Dave Miley deserved his shot, if that's what you call a one-year contract with a club option for a second year. Miley's "shot" amounts to one season with a team that won't be ready to win for two or three seasons, if everything goes right. Loyalty doesn't add up to much in sports. Dave Miley's 24 seasons in the shadows of the Reds organization finally earned him one season in the sun.

Is it enough? Do you say, as general manager Dan O'Brien did, that Miley "is part of this for the long term," then give the guy just one year to prove himself? We couldn't really evaluate Miley in two months last season. He was working with a roster full of Future, given that management had traded away half the Present and the other half was disabled.

Now, he'll have a healthy team. That's the good news. The rest is, it's not a very good team. O'Brien said he wanted to see "progress" from Miley's Reds. OK. Define progress.

Miley said he was pleased with the one year. "I'm very humbled," he said, and he was. There is something about riding buses for two decades that does that to a man. Maybe it's all the bumps in the road.

The players like him, because he knows the game and because he gives them all the credit while keeping all the blame. They didn't go into the tank on him in September. Miley is a bootstraps guy, a baseball lifer unchanged by the game's politics. Who you see is who you get.

He should have been given more than one year. O'Brien says that worked for him and his manager, explaining that he and Miley aren't yet very familiar with each other. Still, it's a very short leash for a rookie manager running a mediocre team, especially a manager whose strength is in developing players and whose yes-sir demeanor goes down easy in the front office.

So it makes you wonder:

Is Miley keeping the seat warm for Pete Rose?

If yes - and O'Brien denied the club even discussed Rose's possible return - it's as cynical a move as you'll ever see. Indications continue to be that Rose will agree to a full confession and a one-year probation if he is granted complete reinstatement, including the right to manage. If that's the case, Rose could be in the Reds' dugout in 2005. And Miley's loyalty will be asked to step aside.

You'd hate to think that was the thinking down there, but a one-year contract just seems too tidy a commitment not to harbor the suspicion. The last Reds manager to get a one-year deal was Tony Perez. We know what happened to him.

It's easy to say that, given the Reds' roster, it doesn't really matter who runs the dugout in 2004. Anyone can lose 90 games. But it's different with Miley, a good and decent man, who says he counts loyalty "first and foremost" among his character traits.

"It's a helluva dream come true," Miley said. He's a good soldier. Let's hope he doesn't die with his boots on.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com