Wednesday, September 05, 2001
Bowden, Boone will duck ax
The Cincinnati Reds clinched a losing season Tuesday night but were nowhere close to identifying a fall guy.
Chief operating officer John Allen is dispensing votes of confidence as if they were so many sticks of chewing gum. He's inclined to attribute the Reds' worst season in two decades to injuries. He's leaning toward leaving poor enough alone.
“I've heard baseball people say you never blame a bad season on injuries,” Allen said Tuesday night. “But I don't see how you can ignore the injuries we've had with a small-market or low-revenue club. ... You're always concerned with the reaction of the fans, but I think we look at the situation and the circumstances behind a lot of things that happened.”
Translated: general manager Jim Bowden and field manager Bob Boone probably have enough political cover to keep their jobs despite the standings and their industry's infamous intolerance of failure. They are being judged on a sliding scale rather than raw percentages. They are being cut a break.
Unusual clemency
Only once in the last seven decades have the Reds won so seldom without experiencing at least one major change in management. That was in 1945, when extenuating circumstances included combat. Every other time since 1932, somebody has gotten sacked when a Reds season went this badly. If memory serves, the Reds fired Jack McKeon after successive second-place finishes.
The baseball business is notoriously unforgiving. The New York Yankees twice have fired franchise icons — Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra — when they failed to win the seventh game of the World Series. The second-place Boston Red Sox may have fired the Manager of the Year last month when they sacked Jimy Williams.
Should Bowden and Boone survive, it will be viewed in some sectors as a testament to the Reds' tolerance and in others as proof of their penny-pinching. Bowden has two years and roughly $1 million remaining on his contract. Boone has one year left (plus an option) in the $350,000 range. Neither salary is too large for Carl Lindner to swallow, but absent a new collective bargaining agreement, there's no guarantee the 2002 season will be played. It doesn't make sense to pay two people to do the same job when there's at least some chance there will be no job to do.<
Maybe no one's to blame
Yet there's also the fairness factor. If you accept the argument that injuries were primarily responsible for the Reds' predicament, how do you go about distributing blame? Should Bowden be punished for Lindner's decision to sign Barry Larkin to a three-year, $27 million contract at age 36? Should Boone be held accountable for the state of Ken Griffey Jr.'s hamstrings?
“Watching Junior's play in the month of August, you sit here and say, "What if we would have had that for four more months?' ” Allen said. “There are a lot of factors that have contributed to where we're at that go into the overall equation.”
If you don't accept the injuries argument, the equation gets more complicated. Is Boone's tendency to overmanage a function of his personality or his personnel? Is Bowden's rancorous relationship with some of his players (and Ron Oester) the predictable byproduct of contract negotiations or evidence of a deeper distrust?
For the answers, wait 'til next year.
E-mail tsullivan@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/sullivan.
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SULLIVAN: Bowden, Boone will duck ax
