Dan O’Dowd said “extend”
There must be a secret code these guys live by that we’re not aware of. The movers and shakers of the sports world don’t abide by the same rules we do. When they make a decision, it seems as baffling to the office worker as it does the construction worker. And what works in the sports world never really seems to fly in the world of the average joe. Strange decisions and unwarranted extensions. This ladies and gentlemen, is your 2012 Colorado Rockies.
I like Jim Tracy. He has a fatherly demeanor that I’m sure goes over well in the supposedly choir boy-esque Rockies clubhouse. But if you asked me last September how short his leash would be at the start of the season, I would have said “the dog that bit Kyle Dyer” short. The Rockies came off what was probably its most disappointing season ever – that’s saying a lot – and I figured Jim Tracy had just a few months into the 2012 campaign to straighten it out. If not, being in the last year of his contract, he’d be shown the door in a kindly, down home way befitting of his disposition. But Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd apparently didn’t watch most of the games we all saw because he saw fit to give Tracy an “indefinite” extension.
Oh it gets better. O’Dowd was quoted in the Denver Post as saying, “To say it extends just beyond 2013 would not do justice to Jim. It could be until he’s using a cane and having trouble getting onto the field. Quite honestly, it can be for whatever number of years Jim wants it to be for.” So unless Tracy is planning on using a cane this August, I don’t feel good about this at all.
This is all from a “handshake” agreement that has essentially set up Tracy to be the manager of the Rockies until he may be too old to pull one of the many crappy pitchers on the team. At least he’ll have an excuse for leaving them in too long. If you didn’t roll your eyes when you saw the news of Tracy’s “handshake” extension, you haven’t been following the team close enough. Tracy certainly should be given the benefit of the doubt, but that shouldn’t extend past another mid-summer flame out by this talented, yet under performing team. If the Rockies end up anywhere but the playoffs this season, this move will manifest as the cruel joke it kind of seems like right now.
The players love Tracy and not giving some public vote of confidence could weaken team morale. And Tracy could prove that last season was a fluke, and all of this will be moot. But after last year, is a vague extension that could last until we’re all old be the right move? I don’t know what goes on behind the closed doors of a major league sports franchise but it seems like logic gets tossed out of the window quite frequently. They live by a different set of rules, while you and still have to live by the same old two: Shut up and pay your money. If the pressure wasn’t on the Rockies, Jim Tracy and Dan O’Dowd before, it definitely is now.
