And yet Justice writes an entire column as if he had the firing all in the bag and just needed to write the lead paragraph and hit "enter".

I really can't stand the sort of journalism that plays with people's lives like that. I'm just a harmless little blogger but I don't call for Roy Oswalt to be traded or for Sean Berry or Cecil Cooper to be fired without having a little lump in my throat about it. They or their families might just read it and feel hurt/angry/betrayed by it. These are, after all, real people with real families, not fantasy league statlines or Baseball Mogul chess pieces I'm talking about. I like to show some empathy even as I ask for someone's life to be disrupted, knowing it might be a tough thing to swallow.

Too many folks in the media, like Justice, almost seem gleeful about someone being fired. I think most would rather get a "scoop" than show some humanity. And then they wonder why some folks treat them like vultures.

Justice was damn near lobbying for a firing on Thursday for no better reason than to see himself proven right. The idea of bringing in someone like Bagwell or Biggio in the interim was sheer stupidity, particularly as he then claims McLane would rather hire and fire people for the PR value rather than any baseball sense. Hasn't he been egging on the very thing he accuses McLane of doing?

Then when McLane doesn't take the bait by doing the thing Justice lobbies for, Justice claims he doesn't think outside the box enough. All five of McLane's managerial hires are proof enough that he's willing to take a risk with an unproven commodity and has been successful more times than not in doing so.

I don't want to see Cooper fired so I can trumpet it on ESPN with a smug sense of having predicted it or to dance on his grave. I'd like him gone because I don't think he's a good fit for the team he has now and the one that will be coming forward. I don't even have a replacement in mind so much as I want to see a manager (of any ethnicity) who seems to have a better handle of how to work a pitching staff and how to make in-game decisions. But I take no joy in seeing Cecil Cooper, the person, fired, nor did I any of the guys fired before him. I've watched people get fired in real life, fairly and unfairly, and it's never a pleasant sight. Someone's life has just been uprooted and torn apart. That's nothing to celebrate.

Of course, I might make an exception for Richard Justice.

"We don't do anything easy. We're the Astros." - Craig Biggio