Leadership Screw-Up In Boston

Theo Epstein Quits
That's right. The boy wonder GM who guided the Red Sox to their 2004 title has resigned.

Epstein had done some agonizing soul-searching the past few days, torn between staying at the job he had always coveted since his childhood days in Brookline and leaving because of intra-organizational politics and power struggles that he ultimately decided he could not live with any longer.
Money and length of the contract were not issues in the past few days for Epstein, who had lobbied hard for an annual salary of more than $1 million a year.
Epstein had come close to agreeing to a deal Saturday evening but had not officially conveyed acceptance of it. On Sunday, he began having serious misgivings about staying on. A leading contributing factor, according to sources close to the situation, was a column in Sunday’s Boston Globe in which too much inside information about the relationship between Epstein and his mentor, team president and CEO Larry Lucchino, was revealed -- in a manner slanted too much in Lucchino’s favor. Epstein, according to these sources, had several reasons to believe Lucchino was a primary source behind the column and came to the realization that if this information were leaked hours before Epstein was going to agree to a new long-term deal, it signaled excessive bad faith between him and Lucchino.
Epstein had not made up his mind about accepting the job before going to bed Sunday night, this despite a report in the Boston Globe, citing multiple major-league sources, that Epstein and the Red Sox had agreed to a contract extension.

While a lot of thoughts come to mnid, prominent amongst them are:

1) Gee, that's so Boston. The Yankees manage to hold on to Brian Cashman in spite of everything awful, while the Bosox let their GM walk in spite of everything good.

2) I wonder who they'll get to replace him? Chances are it won't be somebody who was as good a fit as Theo Epstein. I guess a red-blooded Yankee fan says, "I hope they get Allard Baird or Chuck LaMar"

3) Great. I hope they get Allard Baird or Chuck LaMar.

4) Wow, had your dream job and done what you set out to do by the time you're 31. What a life. And walk away from 1 million a year to boot. Some guys get all the luck.

5) I guess they'll be trading away Manny Ramirez now.