He has a hard-on for that damn 2004 team, and refuses to take any responsibility — none at all — for any of his failures, either in LA or Pittsburgh. Here’s an article from when Tracy was fired by the Pirates by beat writer Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette:

Quite curiously, the shortcomings that Tracy had in personnel or instructional matters seemed to originate from his never-ending emotional tie with the 2004 Los Angeles Dodgers, the $100 million team he managed to the West Division title.

He spoke about them incessantly, to the media and to the players. He even tried to recreate them, it seemed.

Before Tracy had donned a Pirates uniform, in the winter of 2006, he met with center fielder Chris Duffy and told Duffy he should play like Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ leadoff man, even though all Duffy and Roberts had in common was being fast. Among the instructions: Duffy, a line-drive hitter, was told to pound the ball into the ground. He failed miserably, quit baseball for a month and has yet to recover.

Tracy told shortstop Jack Wilson, a three-time runner-up for the Gold Glove, that he did not like his approach to ground balls, that it should be more like Cesar Izturis of the 2004 Dodgers. Wilson had his worst defensive year in 2006 and, at Tracy’s behest, Izturis was acquired from the Chicago Cubs this past July. It was at Tracy’s urging that Wilson nearly was traded to Detroit in late July, after which Wilson batted .401 in the season’s final two months.

There was more: Jose Castillo was told to be like Adrian Beltre. Bench players were told to be versatile like Jose Hernandez, who also was acquired. Even Tracy’s batting orders were modeled based on profiles of the 2004 Dodgers.

Another fallout of that connection, possibly, was that a mostly inexperienced group of Pirates was expected to perform — and behave — just as those veteran Dodgers did, without extra instruction or attention.

I can’t wait until Tracy tries to get Tulo to be more like Izturis.

had to try to play with newly acquired all-stars like Drew, Kent, and Lowe. I’m sure he’d rather have had Finley, Cora, and Lima in 2005 instead, since these were the players they replaced. 2005 spring is when I’d had it with Tracy. I had the misfortune of going to a presentation at Dodger Stadium in which Tommy, Depodesta, and Tracy took the podium. As season ticket holders had plenty of questions we had to hold our tongue when Tracy took the podium and I kid you not blathered for 15 minutes about what a great kid Milton Bradley was when someone asked him the inevitable question about his temper. 15 minutes of hell, the closest I’d ever come to just banding my hands on the table and yelling for him to shut up. Every bloody eye in that was rolling in their heads. Tommy started snoring, Depo started texting, and Frank was thanking him since he wouldn’t have any time left to answer any real questions.

I don’t even remember the 2004 team to be that talented.

But this is an awesome soccer ad by Puma. Found the link from a poster on BTF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo2wFptAX3k

Amazing baseball research here by Tom Shieber regarding a controversial baseball cap (link found via Rob Neyer’s links column today).

After reading that article from Jim Tracy’s stay at the pirates I have concluded that Jim Tracy is insane. The 2004 was 100 million dollar team that won one playoff game.

every time I see it on the sidebar.