A respected baseball man was the manager; a respected baseball mind ran the front office. The team made the playoffs three consecutive seasons. In the third season, the team went on a historic winning streak that enraptured a city and, really, all of baseball. But after the season, the manager was fired. Philosophical differences.
This, of course, is the story of … the 2002 Oakland A’s.
They even made a movie about it (the book was better, though).
And now, nearly two decades later, the St. Louis Cardinals are living out their own “Moneyball” plot (maybe, in this scenario, just drop the “ney” from the title?