MLB Bullets Decides To Part Ways

I want to say that I've read the kind words many of you have said for my work and the work of everyone here at BCB since Wednesday and I thank you for them. It's really a labor of love around here and it was truly a magical season with the only exception being the final four games. Again, I thank you for being one of my readers.

• The Dodgers and manager Don Mattingly have decided to "part ways," according to both parties involved.
• Mark Saxon notes that both the team and Mattingly are declining to call it a firing or a resignation and that both sides praised the other. So it was really weird, essentially.
• Bill Plaschke writes that the Dodgers' failures in October made Mattingly's departure inevitable.
• David Schoenfield also thought it was time for the Dodgers to try a new manager.
• Dayn Perry wonders if Mattingly will end up as the Marlins new skipper. It's been rumored for a while.
• Bill Shaikin has five candidates to replaces Mattingly and Cubs bench coach Dave Martinez is at the top of the list. Now that doesn't necessarily mean he's at the top of the Dodgers list. But it does seem like he'll be a candidate.
• Switching gears a bit, I can't recommend this article enough. Of course, I am the minor league guy. But Ben Halls, writing for Vice Sports UK, goes to a Colorado Springs Sky Sox game and finds out what makes minor league baseball so special. Strange, he admits, but special.
• Here's another very good, albeit quite long, piece by Dan Greene in Sports Illustrated about umpire Don Denkinger and the 1985 World Series and how his life was changed by one bad call. Read it, if only for the history of the so-called "best fans in baseball."
• Going back ten more years, on the 40th anniversary of the Carlton Fisk home run that won game six of the 1975 World Series, Tom Verducci explains how that home run changed baseball and the way all sports were televised.
• Arash Markazi traces the history of champaign celebrations in winning clubhouses. No one is quite sure when the first one was, but it may have started with the Milwaukee Braves. I guess Milwaukee didn't want to spill any beer.
• Yeah, about that. MLB wants teams to stop spraying fans in the stands with alcohol, pointing out that many fans in the stands are underage. It's already forbidden to take alcohol out onto the field, but the rule has been widely ignored.
• Some good managerial news. The Red Sox announced that manager John Farrell's cancer is in remission. They hope that he will be back in the dugout for spring training.
• Former Cubs catcher Scott Servais is the "frontrunner" to be the new Mariners manager.
• Cal Ripken Jr. has signaled his interest in the Nationals managerial job, but the Nats are expected to look elsewhere.
• Mets manager Terry Collins is only interested in managing for two more seasons, maximum. He's looking forward to retirement.
• Craig Calcaterra questions the Mets status as a "tortured fan base." Although he does admit that it's got to be tough to share a market with the Yankees.
• In any case, Mets fans have no interest in sharing this moment with Yankees fans. (h/t Hardball Talk.)
• Will Leitch is looking forward to Citi Field's first World Series game.
• But who will the Mets face? The Blue Jays fate is in the hands of David Price and he's interested in shaking his poor postseason reputation.
• In order to do that, Price will have to counter the Royals' aggressiveness, writes David Justice.
• In any case, the public libraries of Toronto and Kansas City are having a bit of a Twitter war. All in good fun.
• The city of St. Petersburg has offered the Tampa Bay Rays a way out of their lease. The Rays are expected to pass because it would cost them money.
• Rob Neyer wonders if MLB would rather let the Rays burn than violate the principle that MLB teams should get new stadiums for free.
• Neyer also discovers that Dutch Leonard, a pitcher from the teens and twenties, was a real hero in World War II. Not for anything he did in battle (he didn't serve) but for managing a farm owned by a Japanese family sent to the internment camps and returning both the farm and its profits when they returned.
• No wonder the Cubs couldn't get Daniel Murphy out. Just look at his Strat-O-Matic card.
• And finally, we give Dusty Baker a hard time around here and with good reason. But Dusty is a cooler cat than you are. For example, Baker once smoked a joint with Jimi Hendrix. Mind. Blown.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.