Reason #154,728 Richie Whitt at the Dallas Observer doesn't know baseball. First Whitt leads off with this: "To quote Robert quoting me, 'Toldja so.' " (Like all this Buck Stuff was a secret to everyone on planet earth except Whitt, the all-knower of all that is baseball.)

When he gets to the crux of the argument, I have to shake my head more than I shook it reading the first line: "Buck is a great baseball man. But his personality quirks, reluctance to smile and lack of, dare I say, hip communication skills eventually gnawed at the nerves of young players such as Michael Young and Mark Teixeira. There were never lightning-rod incidents with Buck, just a cumulative effect of treating baseball like a business rather than a game that wore out his welcome in Texas."

Let's take this apart gently:

Exhibit A: Michael Young this year became the fourth player since 1940 to have four straight 200-hit seasons. Think about that for more than a millisecond. He is the club leader in hits for a season, doubles for a season, plate appearances for a season and at-bats for a season, 2006 All-Star MVP and 2005 AL batting champion (I could post here the four pages of Young feats in the 2006 Rangers media guide but I am lazy). Buck Showalter was the manager of the Rangers for the past four years, which is - ah - when Young did all that stuff.

Exhibit B: Mark Teixeira this year became the 4th player in Rangers history to hit 30 or more home runs in three seasons. The Texas Rangers have been playing for 34 years and have had, roughly, 850-900 players come to the plate in that time. Only two other guys among all those people have matched Teixeira in this regard? To me, that's pretty good. Teixeira was the 2004 Silver Slugger award winner and a 2005 Gold Glove award winner. He has 450 RBIs the past four years. Compare that to, say, Albert Pujols (501) or A-Rod (475). Four years ago Teixeira was a rookie. It was his worst season so far, and in quotation marks you may put the word "worst" <---- just like that.

"If we're gonna lose in 2007, we will lose with a smile and ice cream cake and balloons in the clubhouse!" said Rangers owner Tom Hicks today, wearing a fake nose that beeps like a bike horn, an oversized yellow polkadot jumpsuit and size 39 red shoes. Man, that was a fun press conference today. I can't wait for more.

Look at the offense of the Rangers this year. It's more than enough for the postseason.

Look at the pitching. It's more than enough to keep this team out of the playoffs.

This post isn't a Buck Was Robbed! defense. How many division titles did he win? But the arguments to kick Buck Showalter out of town thus far have been ridiculous. If you want to run a manager out of town, come up with valid reasons other than he didn't smile enough. The Rangers were last in the playoffs in 1999. Buck wasn't manager in 2000 or 2001 or even 2002. He wasn't manager in the non-playoff year of 1982. Yeah, but that's a dumb argument, Keep It Country.

I refer you to the smile defense.

Bobby Cox led the Braves to 14 division titles and he's never looked like anything other than he's gotta kill someone after the game. Anyone see this Joe Torre photo? Looks like every other Joe Torre photo in the dugout. How many division titles have the Yankees won under Torre? 51? 127? Infinity plus 10 billion?

I have never been in a professional clubhouse or dugout or diamond that wasn't filled with as many curse words and scowls as spit-out sunflower seed shells. Baseball hasn't been a "game" since 1869, and even before that the serious teams paid players in an attempt to be the best. As much as we would wish them to, professional baseball people don't approach the game like carefree kids. Yeah, they can have a good time, they're human beings for pete's sake. But MLB is a business in which billions of dollars change hands between fans and teams and TV and advertisers and gamblers and whatever whatnots are attracted to big sport. When things in life start to get to that financial point, people take those said things in life seriously. Don't expect Ronald McFreakinDonald or Mona Lisa managing your team. (Hey, that photo of Mona Lisa has her wearing the Rangers hat over her eyes. Yeah, but she's smiling. Who cares if she can't see what's going on!)

Occam's razor, brother. Pitching and prospects are this team's biggest problem. It is so glaringly apparent to those who care to look.