Afternoon Baseball

Joe Torre may go out there after the so-called resignation of Grady Little, who's a crummy manager anyways.

Might Alex Rodriguez join him? There's speculation. One thing we know, as I said earlier today and now the N.Y. Times joins in (via River Ave Blues), is that A-Rod's "concerns" are bogus.

Torre and the Dodgers are a good two-to-three-year fit. The Dodgers aren't that far away in the NL West, a division with good, but no great, teams. They need a big bat to support the solid pitching the club seems to have even in down years, and Torre is at his best when he has durable starters to relieve him of needing to overuse the bullpen.

Last man to manage the Dodgers and Yankees? Technically, no one. Wilbert Robinson managed from 1914 to 1931 in Brooklyn, but replaced John McGraw for 83 games in 1902 for the Baltimore Orioles, who were the New York Highlanders a year later. McGraw, by the way, jumped ship with a large lot of the team for the New York Giants, a prominent symbol of the player raiding that characterized the early years of the AL-NL co-existence and the later, failed Federal League.