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Ryne Sandberg bows out of impossible situation with Phillies

Look, Ryne Sandberg seemed a decent enough manager, long as a game didn't run off in too complex a direction. That didn't come up very often; when you're being outscored by 122 runs in not even three months, the issue is not the cerebral maneuverings of the guy standing on the top step. This was the man who jumped behind the wheel as the first axle of the bus went off the cliff, and no amount of steering or brake pumping was going to change what happened next.

Ryne Sandberg pauses during a news conference where he announced his resignation Friday. (AP)
Ryne Sandberg pauses during a news conference where he announced his resignation Friday. (AP)

The Philadelphia Phillies happened next, in a tiny little puff, way down … there.

They held on to who they were for too long. They clung to yesterday. They fired the wrong people. They made poor choices. It happens. The ballpark was full, the payroll was big and had stars; tomorrow seemed so, so far away. If just this guy could hit, or that guy could stay healthy, or that guy could be 25 again, or they all could come together in a happy Kumbaya under a Hall of Fame player with a legit rep, maybe they'd buy a season or two to get their acts together.

It was – is – a wreck. They haven't finished inside 17 games of first place in the National League East since 2011, and they won't this year either. They're awful and appear to be losing ground, which was probably not the plan. So the idea is to bring in Andy MacPhail, allow 77-year-old president Pat Gillick to glide into retirement, and have MacPhail sort through the Ruben Amaro Jr./roster/farm system/future issues.

One less issue: Ryne Sandberg.

He resigned Friday, a few hours before the Phillies would wander into the Max Scherzer buzz saw, a year and three months before his contract would have run out. The broad view was that Sandberg likely wouldn't have finished that contract anyway. There'd been too much losing on the field. There'd be too much change coming. This is the organization that dumped Charlie Manuel, after all. What chance would Sandberg have had?

So, kinda hang-dog looking, perhaps spent by the 159 losses in 278 games, probably just tired a gettin' his butt whooped, Sandberg said, yeah, I'm out.

Which is really unusual.

"This is a difficult day and a challenging day and a tough day for myself," he said. "In a lot of ways I'm old school, and I'm very much dissatisfied with the record. … It's been a difficult thing to swallow, but I have thought about it for some time and we've come to this day."

Just walked in Friday and fired himself.

"Well, it's a surprise," general manager Amaro said. "I mean, I don't know that Ryne should be feeling like he should shoulder all the blame. … I take my level of responsibility for the things that are happening on the field as well.

"It is disappointing. Ryne, he was here as our manager for a reason."

Pete Mackanin, one of Sandberg's coaches, was named interim manager.

The Phillies were 40 games under .500 in parts of three years under Ryne Sandberg. (AP)
The Phillies were 40 games under .500 in parts of three years under Ryne Sandberg. (AP)

Whether Sandberg was overmatched in his job is hardly worth probing. It'd be like judging a man's swimming skills in a typhoon. His story was different because he is baseball royalty, and trudged back to the minor leagues to learn the craft of managing, and took a difficult – impossible, even – job, and made what he could of it. He was widely lauded for making a selfless decision to walk away, though there's a reasonable argument that managing the ballclub until he was told otherwise would have been the more selfless act.

Anyway, that's Sandberg's to ponder. The job was too big, or it was pointless, or he was just getting out in front of the pitchfork. No matter. The next man up is likely to stand in a similar landscape, the sky falling, the bus falling, too. And Sandberg leaves only one thing behind.

The keys to the bus.