Some of the players had the impression that Macha was miserable in his job. Starter Barry Zito, who is a big believer in the power of positive thinking, said that Macha dwelled too much on what might go wrong and that that was detrimental.
“The fact is, when you have someone leading people, you want them to be a visionary, to forge ahead and be on the front lines,” Zito said. “We felt like we were on the front lines,
Roberto Cavalli Sunglasses Sale, and he might have been with us but he didn’t have the same conviction or faith. I think it was a fear of failure. He was a little more focused on the pessimistic stuff than on success.”
Third baseman Eric Chavez, the longest-tenured member of the team, said several times in a phone interview on Monday evening that he likes Macha and got along with him well personally, but he had seen enough going on around him to realize there were problems.
“The whole thing was a weird situation for me because ever since he came here we had a pretty good relationship, but over the last couple years, I could see things unfold, and I kept hearing things,” Chavez said. “He’s always been very open and communicative with me, and with some other players that wasn’t true. I heard some things that were kind of disturbing. I think there are going to be a lot of guys who are happy about this.”
Many of the players felt that the tone set by Macha was gloomy, even when the club was playing well.
“The atmosphere wasn’t positive, for some reason,” Chavez said. “That was hard for us to deal with — here we are, winning the division, we’re banged up but we’re still doing what we should be doing, and every time he spoke to us,
Philadelphia Phillies Hat, he’d say how much appreciated the effort, but then you’d read things where he was always smashing people. … This negative cloud was just eating at everybody.”
It’s tough being around a negative person all the time. Still,
Catching a Trout, it really didn’t show up in the statistics of the A’s. Think what they might do if they have a manager who actually motivates them! They had Jimmy Carter and they want Ronald Reagan.
Thanks to Philip Michaels for the link to the article.
Barry Zito concurs:
The players who got along with Macha talk about the problems with the manager: