What Would George Do?

Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

You can hear the rumbling coming from two clouds up in the stratosphere. “Billy, get in here, I want to talk to you. A voice from the second cloud answers, “what do you want now, George?”

“Billy, is it true that our offense has evaporated? Are we blowing leads? Are we failing to mount comebacks? Is our hitting anemic?

“That’s right, George.”

“That’s unacceptable, Billy.” We’re supposed to be The Bronx Bombers, what’s going on here?”

“Well, George, the problem is that’s about all we’re doing. We hit another home run last night-by Robinson Cano-but we’re still not scoring many runs.”

“Ok, Billy, you’re fired!”

“You can’t do that, George. I don’t work for you anymore. Joe is the manager now.”

“Okay, fire Joe then. He’s supposed to be in the World Series every year, anyway. And win it!”

“Can’t blame it all on him. It seems the team is straddled with that Rodriguez contract. And guys have been going on the DL all year. Remember how we had the same problems and still came back in ’78?”

“Alright Billy, I’m the businessman. You’re the baseball genius. What do we do now? What does this team need?”

“What this team needs now is you and me, George. They need an owner who won’t tolerate what’s going on. They need a manager who gets angry.”

“So what should Joe do?”

“He needs to get them riled up. Get tossed from a couple of games. Get in somebody’s face. Stop acting like we have to be patient and accept this. These guys are playing like their waiting to see how they’re gonna lose. We need more emotion.”

“Never thought I’d say this, but you’re right, Billy. And Hal and Hank need to get on the ball too. Hughes, Chamberlain and Rodriguez, they need to produce or get out of town.”

“Hughes and Chamberlain definitely have not proven themselves as dependable. But the Rodriguez situation is a tough one, George. If he really is healthy he could help out. But I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“We’ll see. If not, let’s just pay him off and make room for somebody who can get the job done.”

“Sounds good, George.”

“And Billy, one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Get off of my cloud!”

*The preceding was a fictional account. Any resemblance to actual persons is strictly coincidence.