Trader Frank vs. Trader Jack

A small part of the fun in delving through baseball's long, glorious history is the useless playing of the 'what if' game.  It's almost as useless as making preseason predictions, but we can't help doing it all the same.  What if Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio had swapped places?  Certainly many more homeruns for both, and a very different individual public perception for each.  What if ballplayers were excused from military service during WWII?  Williams may own all the major hitting records.  What if the Red Sox and Yankees weren't so slow in shaking their racist sensibilities in the aftermath of Branch Rickey signing Jackie Robinson?  Willie Mays should've been in Boston, either hitting in front of, or behind Williams.  What fun would've been had in Boston.  The Yankee dynasty would have likely extended beyond the end of the Mantle Era.  Would Georgie Porgie have gotten his hands on the team if they hadn't fallen from prominence?  There are countless of these scenarios, and they are fun to postulate about in barrooms.  But here's a silly one that surely would've created some exciting roster instability.  What if Frank Lane and Jack McKeon had been GMs at the same time?  Ooh  Boy!  No player's job would've been safe.

"He doesn't run, he skates."

They don't sneer like they used to.

Paul Rapier Richards.  I have been an avid baseball fan for nineteen years, excluding those early years spent weening and teething and those late adolescent years spent seeing just how far I could insert my head up my ass, and I had never heard that name.  At least not in a context that would commit it to memory.  And yet Paul Richards has probably had more impact on post-WWII baseball than most any other man.  A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that he never guided his club to the pennant.  In fact, he seemed to make a habit of getting out just before the getting got good.