Jim Lefebvre is Baseball's Dalai Lama

Jim Lefebvre was fired from his job as Mariners' manager back in 1991 because he couldn't get along with Woody Woodward and kept airing the Mariners' dirty laundry in public. Lefebvre is now the manager of the Chinese Olympic baseball team, and he still hasn't learned his lesson:

Chinese officials have put a gag order on their athletes and coaches, leading up to the Olympic Games, but ordering Lefebvre to stop talking baseball is harder than asking him to stop breathing . . .

. . . "With the Olympics about to begin, the Chinese officials have come to me and said no coach, or player, or manager can talk to the media," Lefebvre said. "So this, what I'm doing now, is against their policy. I asked them why we can't talk and they told me they didn't want to put a focus on their team and I told them, 'You know, that bothers me.'

Good for Lefebvre for standing up to silly authoritarian restrictions like that. Of course, the Chinese government is a bit tougher than Woody Woodward -- there are something like 70 crimes in China that are punishable by death, including white-collar stuff like embezzlement and tax fraud -- so maybe he should be a little careful until he's done with the Olympics gig.