A few days until I'm able to end my work-related exile and return to, uh, this work—in the meantime, a rundown of the managers on the Cardinals' apparent shortlist—with analysis!
- Jose Oquendo: Fine, I guess!
- Joe McEwing: Fine, I guess!
- Chris Maloney: Fine, I guess!
- Mike Matheny: Fine, I guess!
- Ryne Sandberg: Fine, I guess, barring the opinion of time traveling rebels!
- Terry Francona: I only wish he'd managed to prevent the meteor-related cancellation of the 2004 World Series!
Aside from Francona, who is both successful and entirely alien to the Tony La Russa Cardinals' concepts of super-preparedness and borderline paranoia, I just don't know anything about any of these guys. Two utility infielders without law degrees, two organizational heroes, one other team's organizational hero, and that same team's potential celebrity hire.
I'm entertaining, right now, the idea that this is one of the few situations in which all we can do as baseball fans is sit on our hands while the team deals with information that cannot or at least will not be released in a few days in database form. In a few days we'll have three months of offseason and, hopefully, eight months of baseball in which to roast this guy for his every move; right now the moves he's making, whoever he finally is, are visible mostly to John Mozeliak.