Quote of the Day

However whenever I think of the responsibilities of the President one at a time: National and world Economic policy (have you ever seen a federal budget!?!), foreign relations policy, military action that has thousands of lives, international repercussions, supreme court appointments, a million other things each and every day…I find that I think it would take a genius to handle any one of those elements, let alone all of them. I don’t excuse him for doing what I consider a crappy job, but I find myself having a world of respect for anybody who takes that on, even if I think they have no business doing it.

Seriously though, they probably felt awkward about meeting him right before embarking on a barnstorming sweep of his beloved Chicago teams. Nyjer probably was so excited that he took off running into the White House before the tour started and was asked to leave.

if self restraint is not Perry’s strong suit then I support his decision.

in a slightly on-topic note I was at the game last night and ran into Tom Ridge in the concourse. I was heading to my seat with my Ben’s Chili Bowl fully loaded Half Smoke. Talk about a code orange alert for the stomach!

I nod to him and say hello…he says hello back. My wife says “do you work with that guy?” to which I respond “um, no he used to be governor of PA and was the first Sec of Homeland Security.” Her reply “oh, I thought he looked familiar”. If only the cast of “The Hills” had been there, them she would have spotted instantly. HA!

It’s okay to discuss politics here, but just a warning in advance that if it gets more heated than this I’ll probably shut it down. Bucs Dugout welcomes people of all political persuasions and I don’t want to turn off half the population if the commenters all skew to one side or something.

The leagues are clearly different. The issue isnt business model comparisons of 8 games vs. 81 or Salary Cap vs. No Cap.

The issue is leadership. The Steelers have had leaders, the Pirates only recently (and at that the jury is still out, while early returns trend positive).

Leadership transcends any of these differences (otherwise why would any business leader read Jack Welch’s books when GE is unlike 99% of the companies in the business world?).

Hire the right people, give them the resources they need and get out of their way.

Welch has a great quote that applies here I think “Hiring good people is hard. Hiring great people is brutally hard. Yet nothing matters more in winning than getting the right people on the field”

Bonifay and Littlefield were not the right people and it is quite possible that they either were not given appropriate resources…in the case of DL it appears he was unwilling to spend resources provided (Latin America/DR vs. Burnitz/Randa et al).

We’ll never know the correct answer to this question, but were it the Rooney’s in that role and not McClatchy/Nutting in the last 13 years would the Pirates have been a better ball club? I vote yes.