Baseball

Cox has nothing on Weaver, Piniella

When it comes to ejections, Braves manager about quantity, not quality

Nam Y. Huh / AP

Lou Piniella argues with third base umpire Mark Wegner during a game in early June. Unlike Bobby Cox, Piniella knows how to get his money's worth out of an ejections, writes Bob Cook.

OPINION

By Bob Cook

NBCSports.com contributor

updated 9:17 p.m. ET Aug. 15, 2007

Bob Cook

Bobby Cox’s new ejection record is a lot like his Atlanta Braves’ recent 14-season division title streak — a triumph of quantity over quality, fizzle over sizzle.

The Braves’ manager beat the legendary John McGraw for the most times being tossed out by an umpire, but you’ll never hear Cox given a bad-guy nickname like the "Little Napoleon." As I write this, Cox hasn’t had one of his tantrums posted to YouTube. Although maybe somebody for posterity’s sake will post his fifth-inning ejection Tuesday night by home-plate umpire Ted Barrett, who didn’t like how Cox questioned his judgment on a called third strike on Chipper Jones.

For a major-league blowup involving a Braves manager, you have to go the minors — Class AA, to be exact, where Mississippi Braves manager Phillip Wellman created his madcap legend in June by tossing third base, covering home plate with dirt, crawling through the infield on his stomach, and pulling a pretend pin out of a rosin bag and throwing it like a grenade.

Now that’s an ejection!

Cox’s departures are less memorable than an angry customer leaving a convenience store. His record is aided by his longevity — 27 seasons with Atlanta and Toronto — and umpires’ delicate sensitivities, compared to their forebears. Cox has been tossed out, at most, 11 times in a season (2001), and has never been tossed out any more than three times by the same umpire. So there are no Earl Weaver-Ron Luciano-style feuds for Cox.

Cox most definitely has a temper — the dark side of which was revealed in a 1995 battery arrest for allegedly punching his wife (he was not convicted, though he and his wife did agree to go to counseling). But either he doesn’t allow it to flourish to its full potential during an ejection, or baseball’s increasingly corporate environment doesn’t allow it to happen.

To get an idea of what an ejection used to look like what it was performed by a master, go to YouTube and do a search for Earl Weaver’s 1982 (it appears) tirade, which has made its way around the Internet for a little while now.

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Weaver is arguing over whatever he felt wronged his Baltimore Orioles, but he (and the umpire) know the argument is about more than the call.

It is the manager’s — and the umpire’s — opportunity to assert their authority. It’s also the manager’s chance to rile up his team, and the home crowd, by showing he is not going to take any guff, even if in the end he always loses.

CONTINUED : Weaver really knew how to argue

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