Blue Jays Fire GM Ricciardi, Promote Anthopoulos As Successor

Blue Jays Fire Ricciardi With A Year Remaining On His Contract

NEXT IN LINE: Beeston said of Anthopoulos, "He knows the organization. He knows the players. He knows the farm system. He knows the scouts. We're very, very pleased that Alex has accepted the role." In Toronto, Richard Griffin wrote one of the "major tasks inherited by Anthopoulos this winter will be to make sure the Jays get the right situation" for P Roy Halladay, "whether it is trading him for major-league ready talent or convincing him to stay for the final year of his contract" (TORONTO STAR, 10/4). The TORONTO STAR's Griffin today writes Anthopoulos also should "put out the clubhouse brushfires." The "player insurrection that surfaced on the weekend ... has to be mediated, otherwise free agents and others with any say on their destination will not ever consider the Jays as employers." In addition, Anthopoulos should "find a strong senior baseball adviser," a "hallmark of all good young GMs" (TORONTO STAR, 10/5).

LONG TIME COMING: The TORONTO STAR's Griffin noted Ricciardi was "heralded as one of the bright young minds in the game when he first arrived on the Jays scene" in November '01. But in his eight years, the Blue Jays have "gone through four different managers, four hitting coaches and three pitching coaches," and his managerial changes "have taken place in mid-season." Griffin: "At some point the buck has to stop at the GM's office" (TORONTO STAR, 10/4). Also in Toronto, Chris Zelkovich writes Ricciardi's firing "closes one of the strangest relationships between the media and a sports executive this city has seen since the days" of former Maple Leafs Owner Harold Ballard. Ricciardi "did everything he could to control his message by using the media," as "in the early days, he would routinely appear on television and radio broadcasts." He later "hosted his own radio show," but that is where "things started to unravel for Ricciardi, where he began to lose public support." The media efforts "exposed Ricciardi as a rather arrogant man who had little time for what he considered the uninformed opinions of Canadian baseball fans" (TORONTO STAR, 10/5).

TIME FOR CHANGE: In Toronto, Steve Simmons wrote by the end of his tenure, it was "hard to find anyone who could stomach" Ricciardi. He made "enemies in his own clubhouse, with his own coaches, with players on other teams, with a wide array of media members, and there are those who truly believe his last desperate act as Blue Jays general manager was an awkward attempt to get manager Cito Gaston fired." Ricciardi was "all about deception and misdirection, eight years of false promises and, worse than that, an inability to peddle hope" (TORONTO SUN, 10/4). The GLOBE & MAIL's Stephen Brunt writes Ricciardi "had that smartest-kid-in-the-class way about him, he may not have been appropriately deferential to what had gone before, he seemed anxious to give the old order the bum's rush, so it was way too easy to pine for his failure." Brunt: "Fail he did, though who might have succeeded under similar circumstances remains an open question. But what has failed, also ... is the second back-to-the-future movement, with Beeston returned to the helm and with Cito Gaston returned to the dugout" (GLOBE & MAIL, 10/5).

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