The Philadelphia Phillies (that’s a baseball team, for those of you tragically unschooled in the Great American Pastime) have fired manager Rob Thomson and named former Yankee star and past major league manager Don Mattingly as interim manager.
The Phils are off to a terrible start, especially for a team that has been a World Series contender for four years and was supposed to be one this season. Firing a manager in April, especially a skipper as successful as Thomson has been, is rare indeed, but the Boston Red Sox just did it. Baseball teams are like that: they tend to get caught up in fads. With this firing, many think the New York Mets will follow suit and fire that team’s manager. The Mets, another expected contender with a huge payroll, have been worse than either Boston or Philly. It may also be germane that all three cities are infamous for having impatient and unforgiving fans.
But I digress. Here is the issue: Don Mattingly is an experienced manager and was Thompson’s bench coach, essentially the in-game strategy consultant. He would make perfect sense as Thomson’s replacement, except for one fact…
Mattingly’s son Preston is the Philadelphia Phillies general manager.
That’s Don on the left and Preston on the right above.
Ethics Alarms 
Isn’t this some sort of reverse nepotism? A son promoting a father? Isn’t this more, “Hey Dad! Little help here?” And after all, the new manager is “Donny Baseball.” Of course, once it’s time to fire dad, if he doesn’t do so timely, that will be a problem.
Did Chad Tracy trade on his father’s reputation? Is that nepotism?
No, that’s just contacts and insider influence. Baseball is an incredibly incestuous culture. The new Red Sox manager is Chad Tracy: his father is Jim Tracy, a manager with several MLB clubs. A law school classmate was Joe Garagiola Jr.—guess where he ended up working right out of law school? I would have killed to get into baseball…I would have been good at it, to. Joe Jr. had my dream job wired.
“Baseball is an incredibly incestuous culture.” I was just going to write that in this reply! I’m not sure incest and nepotism differ much.
You went to GTown with Joe Jr? Joe Jr. officed literally in the office next to mine in the late ’80s, but we were at different firms on the same floor. He. was stashed in the firm next door while he was helping Jerry Colangelo get the expansion franchise that became the Diamondbacks. You could hear him through the wall working the phone non-stop.
Once he left the Diamondbacks, he was ascended into the MLB offices in New York.
And you probably should have tried to get a job with Peter Angelos. He was Greek, wasn’t he? Joe Sr. and Joe Jr. were paisans, like Colangelo. By the way, I met the daughter of Jerry Colangelo’s longtime trusted basketball scout, Al Bianchi. Once you work for Jerry Colangelo, you have a job for life.
Glaring, for sure! For now though, Don Mattingly is the interim mgr. I like him and always have. But keep an eye on this. Phils Pres of Operations Dombrowski and Cora have ties. As Jack knows, Dombrowski hired Cora back in 2017 as Red Sox mgr and they won it all the next year. Not sure how you would trade one losing mgr for another, but hey! this is baseball, where pitchers with losing records are paid millions and millions.
Alex Cora just looks like a sneak. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hire him. How could you trust him?
As long as he is an interim, I look at more as a ‘Can you help me out here, Dad?’ sort of thing. As long as they immediately start searching for a permanent manager and that is done in a reasonable time frame, I am not sure I have a problem with it. I’m sure it isn’t easy to get a qualified major league manager to show up on a few day’s notice for an interim position. I have seen interim positions filled a lot worse. Of course, those cases didn’t have the resources of the Phillies.