How to Spell Quitter in One Easy Lesson

Today Nationals fans are caught up with the news of Jim Riggleman’s departure and the backwash therefrom.  Tom Boswell’s column in the morning paper provides some insights, but the headline, “Riggleman Proves He Wasn’t the Man,” says it all.

Riggleman was not a particularly good manager.  He had his good qualities: his straight-shooter, old school approach that seemed to emphasize defense and solid play above any thing else had its pluses. But his lineups were odd and have only gotten odder. But he was winning and everyone was willing to forget about the quirky stuff.

Like Rick Ankiel as leadoff hitter. That seemed hard to understand, but as Ankiel continued to hit around .200 and there was a young guy named Roger Bernadina gathering dust while he did it, the question was really what is Riggleman thinking?

We never found out because Riggleman never said much in the hundreds of press interviews he gave. And I liked how he danced around the questions without answering them. I said as much in a column about Riggleman who was remembered by his old dance partner from Richard Montgomery High School.

But in the end he was tight-lipped to a fault. There was something simmering inside and maybe it would have been better to get a little more of it off his chest. Dan Steinberg of the Post noted as much this morning talking about Riggleman’s response to Boswell. Steinberg was as shocked as I was to see Riggleman on a radio show baring his soul.

Now the tight as a drum Riggo is all over the place calling Boswell a hack. Wow, that is news!! So many bridges have not been on fire on a single day since Sherman torched Atlanta.

In the radio interview Steinberg is quoting in his Post blog, Riggleman says he is not a quitter, that he would have been a quitter if he had continued to drag his bad attitude around the clubhouse and influence the team unfairly because he was mad about his treatment by Rizzo and the Lerners–Nationals team owners.

So let’s see. He couldn’t keep his bad attitude to himself and rather than harm the team he quit. He could refuse to explain to anyone why Rick Ankiel was his starting center fielder for almost two months and Matt Stairs was still pinch-hitting in crucial situations despite being 43 and having a .085 batting average.  But he couldn’t hide that bad attitude any longer. Hard to believe, even harder to swallow. Something else may be going on and maybe in a few days we will learn that Riggleman is managing the Marlins.

But at the end of the day, it all looks pretty much the same, regardless how you dress it up.

Quitting by any other name is still the same. And that is what Jim Riggleman did. But that fails to describe the full pathetic sense of it. He did not just quit the team.

No, it’s more like this. The team is a bunch of young guys charging up San Juan Hill. They have taken some fire but have just taken the first set of prisoners and are ready to rush on enthusiastically when their leader, Jimmy Riggleman says, “You boys keep on up the hill, I am stopping here to get some tea.” He starts back down the hill with them looking on incredulously.

And why is that okay? Because he was dis-respected by having a contract almost identical to what most managers of bad teams have. Because as a manager who had never brought home any bacon of note, he did not have the kind of contract that Mike Scioscia has–he of the ten-year $1.7 million agreement?

Bruce Bochy and Ron Washington were big winners last year and based on what I could learn, neither has any more contract security than Riggleman. Have they quit yet? Did I miss something?

“I don’t use the word quit” Riggleman said on the radio according to Steinberg. Well, listen up, bud. You may be built like a brick outhouse, but you are a quitter. Q-U-I-T-T-E-R.  Can you think back to your days at Richard Montgomery High School–just up the road here–and remember the spelling bees you did so well in.

Here is what it says: “Local boy quits the fight!!”  That is the headline.  The fact that Tom Boswell did not say it emphatically is because he is too classy a guy.  Let me do it for him. Jim Riggleman quit in the line of fire. Deserted the team, let them down. Dance around that Jimmy boy, if you can.