The most fun part about baseball is this: Everyone can be a manager.
It’s been that way forever. Sandlot kids in Parkchester and Highbridge probably debated whether Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig should hit 3-4 or the other way around. Neighborhood wiseguys in Bushwick and Brownsville surely argued if Gil Hodges should be dropped lower in the batting order — or dropped altogether — when he went 0-for-21 in the 1952 World Series.
And starting in 1963, when Strat-O-Matic started assigning one card for every player in MLB … well, we weren’t just playing the part of manager, we WERE the manager.