One of my favorite scenes in a baseball movie is the “lollygaggers” speech in “Bull Durham.” I’m sure that the movie’s writer, Ron Shelton, at one point during his minor league career, heard a speech a lot like that. I’m guessing you don’t hear that kind of rant very much anymore, if for no other reason than because managers know it well and realize they’ve been successfully pre-parodied out of being taken seriously if they do.
Terry Collins doesn’t care, though. After the Mets got shellacked 9-0 by the hapless Diamondbacks today — who completed a three-game sweep in New York — Collins was hot. Apart from Neil Walker, who he praised for hustle, he was mad about his team’s lack of effort. He starts strong but finishes The second half on fire, channeling Trey Wilson’s Skip and telling his club, through the press, that he’ll ship every last one of ’em out and replace them with someone from Las Vegas if they don’t shape up.
Managers are such middle managers these days. I get why that is and I’d probably want my manager to be a calm guy, channeling the baseball operations staff if I ran a team, but I’m not gonna lie: loved seeing Collins get hot like this:
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