Everyone knows that the scariest thing in sports for any manager or general manager is the "vote of confidence" from the owner. If the owner has to publicly defend someone, chances are pretty good that person isn't doing a good job. Well, today
Phil Garner and
Tim Purpura both got their
second vote of confidence from
Drayton McLane of the summer. From the Houston Chronicle:
"As far as I'm concerned, there's no speculation (about firings)," McLane said. "We sure wish the team was playing better. We all sat this morning for over an hour and talked about the team and what prospects we have of improving and how we can move the lineup to enhance that and get players responding better, but as far as concerns for their jobs, no."
A second vote of confidence is pretty much unprecedented in sports, but only because most people get fired shortly after the first. Then again, the rest of the article is full of McLane talking about how he thinks that the fourteen games under .500 Astros are going to make a push for the second half and he's not even sure they're going to be sellers at the trade deadline yet, so it's entirely possible that he's just insane. And yeah, for the record, I think Garner and Purpura will both be canned either before or shortly after the end of the 2007 season.
