John Gibbons has been fired once by the Toronto Blue Jays.
That makes him the most intriguing of baseball's six new managers for 2013, a split of three major league first-timers and an intertwined trio getting second or third chances.
The reasons behind the hires — by the Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros, Miami Marlins and Toronto — vary as widely as the men themselves, but the Blue Jays' choice was the most curious in the midst of turning themselves into instant contenders with the additions of R.A. Dickey, Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle and others.
The man who will manage baseball's most made-over team is more shocked to return to the job than he was to lose it that day in 2008, when one of his best friends in baseball walked through the door bearing bad news.
Gibbons and J.P. Ricciardi had been close since they were roommates as ClassA players in Shelby, N.C., in 1981, a year after the New York Mets took Billy Beane and Gibbons with back-to-back first-round picks (a fact that must have landed on the Moneyball cutting-room floor).
That friendship wouldn't change despite the message then-general manager Ricciardi had to deliver with the team in a 4-13 slide. Gibbons understood. It was pretty much a matter-of-fact transaction.
The most distraught man in the room, in fact, was Alex Anthopoulos, Ricciardi's 31-year-old assistant witnessing his first firing — and someone he had grown to like and respect.
Anthopoulos succeeded Ricciardi 16 months later, and Gibbons remained one of the confidants on whom he would call for opinions on players. But who would have thought Gibbons would be his choice to take over the team already buoyed by its 12-player trade with the Marlins that set the tone for this offseason?
Gibbons didn't dare.
"I was wondering, 'Who the heck is he going to hire?'" Gibbons says. "I said, 'Gosh, I'd love to be back there.' But I didn't even go to wishful thinking."
Neither did Anthopoulos — at first.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ml ... s/1865923/
