Hired to Be Fired

I'll never be a manager; I'd never want to be.
'Cause that's a job for masochists, or so it seems to me.

A manager gets hired, and he walks out to meet the press,
And each guy that he sees that day has got a second guess

About who should have won the job. And that is just the start,
For even on the day he's hired the manager's own heart

Must tell him that he's one bad stretch from joining the retired...
For managers, they say, are only hired to be fired.

And fired for what? Because some teenaged jerk stops hitting curves?
Or when some psycho pitcher fin'ly gets what he deserves

And finds himself in court, in jail, in rehab, in Japan...
Because the manager can't help...because nobody can?

Or fired because the owner, dumb as dirt and rich as God,
Decides one whacko day the brilliant manager's a clod

Because he sat the wrong guy down or nixed a stupid trade?
Or that the ancient hitter, slow of foot, should still have strayed

Away from third with no one out and nowhere else to roam,
"A better manager," he thinks, "that guy'd have stolen home."

I do not wish to manage, 'cause the job cannot be done,
And even when you're winning, games are not near as much fun

As you might think, because, although the players all stay young,
As manager, you age, and all the great songs that you sung

When you were still a player to your players seem bizarre
As well as old and slow, and so you limp off to the bar

Where you can drink alone or with a coach as old as you,
Because that's what the managers and coaches have to do.

And while the players light their teammates' shoes on fire or fill
Their lockers up with shaving cream or, for a greater thrill,

Send groupies to their hotel rooms or deflate all the tires
On some poor rookie's SUV, your own sustaining fires

Are banked. And you don't find these stupid, boyish tricks amusing,
But goofy, stunted, self-destructive, these guys that you're using

To fill the slots on every line-up card you write each day
Have got your job in their hands, and it's all in how they play.

I'll never be a manager because, though kids are great,
The teenaged years are not so easy, as I've learned of late,

And if you are a manager, you will quite quickly learn
That lots of guys upon whom you depend for what you earn

Are teenagers forever in their language and their dreams,
And managing is not the great job that it sometimes seems.

No, I'd not be a manager, it doesn't fit my plan.
It's hard enough these days, I think, to merely be a fan.