Two of Beane's staff have gone to other teams. One, Theo Epstein, led the Red Sox to their first World Series victory in 86 years. The other, Paul DePodesta, was hired as general manager of the Dodgers. (In baseball, general managers are responsible for signing and trading players, and managers are responsible for day-to-day oversight of players and tactics during games.) The Dodgers did well in 2004, his first year, and did poorly in 2005, when they lost $36 million in payroll (about a third) to injuries. DePodesta had never gotten along especially well with the Dodgers' well-respected Traditionalist manager, Jim Tracy. DePodesta effectively fired Tracy after the 2005 season. The owner of the Dodgers, Frank McCourt, a highly leveraged East Coast real estate magnate, fired DePodesta two weeks later. Given that both DePodesta and Tracy are both very good, and between the two of them exemplify the two different philosophies currently in play, letting both of them go is evidence that McCourt is incompetent.

Jim Tracy landed a job managing the Pirates, who have been lousy for over a decade. Today the Pirates played the Dodgers, and lost. Tracy's commentary is priceless:

"One-and-7 obviously isn't the way you want to start," Tracy said. "But the (Dodgers) team I managed last year started 12-2 and we won 71 games. So it's not a large enough sample size of games. It doesn't mean this is the kind of team we're going to be for the next six months."

Jim Tracy using the phrase "sample size". Awesome.

Bonus points: "Attendance for yesterday's march topped that of the largest known San Diego march, a 1994 'March for Jesus' that drew 25,000 to 40,000 people to the waterfront." San Diego Union-Tribune