Despite how much it pained me, toward the end of his tenure with the Sox, to watch him lumber to the plate with men in scoring position, Trot Nixon is The Man. And I found myself getting a bit misty (in a manly, pro-America, post-Rocky IV-watching kind of way) upon reading of his recent release by the Brewers:
“That’s tough for me,” Macha said. “The four years I managed in the minor leagues, he was a player on my team. When you’re a minor-league manager, what you should do is put your heart and soul into getting a guy developed, to the big leagues. I explained to him his career has meant as much to me as it has him because he spent so much time with me and I’m proud to say he was a player for me in the minor leagues because of his professionalism and the career he has had.
“I consider Trot a friend and I’m proud of his career,” Macha said. “If he does get on to play, I wish him well. And if he doesn’t, I told him it’s equally difficult for anyone who loves the game as he does to call it quits. I’d recommend him as a person, a teammate and a baseball player.”
Surely there’s a place for Big Nix on the Sox? Not as a player, mind you, but as resident ass kicker? The guy who mainly sits in the clubhouse, chewing steaks and drinking whiskey, and gets called into action for every on-field donnybrook.
Because, as I’ve noted before, Trot was a two-fisted, double-flushing tough guy in the finest sense, and if he was born in another era, I could totally see him fixing a plate of knuckle sammiches for the likes of Cy Young and Joe Jackson, showing up hungover and black-eyed with Babe Ruth, and helping General Patton keep the Communists at bay.
There was never a player who was quicker out of the dugout to stick his cleat up another guy’s ass, and when you’re facing the Yanks in a critical series in mid-summer, that’s a good thing to have on your side.
