Gammons Tidbit

Inside Peter Gammons' latest Insider column on ESPN.com is found this interesting tidbit:

Someday, Gabe Kapler will manage the Boston Red Sox. He is starting in Greenville (South Atlantic League) on a five-year program to learn his trade and eventually get the Sox job when and if Terry Francona retires. This is what you need to know about Kapler. He approached one of his players, Zak Farkes, who happened to go to Harvard. "What is the best book you've read in the last year?" Kapler asked Farkes, knowing he is a voracious reader. Farkas identified the book, and Kapler told him he wanted to read it to better understand his player.

That, friends, is a man who's got something going for him upstairs.

Though Francona retiring is not necessarily a sure thing, give credit to both Kapler and Theo for starting this supposed program. Grooming a manager from the very roots of A ball through the big leagues is beneficial to the organization in a number of ways. Not only does the club avoid the frustrating offfseason speculation regarding a managerial replacement, but they also avoid encountering one of the deepest pitfalls of modern baseball: offering a retread manager a job in hopes he's different from wherever he was before.

Too many times managers are fired in one town and hired in another, with vague allusions made to the ability to handle character issues and perform as "a good baseball man." Man, I hate that. Additionally, by the time Kapler is ready for a big league job, he'll have spent several years inside the organization as an educator, acclimating himself to the way the club wishes to develop players. In much the same way that players who journeyed through the minors together gel better at the major league level, a manager who's traveled up the ladder with the players would be likely to have a better than average rapport with his players.