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Head coaches in all sports are given too much credit for success and too much hardship for failure. After all, if you don't have the horses, the greatest coach couldn't get an untalented bunch to beat a dominating team. To me, baseball requires almost no coaching at the pro level. Give me a bag of sun flower seeds, preferably jalapeno flavored, and I can make magic happen from the dugout with a stacked team like the Yankees have.


That is why it is a mystery to me whey people go absolutely nuts when a team doesn't do well. I listen to a radio station most mornings called WFAN, and I hear idiotic New Yorkers call in about how the Mets coach and GM need to go. I hear people like ?Vinny from Queens? go off on tangents on why the Mets aren't doing well, and why they need to make a change in command. They say things like, ?I really think Jerry Manuel should have dropped David Wright one spot in the order verse a lefty pitcher last Tuesday, what was he thinking?!? People harp on such minute aspects of the game, because they are secretly jealous of the fact that they have such crappy jobs, and baseball managers have such awesome ones.


In all honesty, what does a baseball manager really do? He needs to come up with the starting line up for the day, and he needs to make a few infield and outfield shifts during the course of the game. If he fell asleep for a few innings, no one would notice. I am not even sure if he deals directly with rotating pitchers, isn't that what a pitching coach is for?


Classic Lou Piniella clip below




All in all, with a stacked team, a head coach can look brilliant, and with a crappy team like the Mets, he looks like an idiot. At the professional level, you either know how to play the game or you don't. There is not too much a head coach can tap out of you that you haven't realized on your own. There is a hitting coach who can work on hitters mechanics, and a pitching coach who works on pitching mechanics, so that brings up the question: what does a head coach do?


I feel like ?great? coaches like Lou Piniella and Joe Torre are all laughing at us from behind closed doors. Here they are making millions of dollars for being fat and having a good time at the ball park. The fact of the matter is, Joe Torre wouldn't be Joe Torre had he not coached a dynastic team for the better part of a decade.