There’s something innately satisfying with leaving a job after you know you’ve done it well.
York Revolution manager Andy Etchebarren said at Wednesday’s Hanover Rotary Sports Night that 2012 will be his last season in the dugout before he moves into an administrative position with the team’s ownership group.
He will leave as the first manager to direct back-to-back Atlantic League championship teams, teams that he himself built after he took the job.
You see, while players and managers on major league-affiliated minor league teams strive to reach the “big club,” Etchebarren has gone the other way. A member of the 1966 World Series champion Baltimore Orioles, he tried the managerial role in a major league organization and said he didn’t like it.
“You get to manage here to win,” Etchebarren said about York and the independent status of the Atlantic League. “I’m not saying you don’t try to win in organized baseball, but you have your draft choices. The farm director tell you this guy can only play five days per week. This guy can’t sit on the bench more than three days in a row. It’s all scripted. ‘This guy can only throw 60 pitches. This guy can only throw 80 pitches.’ It’s so far out of hand that you’re really not managing.”
However, given the opportunity to develop his own roster for an organization that includes good friend Brooks Robinson as a co-owner, Etchebarren has every right to feel vindicated now that his work has reaped such rewards.
And so the man that the Revolution promote as “The Most Interesting Manager in the World” will move on, even if the Revolution turn 2012 into a three-peat of league crowns.
And, as one last stroke after his control of the York roster, Etchebarren said he’s ready to advise the Revolution about his own successor.
“I’ve got a guy in mind,” he said. “The organization’s got a guy in mind, so we’ll where that goes.”
