Mike Hargrove’s sudden resignation and retirement last weekend as manager of the Seattle Mariners caught most observers by surprise. The Mariners were in second place in the AL West, 12 games over .500, and with half the season yet to play, the timing of his departure couldn’t be more bizarre.
In a statement he claimed he had been “losing his passion” for the game. From my perspective, his passion for the game deserted him a long time ago, right around the time he accepted the job of managing the Orioles.
Hargrove has many friends in baseball, friends whom he has confided in over the years. After being let go by Cleveland in 1999, where he won five straight division titles and a pair of AL championships (1995 and 1997), he told several of those friends that he couldn’t see himself taking the open Baltimore job, based upon the meddlesome reputation of the Orioles’ owner and the fact that the Indians still owed him some money. He simply didn’t need to work at that point.
When the Orioles approached him with a four-year offer worth considerably more than the Tribe owed him, he changed his mind. He never really had the players to compete in Baltimore, and when his 2002 club finished the season 4-32 over their final 36 games after reaching the .500 level at 63-63, he likely returned home to the Cleveland suburbs that fall thinking he was done in Charm City.
The ’02 Orioles had probably overachieved when they reached .500 on Aug. 23; their collapse thereafter was dismal, but Hargrove stayed the same as he’d been since he arrived: stoic, laid-back, without a whiff of what one would expect from the skipper of a team playing its way into oblivion. I tend to think he was disappointed to find out they wanted him back to fulfill the final year of his contract. No golden parachute? Shucks.
Hargrove finished 97 games under .500 for his four-season tenure in Baltimore. He finally took a year off before accepting the Seattle job, taking over a team that had lost 99 games in 2004. Getting the Mariners back into contention this year may have scared him into accelerating the process of his retirement. (“Omigosh, what do I do if they want to extend my contract? Better check my investments ? hmmmm, OK, enough cash to last the next 20 years. … I?m outta here!”)
When he was named Orioles team president, one of the qualities Andy MacPhail said he was looking for in a manager was passion, specifically a passion for managing the Orioles. He knows there’s no shortage of ex-managers with resumes who wouldn’t hesitate to take the team’s money and do the best they could. Joe Girardi certainly fit the criteria, but he apparently wanted assurances he could leave if something better came along.
Hargrove’s managerial legacy is secure in Cleveland, and I believe the trauma of losing that job on the heels of a fifth straight division title killed his passion for the game then and there. His inexplicable departure from Seattle leaves the unpleasant aftertaste of someone who hung around enough additional years to insure a more comfortable life in retirement, just another dispassionate baseball mercenary.
Contact Phil Wood at [email protected]
