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Dave Dombrowski Home Improvement.
I?ve never been a Detroit Tigers or Boston Red Sox fan, so my experience with Dave Dombrowski has mostly been of the faroff variety. Here are the highlights: he?s a good executive who makes good trades and has a really hard time building a bullpen. That last one is probably the main thing people know him for in Detroit: despite all of the best intentions, Dombrowski could never build the bullpen he needed to take his Miguel Cabrera-Justin Verlander led powerhouse to World Series glory.
And today, I feel like I get his plight a little bit more. Today, I tried to fix a toilet.
Now before you ask: no, it?s not the gross kind of fix. This was a pretty sanitary problem, just a leak in the tank I discovered by chance going for my second cup of coffee. The problem, I diagnosed as I took off the top of the toilet tank, was that there was a faulty fill valve. It seemed like an easy enough fix, so I turned off the water, hopped in the car, and headed to Home Depot.
And seven hours later, two more trips later, and seven or so towels on the floor later, I was left looking at a toilet that had been remade from the guts up and was still...leaking. Not just leaking, but leaking in new and exciting ways every time I turned on the water: in great jets from the fitting; in drops small enough to make me hope the problem was fixed for a brief second; in streams coming from areas I didn?t know could leak. I closed the bathroom door resolved: I didn?t do a good job.
And this must be what Dombrowski felt like during those years in Detroit.
Every Joe Nathan he signed who went down with Tommy John surgery, and every Bruce Rondon-like 100 MPH pitcher who couldn?t find the plate -- these were all his fill valves and new rubber washers. That water line I bought that worked pretty well but didn?t actually solve my ultimate problem? That?s Alex Wilson. The porcelain that?s probably cracking as we speak? That?s right: Jose Valverde.
I suppose the moral of the story is that prince and pauper, great man and small, we all face our own Dombrowski Bullpen. What distinguishes us is how we recover from it and...well, look I just saw the box score from game four of the Red Sox-Astros ALDS and, ah, we?ll just wait on a moral for a less touchy day.
BaseballProspectus
I?ve never been a Detroit Tigers or Boston Red Sox fan, so my experience with Dave Dombrowski has mostly been of the faroff variety. Here are the highlights: he?s a good executive who makes good trades and has a really hard time building a bullpen. That last one is probably the main thing people know him for in Detroit: despite all of the best intentions, Dombrowski could never build the bullpen he needed to take his Miguel Cabrera-Justin Verlander led powerhouse to World Series glory.
And today, I feel like I get his plight a little bit more. Today, I tried to fix a toilet.
Now before you ask: no, it?s not the gross kind of fix. This was a pretty sanitary problem, just a leak in the tank I discovered by chance going for my second cup of coffee. The problem, I diagnosed as I took off the top of the toilet tank, was that there was a faulty fill valve. It seemed like an easy enough fix, so I turned off the water, hopped in the car, and headed to Home Depot.
And seven hours later, two more trips later, and seven or so towels on the floor later, I was left looking at a toilet that had been remade from the guts up and was still...leaking. Not just leaking, but leaking in new and exciting ways every time I turned on the water: in great jets from the fitting; in drops small enough to make me hope the problem was fixed for a brief second; in streams coming from areas I didn?t know could leak. I closed the bathroom door resolved: I didn?t do a good job.
And this must be what Dombrowski felt like during those years in Detroit.
Every Joe Nathan he signed who went down with Tommy John surgery, and every Bruce Rondon-like 100 MPH pitcher who couldn?t find the plate -- these were all his fill valves and new rubber washers. That water line I bought that worked pretty well but didn?t actually solve my ultimate problem? That?s Alex Wilson. The porcelain that?s probably cracking as we speak? That?s right: Jose Valverde.
I suppose the moral of the story is that prince and pauper, great man and small, we all face our own Dombrowski Bullpen. What distinguishes us is how we recover from it and...well, look I just saw the box score from game four of the Red Sox-Astros ALDS and, ah, we?ll just wait on a moral for a less touchy day.
BaseballProspectus
