Managerial musical chairs

This morning's USA Today had a story on the likelihood of a mass of managerial changes, which ties in to a recent post here about Scott Ullger and his ambitions.

Bobby Cox is retiring after
29 years as a major league
manager -- 25 with Atlanta,
four with Toronto.

Dave Nightengale's piece conveys the false impression that managers used to have greater job security than they do now. In reality, managers today who have any real success get far more rope than in the past. A big part of the coming upheaval comes from a group of 20-year managers who are leaving on their own behest --Joe Torre, Bobby Cox, Lou Piniella, maybe Tony LaRussa, possibly Dusty Baker.

Some other comments:

*Nightengale mentions Joe Girardi's contract status with the New York Yankees -- signed only through this season. I don't think he's going anywhere. George Steinbrenner is dead, and his infantile emotionalism was buried with him. The people running the Yankees now are not going to dump Girardi on a whim. And for his part, Girardi knows that, so long as the rest of MLB allows the Yankees to hold such a massive financial advantage over everybody else, whoever manages the Yankees has one foot in the Hall of Fame.

If Ozzie Guillen leaves the White Sox
for Florida, will bench coach Joey Cora
go with him, or get a managerial job
of his very own?

* According to Nightengale, Ozzie Guillen in recent weeks told people in the White Sox organization that he would resign after the the season, then changed his mind.

Nightengale, in an on-line only piece, predicts Guillen will decamp for the Florida Marlins job. I'm pretty sure that would be a mistake on both sides, and I think Ozzie is too smart for that (I won't say the same for Marlins owner Jeffery Loria, who is apparently set on getting Guillen).

And Nightengale figures Guillen's successor on the south side will be Tony LaRussa. Jerry Reinsdorf loves LaRussa, but I don't think a one-and-fly guy is a good idea.

---

Fascinating stuff in the Dodgers divorce trial: On Monday. Jamie McCourt (a lawyer herself) testified that she never read the postnuptual agreement in which the Dodgers franchise was declared to be husband Frank's sole property. Bad for her, right?

On Tuesday, the lawyer who drew up the agreement said he changed it AFTER it was signed, switching the Dodgers from community property to sole property. Incredible. Equally incredible: he told the court he saw no reason to tell Jamie McCourt of the change.

The words unethical and incompetent come to mind -- for Jamie McCourt, for Frank McCourt, for their lawyer ... for pretty much everybody involved in this unseemly mess.

The Dodger divorce is working for at least one guy: A law student at the University of Minnesota from L.A. who has chronicled the entire travesty on his blog.