Dave Miley, who I continually have to remind myself is not the same Dave Miley that lived across the street from me when I was a kid, was mercifully fired yesterday by the last-place Reds. There's been widespread speculation that Miley wouldn't survive past the All-Star game given the team's performance (27-43, 18.5 GB).

Judging from Miley's profile photo on ESPN.com, he was getting a bit worn down by the job:

Why Me?

Anyway, Miley was just asking to be fired given that his bench coach, and eventual replacement, was Jerry Narron, a lifetime backup catcher. Everyone knows that today's backup catcher is tomorrow's fast-track managerial candidate. Whether it's Eric Wedge, Ned Yost, Bruce Bochy, Bob Brenly, Buck Martinez, Lloyd McClendon, Mike Scioscia, or Bob Melvin, catchers are hot commodities in the dugout, and they seem to keep their jobs for years no matter how the team performs on the field. It's the Catcher Mystique. Willie Randolph and other minority candidates couldn't get more than a cursory glance for years. If you want to be a major-league manager, put down the Strat-O-Matic and pick up the Tools of Ignorance.

I call it the Tim McCarver Principle. McCarver has tried to sell catchers as astute students of the game for years, and I guess the owners are picking up what he's putting down. As for me, I wouldn't pick it up with a pooper scooper.

Take a look at the percentage of managers who were mainly catchers in their major-league career. Here are the numbers over the last twenty years:

2002 was the year of the catcher-manager, like some Jeffersonian mini-renaissance for the philosopher-king. And that's nothing compared to 1909 when eight out of the eighteen managerial jobs were filled by men who were primarily catchers in their playing days.

That made me wonder what managerial splits based upon player position would look like. I took the primary position that a player occupied during his career. This was based on most career games per position. (If there were two positions that tied for most games for an individual, he was counted under both. There were two such managers. That's why the totals are slightly askew.). Here are the results based on managers per individual position (Moose Stubing is the one without a position). I also looked at the totals for managers who never played in the majors (Note: Through 2004):

Catchers are second on the list, but when you consider that the outfield category actually consists of three positions, catchers are actually way ahead of the pack.

There's also one other thing you may note. Catchers have by far the worst record of any of the categories with more than a handful of representatives on the list. Non-playing managers also have done better than ones that played in the majors. This intuitive supports the "Ted Williams makes a lousy manager" theory that now seems to hold sway.

Maybe being a catcher had nothing to do with Narron getting the job. Maybe it's his sage advice. Witness:

"We've got to concentrate on little things."

Nuff sed?