Short Hops | Love Letters
There's nothing wrong with Philadelphia Phillies manager Larry Bowa that a roster full of 25 feisty, passionate, fire-breathing, bone-crunching, cheesesteak-eating, teeth-gnashing, win-at-all-costs, losing-makes-them-sick-in-the-gut players couldn't fix.
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| Larry Bowa's job status has been an on-going story in a bummer season.(AP) |
Armed with a roster full of guys who really care a lot but every so often allow their feelings to bruise like pears, well, this is what you get:
Click over to Google, type in the words "Larry Bowa" and "fired" and you get -- hold your breath here -- a Greg Luzinski-sized 2,080 hits.
I kid you not. Does a day ever go by when Bowa doesn't spend time discussing his job status?
"Especially when we lose two or three in a row," the manager was saying this week during a quiet moment in his office, shaking his head and chuckling. "We go a month without losing two or three and everything is cool."
Then one loss follows another, and perhaps a third, and, well, then it's time to say hello to baseball's chicken-or-the-egg team. As in, which comes first: Bowa melting down and causing the players to go into a shell, or the players kicking games away and causing Bowa to go all Mount St. Helens on everybody?
It is the eternal mystery, one that will not -- cannot -- be solved definitively until either A) the Phillies win a World Series with Bowa in charge or B) the Phillies win a World Series with someone else in charge after Bowa has been fired.
"I'm not going to lie to you, it did bother me at first, but not now," Bowa continues. "You drive yourself crazy."
Bowa's status changes more frequently than information on the Weather Channel during a tropical storm. Fact is, he could have his own cable channel, the Bowa Channel. Slightly cloudy today with a chance of showers, becoming sunny later this afternoon. Or the other way around.
Right now, this minute, Bowa is not on the hook. The Phillies, in the midst of a season-long, 13-game trip, opened a series in San Diego with victories Tuesday and Wednesday.
