Hi -

There's an interesting article today about Jim Tracy, comparing him to 23-year Dodger manager Walter Alston. But the most interesting thing I found was this: Tracy is 6-foot-3, 205 pounds.

This may be an innocuous detail on the surface, but Tracy always struck me as so mild-mannered, it never occurred to me that he is in fact bigger than most of the players on the team. (Yes, ballplayers are getting bigger, but 6-3, 205 is still big.) I would have thought he was closer to my size.

I'm sure that it's more important that Tracy is smart and not dumb, and I'm sure there have been plenty of smaller managers that have been successful, but I would think bigger is better in terms of leading a team. Maybe I'll look up the top managers in baseball history and see if I can find out their sizes. (I know, as if anyone really cares...)

Another question is, where would short but stocky fall in this spectrum? Tommy Lasorda, anyone?