COMMENTARY : Bag-Boy Baseball Is Not Atop Their Lists

George Steinbrenner should let Buck Showalter go over to Tampa and work with the Yankees’ minor leaguers when the time comes. Or he should just send Showalter home until bag-boy baseball is over, telling him his job is safe when real baseball comes back.

Sparky Anderson walked away from the Tiger earlier this month. It is a little different for Showalter. He does not have 25 years in the big leagues the way Anderson does. He is not 60 years old with his baseball legend made, with more then 2,000 wins in the books. Showalter hates bag-boy baseball the same as Anderson, though. Maybe he hates it more than anyone.

There is no manager who works harder than Showalter, in season and out. There is no one who reveres Yankee tradition the way Showalter does. Only he is not managing the Yankees now. Steinbrenner should have the grace to get him away from this farce.

The problem, of course, is that Steinbrenner rarely shows grace of any king. If Showalter tries to walk away the way Anderson did, asks for an unpaid leave of absence, i believe Steinbrenner will fire him.

Anderson could get fired, too. there is more on the line for Showalter at the beginning of his career than there is for Anderson, who is near the end. So there is a lot for Showalter to think about. But then Anderson gave everyone a lot to think about, when he looked like the biggest guy in the whole sport.

It has always been easy to make sport of Anderson, even with a record as a manager the size of a ballpark. There are smug baseball people who treat Anderson like some old dugout fool despite all his wins, as if he is Casey Stengel without nearly as many laughs. And he had come up better than all of them.

Last week, Anderson was all over the lot with another of his rambling monologues. It did not make his words any less important. He was the conscience of the game, even if no other manager, Showalter or anyone, follows him out the door. Anderson was an eloguent a spokesman as the game could ever have, one fractured sentence after another.

Anderson was baseball before Bud Selig or Donald Fehr came around. Anderson was winning World Series before some of the millionaire baseball boys were born. He managed the Big Red Machine, managed Rose and Morgan and Bench and Perez, befro most of these clerks who won teams were anywhere near baseball. When he used words such as “class” and “integrity” to explain his decision Friday, all the people who have shut down the game probably wondered what he was talking about.

He has been around too long, done too much honorable work, to pretend that bag-boy baseball is real. It is not worthy of his effort, the same as it is not worthy of some of the idiotic field-of-dreams coverage it is getting in newspapers and from television. So Anderson went home. His words still come at you is sentences that don’t end. Anderson spoke for everyone who still loves the game. he has been a baseball star for 25 years. On Friday, he was more of a star than he has ever been.

“I don’t like my intelligence insulted by telling me (replacement baseball) is the Detroit Tigers,” he said.

There is no charm to bag-boy baseball. It will not end the strike; only fools think that. It is not just an insult to Anderson’s intelligence, but everyone’s.

Tigers president John McHale Jr., whoever he is, suggests Anderson’s actions could cost him his job. “There seems to us to be circumstances that could include the passage of time where it might not be in our best interests to have him back,” McHale said. McHale turns out to be clumsier with the English language than Anderson has ever been.

Anderson is one of the great mangers in baseball history. He is a better man. The words will always come at you in sentences that don’t seem to end. it did not matter in baseball on Frideay because Sparkey Anderson spoke for everyone who still loves the game. he is better off on the sidelines. So is Buck Showalter.

Steinbrenner has always wanted to do the thinking for his manager. He should to it, just this once.