Jayson Stark gets some great quotes from Bobby and several players, plus some pretty amazing fun facts. Read it here:
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"You know, I've played for other managers," outfielder Matt Diaz said. "And it's not something I look forward to at all."
↵Diaz is not what we would describe as alone in that sentiment, either. Pretty much everyone else who has managed a big league baseball team has left a trail of players who think that whatever bad stuff happened to them, it was at least partly the manager's fault.
↵Cox, on the other hand, has set a record that might never be broken: We've never heard a single player rip him. Not one. Not ever.
↵"If somebody has, I've never seen it. I've never heard it," said Braves president John Schuerholz, the man who teamed with Cox to form the longest-running manager/general manager tag team in history. "I never even heard it secondhand. I never even heard it fourth-hand."
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And how's this for a recruiting pitch by Chipper Jones:
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"The people who come here for a little bit of time and have aspirations of going somewhere else -- or the guys who come up and have only known Bobby Cox and are about to become a free agent -- I always tell them, 'The grass is not greener.' And they find that out. It took Gary Sheffield literally three weeks of spring training. After he left here and went to the Yankees, we played them in spring training. And he walked up to me in batting practice and said, 'Man, did I screw up. I didn't know how good I had it.'"
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