There’s no safety net on the managerial merry-go-round

Billy Martin once observed the only sure way for any baseball manager to know whether or not he had been fired was to jump in the car and drive to the stadium, writes Brendan O’Brien.

If their name was still on the parking list when they arrived, then they were safe, he explained. If it wasn’t, well…

Martin knew, better than pretty much anyone else, the vagaries of life in the hotseat. This was a guy who managed the New York Yankees on five different occasions. And he had other stints with the Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers and Oakland Athletics in a post-playing career that stretched for over 20 seasons.