers calling Girardi one day during his second tour in Chicago and finding him somewhere unexpected.

"He said he was having a picnic with his kids in left field at Wrigley," Wellman says with a laugh. "They had a night game and it was noon, and he thought he had died and gone to heaven having that picnic on the outfield grass."

Wellman, now athletic director at Wake Forest, says it's natural to assume Girardi would want to one day manage the Cubs.

"But I don't think Joe is there at all," Wellman says. "He's totally committed to his (Florida) players. The worst thing that can happen is for his players to think he wants to be somewhere else, and he has not indicated that to anyone."

Conversely, if Girardi's players were any more dedicated to their boss, it would be cultlike. He took over a club that had unloaded seven of its eight starting position players, two starting pitchers and a closer from last season and had been stripped down to a $15 million payroll. But Girardi actually mentioned the words "World" and "Series" - as in, that's our goal this season - from the day he took the job.

His team, made up of top, though woefully inexperienced, prospects, might have scoffed, but it was hard not to take him seriously after the first week of spring training.

"He was just standing there watching us run one day, and I guess we were going too slow and he was giving us a hard time, and I said, `It's hot out here. Why don't you run with us?''' says pitcher Scott Olsen.

"Sure enough, he's out there the next day, outrunning everybody. Everybody was like, `Why did you make him do that?' I was like, `I didn't know he was that fast.'''

Matt Herges, one of four players on the roster to have played with or against Girardi, knew what the team was getting with its new manager.

"I never played with him, but I played with guys who did, and when I said I was going to Florida, they were all like, `Oh, man, I'd love to play for him,''' Herges says.

Picking up the slack

When the youngest team in the majors broke camp, however, the project was far from complete. On May 21, the Marlins were 11-31. But they won nine of their next 12 - it began with a three-game sweep of the Cubs - and 19 of the next 25 to rise to 30-37 by June 20 and into the thick of the wild-card race.

Girardi points to the Marlins' 5-4 come-from-behind victory in the second game of the Cubs' series as the turning point.

"The week before we had lost seven games in a row," he says. "Four of them were on walk-off home runs. I think our guys were getting a little bit tired, but when I talk about our resiliency, in those seven games, five times we had the lead.

"They kept coming back, but the next day it didn't mean anything, and I was proud of them. I told them, `It's going to turn. We are going to win some of these games, and we are going to come from behind and beat people because you play hard.'

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"Then all of a sudden they started to relax. You could see it. And they began to believe in themselves. We added some people in the bullpen, and things just started to click."

Though they have not quite replaced A.J. Burnett and Josh Beckett, the youngsters are making names for themselves. Olsen just notched his 10th victory and, with Josh Johnson and Ricky Nolasco's 11 apiece, is part of the first trio of rookies from the same team to win 10 or more games since the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers did it with Joe Black, Billy Loes and Ben Wade.

Second baseman Dan Uggla, who had never advanced past Double A in five minor-league seasons, is hitting .288 with 19 home runs and 71 RBI.

They do it the Girardi way, sprinting to first on every groundout and speeding around the bases on popups with two outs. Taking a page from the Yankees, no facial hair is allowed. But with this group, many probably haven't started shaving yet anyway.

"He's not a young guy in here," Olsen, 22, says of Girardi. "A lot of us are in our low 20s. He could be my dad.

"We look at it that he's been in some great organizations. He's seen the top of the mountain in New York, the pinnacle of baseball a couple of times, so that brings credibility right there."

A players' favorite

In 2001 Girardi was the leading vote-getter in a poll of players, managers and front-office personnel asked to pick the most likely future managers among active major-leaguers.

Veterans like Herges, Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera point to Girardi's hands-on approach.

"He's continually trying to teach us something, whether we're winning by eight runs or losing by one," Willis says. "Baseball is one of the few sports that you don't have to be the strongest or the fastest to be successful. He'll tell you himself he didn't like hitting, but he had knowledge of the game, things that don't necessarily go in the stat book."

Herges marvels at Girardi's attention to detail.

"He's very cerebral, not just because he went to Northwestern and was an engineering major," Herges says. "He just is. He's with it. He doesn't let anything go by. He sees it all. In the clubhouse, in the weight room, on the field, tendencies, he picks up signs. A lot of times, managers depend on other people to do things like that. But he's a perfectionist, to say the very least."

Cabrera, second in the NL with a .341 average, says Girardi won him over immediately.

"He gives everyone a chance and respects everybody," Cabrera says. "He goes out every day and says we're going to win, we're going to win. No matter what's happening, we're down 10 runs, he makes a move to make something happen. When you see that, you say, hey, this guy is here for one reason. He has done that for the whole year now, and we want to win for him."

Girardi preaches accountability and practices tough love with his youngest players.

"I tell them (when they struggle): `Don't think I've lost confidence in you. You're going back out there.' I believe in them," he says.

He recalls the reaction from friends and family when he took the job last October amid Loria's fire sale.

"People wanted to feel sorry for me, and I'm thinking, I'm one of the luckiest guys in the game of baseball," Girardi says. "I'm 41 years old, and I'm one of 30 people (managing) in the big leagues."

After the Loria incident, they worried about him again.

"I hated to see him go through it because you hate to see anyone you care about go through something like that, but it was quickly apparent once I talked to him that he knew how to handle it," says Wellman, who surprised Girardi last weekend by bringing a Northwestern baseball reunion to Miami after Girardi had to miss the last one.

"He's tenacious and bull-headed, but he knows how to not be bull-headed too. He knows how to survive."

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Indeed, Girardi makes the best of challenges like playing before small home crowds.

"I always joke that most of our players haven't played in front of this many people anyway because they came through the minor leagues," he says. "So we get 10,000 and the stadium looks empty, but it's still more than they're used to.

"I'm thankful for the fans (who) do come out. We have stadium issues here, and until (those) get worked out, it's hard. The other thing that's hard is you look at teams like the Cubs and Yankees and Dodgers and Reds, it's generation upon generation, kids were born in that state and the parents were fans, and then you're a fan and then you have kids. My dad was a Cub fan, and I was a Cub fan because of him."

Family guy

Despite the inherent disadvantages, however, he can hardly contain his enthusiasm when he talks about his job.

"I love it, I absolutely love it," he says. "As a player, eventually you start thinking there is life after baseball and I have to do something, and this is what I always wanted to do."

Joe and Kim Girardi, parents of Serena, 6, Dante, 4, and expecting a baby in two weeks, are taking each day as it comes.

"It's easy because they're in school, but there always comes an age they need you at home more," Girardi says. "So every year I'll make an evaluation of what's the right thing for my wife and our kids.

"But when I asked my kids if they liked me better as a manager or a broadcaster (which he did for the Yankees in 2004), they told me manager. I think they enjoy the field."

Especially the picnics.

[POJO_Risin]

OK...fuck the Yankees...

to the CUBS...

makes a lot of sense...