John Donovan: A week of pink slips for skippers of sinking ships

Baseball's pink slip-wielding Grim Reaper made Its unwelcome visit last week to three big-league managers -- I envision a kind of dark, gliding presence, carrying a maple bat over Its shoulder; either that, or somebody who looks a lot like Omar Minaya -- in one of the more brutal weeks in recent memory. Starting with Willie Randolph's canning in the middle of the night, through John McLaren's off-day axing and into John Gibbons' much-expected whack at the knees, it was a bad week for a lot of teams and a lot of skippers. (link)