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It's not as if he didn't have choices. John Farrell would have been on anybody's short list to manage their baseball team, which is why the Boston Red Sox added financial sweeteners to his contract that prevented him from leaving as pitching coach the last three seasons.

John Farrell, middle, was the Red Sox's pitching coach for the last four seasons.
So, then how do you explain why Farrell, freed from his obligation to Boston, has elected to make his managerial debut with the Toronto Blue Jays, which is the baseball equivalent of signing up to fight Manny Pacquiao 18 times a year, followed by another 18 nights in a steel cage with Brock Lesnar?

During the winter meetings in Orlando, while the Red Sox were dominating the headlines with their trade for Adrian Gonzalez and signing of Carl Crawford, and the New York Yankees were engaged in their futile pursuit of Cliff Lee, Farrell insisted that he was undaunted by going toe-to-toe with the two teams that have maintained a chokehold on the AL East.

"The division honestly was an appeal, not a deterrent,'' Farrell said. "I think when you go up and you play 72 games against the likes of Boston, New York, Baltimore and Tampa, that is one heck of a challenge. Some might think daunting. I kind of think of it as an attraction.''