July 22, 2004
Lack of Leadership
James at SoxBlog looks at the leadership capabilities of the Red Sox big three and finds them lacking. I'm not a big one on leadership making that much of a difference, but the comments of Ken Baumgartner are worth considering:
As impressed as I was with Ken, I couldn’t resist asking him once if the Bruins brought him in to be a team leader. He said that indeed that was one of the things the Bruins had in mind when they signed him, but the idea of him being a team leader was stupid. On a sports team, the best players are the leaders. Period. Whether they’re good at it or bad at it, the job falls to them. When a team struggles, the players don’t look at the guy sitting on the end of the bench for direction. They look to the stars. Ken knew he was literally the worst player on the team; while he could serve as a positive presence or perhaps even a mentor to some of the Bruins’ budding young stars, leadership would not be in his portfolio.
According to the post, Manny, Nomar and Pedro are acting like they don't care that much. I don't need players to be rah-rah guys (althought that's nice), but I do need them to care about winning and losing. They're setting a bad example.