After all is said and done, reading this puts a lot of things into perspective for me. "Yost apologist/hater, "whatever. Bottom line, I can't argue with that at all. Thats basically how I see it. Melvin needed a manager. He told Yost "We are not going to be that good, we can't aford to pay for free agents. The team we have now(2003) is not going to be that good. Its going to be place fillers until our draft picks pan out. And when they slowly come up, thats going to be your job. Make sure you play the kids when they come up. They are going to struggle, and they will have growing pains. Stick up for them and lead them the right way. We won't fire you because of your record just help develope these young kids. And when we start competing, you will have your shot to manage a championship team" Well we started to compete. He got his shot to manage a winner. He failed. Even though all of it was not his fault.. he didn't do enough to justify him staying with the team.