Marlins fire Dan Jennings for second time this month — now from GM job

During the 2015 season, Dan Jennings served as both the Miami Marlins' general manager and their field manager. In 2016, he'll be neither.

Jennings was "relieved of his duties" as general manager on Thursday, ending a guessing game about whether he'd return to that role after being fired as the team's field manager on Oct. 6.

Yep, the Marlins fired him twice in one month. Even for Jeffrey Loria, Miami's notorious manager-firer, this is an accomplishment.

It caps a weird, weird year for Jennings. He started the season as GM, as expected. He'd had that role since the end of the 2013 season. When the Marlins decided to fire manager Mike Redmond on May 17, they shocked everyone in baseball by making Jennings their field manager. He backed away from his GM duties then. When he was fired as Miami's manager after going 55-69 to finish the season, the Marlins offered Jennings his old GM job back. He was said to be mulling it over.

Something changed between then and now, because he's 100 percent out the door. The Marlins announced Michael Hill, their former GM and current president of baseball operations will also "assume the full responsibilities of the general manager position." And if you missed the news earlier, the Marlins are reportedly hiring ex-Dodgers manager Don Mattingly as their new skipper.

The complete exile of Jennings reportedly is because of a rift between he and Loria. USA Today's Bob Nightengale said their relationship soured when Jennings played outfielder Marcell Ozuna against Loria's wishes. This goes back to when Ozuna, who was struggling in his third year in the big leagues, was sent to Triple-A, then called back up.

Loria has long had a reputation for meddling with his managers and/or giving them directives. What's interesting about this particular situation is that deciding how and when to play Ozuna would be the job of the manager and general manager — both jobs Jennings had experience in — yet Loria stuck his nose in anyway.

The message from the Jennings saga is clear: If you want a job with the Marlins, stay on Loria's good side.

Tigers pitcher Daniel Norris announces he's cancer free after thyroid surgery

When he revealed two weeks ago that he'd been diagnosed with thyroid cancer in the middle of the 2015 season, Detroit Tigers pitcher Daniel Norris said he hoped to be "100 percent cancer free" soon and ready to play baseball again next spring.

He's taken a very promising first step. Norris, 22, announced Thursday on his Instagram account that his surgery to remove the malignant growth on his tyroid was successful and he was indeed cancer free.

Norris posted the following picture and caption:

I just want to thank everyone for the thoughts & prayers. Surgery was successful & I am Cancer Free. #justkeeplivin

If you missed it the first time: The most amazing part of Norris' story was that he was diagnosed midseason — even before he traded from the Toronto Blue Jays to the Tigers in the David Price deal — but continued to pitch anyway. He finished his rookie season 3-2 record and a 3.75 ERA in 13 starts.

Now that the cancer's gone, you can add one more win in 2015.

So much drama lately over Colin Kaepernick in San Francisco

How loony is the drama with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick lately? TMZ said that teammates are griping about Kaepernick wearing his signature headphones too much.

Beaten down by Beats, I guess.

The latest report from TMZ is that teammates are upset that Kaepernick is always wearing his large headphones, which makes him seem like a loner and unapproachable. The headphones may or may not have been a reason offensive tackle Joe Staley and tight end Vernon Davis had a verbal altercation over Kaepernick. Seriously, this is actually a thing we're talking about, involving professionals.

Are these reports exaggerated? Are parts made up? Who knows. But it has to be getting tiring for the 49ers talking about the Kaepernick drama so much.

It really got going when Fox Sports' Jay Glazer reported that Kaepernick was "on an island" in the 49ers' locker room. That's generally not good for a quarterback (although the narrative that every great quarterback is also a great Leader Of Men is also not true).

All week since that report, the 49ers have been asked about Kaepernick's demeanor in the locker room. 49ers receiver Torrey Smith said, "Kap isn’t on a damn island," according to CSN Bay Area. 49ers coach Jim Tomsula said he doesn't think any of the negative reports about Kaepernick are coming from within the team. He said he remembered the same type of stuff happening when Alex Smith was quarterback of the team.

"It’s always something,” Tomsula said, according to the Sacramento Bee. “I guess that’s what goes on when you’re the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers."

There is the matter of a heated team meeting. Tomsula called it after the 49ers' Oct. 4 loss to the Green Bay Packers. The players continued to voice their concerns after he left. Apparently that's when Staley and Davis got into it. Davis apparently called out Kaepernick and Staley supported the quarterback, CSN Bay Area said, citing sources.

"I don’t recall that," Davis said, although you'd think that's the type of thing one would remember. "I don’t know where that’s coming from. It’s funny to me, if you ask me."

Davis said he has never been mad at Staley and he didn't call out Kaepernick.

"I didn’t call Kap out at all," Davis said, according to CSN Bay Area. "It’s not my job or my role to call Kap out. I’ll let the coaches do that. We’re all together. There’s nothing that can separate any of us. We’re inseparable, I would think. Me, Kap, Joe, we’re all on the same page."

The CSN Bay Area report from Matt Maiocco said that in the days after that, Staley, Davis and Kaepernick cleared the air.

This is all fairly ridiculous, right? While this soap opera churns around the 2-5 49ers, the guy in the middle of it has seemingly been pretty calm.

“Reports don’t bother me," Kaepernick said, according to CSN Bay Area. "My relationship with my teammates is great. That’s all I’m worried about. What the perspective is outside the locker room really has nothing to do with me or this team.”

Just keep this question in mind as you think about this craziness: Wasn't the drama around the 49ers supposed to go away after the front office ran out coach Jim Harbaugh at the end of last season?

What Rangers manager Jeff Banister hopes to find in a new pitching coach

During his managerial interview last year, Jeff Banister wowed Rangers executives when they asked him who he'd like to see on his staff.

"I'll answer that with a question," Banister countered. "Who in your organization deserves to be on the major league staff?"

Banister got the job. And three minor league coaches earned promotions to the big league staff.

A year later and faced with more coaching openings, Banister has a chance to prove his words didn't just set a tone for the interview, but also set a tone for the organization. With news on Thursday that Mike Maddux would not return as Rangers pitching coach for 2016, the Rangers have three openings on staff: pitching coach, hitting instructor and bullpen coach.

And they have an ample number of candidates in the system.

But first: Maddux. The decision came down mostly to business. The Rangers were prepared to keep the status quo at pitching coach and offered Maddux a two-year deal after the season. Maddux, who has overseen the six lowest staff ERAs in the 22 seasons at Globe Life Park, wanted to either further negotiate his situation or have a chance to explore his market value.

Though technically still under contract until Saturday, the Rangers gave Maddux permission to shop around. As the process went on, it became more realistic Maddux would go elsewhere.

The Rangers began their own contingency search and review and decided there was the possibility of improvement.

"Mike is as hard-working and dedicated coach as we've been around," general manager Jon Daniels said Thursday. "I've got nothing but positive things to say. While Mike was looking around, we did the same. As we talked things through, we felt like there was an opportunity for us to get better with a new voice in that role."

The Rangers have a chance to bring in a voice or voices with whom all of their home-grown starters -- Derek Holland, Martin Perez, Chi Chi Gonzalez and Nick Martinez, to name a few -- are familiar. As part of the contingency plan, the Rangers have interviewed minor league pitching coordinator Danny Clark, Triple-A pitching coach Brad Holman and Double-A pitching coach Jeff Andrews.

All three have been with the Rangers at least seven years. They've all handled the home-grown pitchers at some point, with each of the relationships pre-dating the pitcher's relationship with Maddux. While praising Maddux's ability to help him scout and prepare, Holland on Thursday also cited his relationship with Clark as key in his development.

With his background in college coaching, the Rangers may see Clark as more valuable by getting to work with pitchers at a younger age. Holman and Andrews both worked in the Pittsburgh system when Banister was the club's minor league field coordinator and have more recent experience managing the day-to-day needs of the staff. In 2008, Andrews was the Pirates pitching coach and Holman was at Pittsburgh's Double-A club Altoona.

The same principle applies to the hitting instructor's job. Justin Mashore, who was at Triple-A Round Rock in 2015, gets a lot of credit for helping Rougned Odor fix his approach during a one-month minor league demotion. He was also with the major league club for much of September, even while Round Rock was still playing. Mashore and assistant hitting coordinator Dwayne Murphy have both interviewed for the hitting instructor's job.

"Guys in the system spend hour upon hour building and deepening relationships and communication skills with these guys," Banister said. "I want difference makers, and those guys are making a difference and impacting people along the way. When you create that ideal where people are getting promoted to the big leagues, you create a hunger for everybody in the system to get better."

There is one qualifier to all of this, and it's that nothing Banister does will be considered straight "in-the-box" thinking. He's likely to expand the duties for his bullpen coach and ask all of his coaches to better understand analytics. But he will want coaches with big energy.

Need an idea of what that looks like? Think of the one hire Banister made from outside the organization last year: third base coach Tony Beasley. Beasley was a jack of all trades and arguably had the biggest impact of any single coach on the staff.

Impact is what Banister wants. If it comes from within the organization, all the better.

Ohio State self-reports 6 minor violations, including Braxton Miller Instagram post

Ohio State athletics self-reported 29 violations to the NCAA from the period of Feb. 1 to Sept. 10 and six of the violations involved the football program.

According to The Lantern, which obtained the list of violations via a public-records request, one of the reported violations was Braxton Miller’s Instagram post from March that promoted AdvoCare, a nutritional supplement.

Once it became aware of the post, OSU’s compliance department asked Miller (who was not named in the list of violations) to remove the post, which he did a few hours later. Miller was initially declared ineligible, but was reinstated without any conditions by the NCAA a few weeks later.

“In response to the violation, the Compliance Office met with the student-athlete, the football coaches, and staff to provide additional education related to the incident,” OSU’s report read. “Further, the student-athlete was immediately declared ineligible until reinstated by the NCAA.”

Another noteworthy self-reported violation appears to involve quarterback Cardale Jones. The violation details a football player’s attendance of Cleveland Browns cornerback Joe Haden’s celebrity softball game, which Jones attended.

 

Here’s what the violation says:

On June 6, 2015, a football student‐athlete attended the Joe Haden Celebrity Charity Softball Game in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to attending the celebrity game, the student‐athlete was told by the Compliance Office and football staff that he was neither permitted to attend nor play in the game. The student‐athlete told the Compliance Office and football staff that he would not attend the game. However, on the morning of the event, the student‐athlete called his position coach and asked if he could attend the celebrity game. The coach gave the student‐athlete permission to attend the game provided that he did not play. As such, the student‐athlete attended the celebrity game, appeared on the field, but did not play in the game. Because the institution did not provide written approval for the student‐athlete to appear at the Joe Haden Celebrity Charity Softball Game, a violation occurred.

The violation had no bearing on Jones’ eligibility, but the compliance staff sent the team a “letter of education” to emphasize “rules regarding promotional activities" after it occurred.

The other four football violations included: a walk-on who was ineligible to travel with the team to the Sugar Bowl, an impermissible phone call from head coach Urban Meyer to a recruit, special teams coach Kerry Coombs posting a photo of high school coaches in front of the national championship trophy on his Twitter account and a current football player tweeting about a class of 2016 recruit.

Thanks to The Lantern, you can view all 29 violations here.

Alex Anthopoulos departure signals big changes coming to Blue Jays

The official company line from Toronto Blue Jays ownership is that Alex Anthopoulos rejected a five-year extension to remain as the team's general manager.

But given the context of the situation surrounding his soon to expire contract, that's like saying Anthopoulos could keep his car but would have to give back the keys. Or at least, ask for the keys any time he want to go for a spin.

When the Blue Jays hired Mark Shapiro in August to take over for Paul Beeston as president and CEO at the end of the season, they hoped their current GM would be OK with riding shotgun after six years in charge. It turns out he wasn't.

Anthopoulos was classy and diplomatic as ever in a conference call with reporters Thursday, stressing repeatedly that Shapiro and ownership – Canadian communication giant Rogers – gave him every opportunity to continue in the role he'd held since 2009 and that money wasn't an issue.

"I don't know if I've had to make a harder decision in my life. But I did what I felt I needed to do," said Anthopoulos. "I didn't feel this was the right fit for me going forward."

His title hadn't changed, but the terms he'd be working under sure had. Anthopoulos would have to cede power to Shapiro on baseball decisions. That was the part of the deal ownership had to offer Shapiro to get him to leave his post with the Cleveland Indians. You have to figure the same struggle would have played out if Toronto had been able to land offseason targets Kenny Williams and Dan Duquette. Shapiro was an attractive get because of his well-regarded baseball acumen combined with his business background.

It appears a marriage between Anthopoulos and Shapiro just wasn't going to be effective, though, as they differed philosophically on their vision for the Blue Jays' future. Rick Westhead of TSN reports that Shapiro believed Anthopoulos was reckless with his trading of top prospects at the deadline in deals that netted the team Troy Tulowitzki and David Price.

So after filling up the tank with stars – Price was a rental but Tulowitzki, likely AL MVP Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, Russell Martin and Edwin Encarnacion are under contract for 2016 – and building a team good enough to reach the ALCS, Anthopoulous decided the Blue Jays could drive on without him. And just like that the mastermind behind Toronto's this past year makeover won't be around to see it through.

The odds are good that plenty more changes are to come in Toronto. Manager John Gibbons might be out of work before long. So too could the top members of Anthopoulos' front office staff. That's not to mention countless jobs on the business side of the organization that will undoubtedly be reviewed.

This time should have been spent celebrating the Blue Jays' first playoff berth in 22 years and their arrival as a contender instead of this.

Earlier this week Anthopoulos said that he was just finding his stride as a GM. He said he'd learned from past mistakes – there's not one GM out there with a perfect resume – and reevaluated his process and values. While Anthopoulos reevaluated his own process, the man who stood to be his new boss did the same. Shapiro came to a different conclusion, and it's a sign a shakeup is on the way with the Blue Jays.

One-of-a-kind: American Pharoah set to race for the last time

As the great horse galloped through the crisp Kentucky air, striding beautifully as always, the crowd ringing the training track at Keeneland Race Course Thursday morning feverishly recorded the moment.

Cell phones. Tablets. TV cameras. Still cameras. A few old fossils simply stored the image in their minds with the naked eye.

It was a moment to savor: the shiny bay colt moving with easy speed on a loping breeze, through long shadows and slanting sunlight, one of the very last times he'll be seen on a track.

American Pharoah's time as a racehorse – as the racehorse of a lifetime for those who have owned, trained and ridden him – is almost over.

"I try not to think about it," exercise rider Jorge Alvarez said Thursday, after climbing off Pharoah's back for the penultimate time.

If Bob Baffert and Ahmed Zayat could turn the hourglass over and borrow more time, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Who wouldn't want a little longer with the best athlete they'd ever been around? But retirement looms for the 2015 Triple Crown winner, starting Sunday. A stall at nearby Ashford Stud, the American bluegrass division of the Irish breeding giant Coolmore Stud, awaits.

So they try to focus on American Pharoah's last racing task – the Breeders' Cup Classic here Saturday – and try to keep the growing wistfulness from overwhelming them.

"It's emotional for me," said Baffert, Pharoah's trainer. " … My wife wants to kidnap him and take him back to California."

Baffert has had a brilliant career, one of the greatest in the history of the sport, but this has been the apex. He has guided American Pharoah to eight wins in 10 starts, becoming just the 12th horse to complete the Triple Crown and the first since 1978, a gap that had many in the sport proclaiming it could never be done again.

Until Pharoah did it. His gate-to-wire victory in the Belmont is arguably the most stirring sporting achievement to date in 2015.

"In any sport you want to see something spectacular," Baffert said. "And he delivered."

Now Saturday he will try to deliver one last time, becoming the first horse to win the so-called Grand Slam: the Triple Crown plus the Breeders' Cup Classic. He will take on older horses for the first time in this one, a formidable task for a 3-year-old but one that got appreciably easier Thursday with the unexpected scratch of 5-year-old mare Beholder. American Pharoah now is the 4-5 favorite in the $5 million race.

Then it's off to a princely, pampered second career as a stallion. And life becomes a little more normal – and less thrilling – for Baffert and Zayat.

For time immemorial, horsemen have said the next crop of 2-year-olds keeps them young. It's the seductive, addictive power of hope – the next crop of babies could contain the next special one. They're always looking for that glimmer of greatness in a young horse that could fulfill their wildest dreams, of winning the Derby and beyond.

It's the same narcotic that keeps baseball scouts scouring the Dominican Republic and track coaches combing the streets of Jamaica and football coaches vigilant in South Florida. Who can find the new superstar?

Baffert has a full barn of 2-year-olds at Santa Anita in Southern California that he is coaching toward the classics in 2016. Zayat owns plenty of 2-year-olds himself, interspersed with various trainers nationwide. Many of those young horses have the breeding and potential that dares a man to dream.

But how seductive can the dream be now, when you've had the best you'll ever get? How do you enjoy the next group, knowing they won't measure up to what you've already had? How does the fantasy of finding another Triple Crown winner coexist with the rational knowledge that it will never get any better than 2015?

"You can't compare them [the next wave of young horses he's training] to [American Pharoah]," Baffert said. "He's sort of once in a lifetime."

Said Zayat: "There will only be one Pharoah in my life. He's just bigger than life. We owe a lot to him. He doesn't owe us anything. As much as we get excited about 2-year-olds in our barns – and we have a nice crop – it's just different."

Bob Bowman will continue coaching swimmers after Michael Phelps retires, and he will never stop looking for The Next Phelps. But he won't find him.

David Cutcliffe has kept coaching college football for 20 years after Peyton Manning left Tennessee. But he's never had another Peyton.

Bob Baffert will keep training horses and Ahmed Zayat will keep buying them. But they won't see one with this kind of stride, this combination of speed and stamina. They won't have another who takes them to the dizzying heights American Pharoah did in the spring of 2015 – in Louisville, in Baltimore, in New York.

That's why even a $5 million race – the richest in North America – is less about winning than Pharoah simply making a graceful exit from competition. As Zayat has said, the colt doesn't owe him anything. His place in history would be enhanced with a Grand Slam, but it's already secure.

And that's why the wistfulness is hard to tamp down as the days having American Pharoah in the barn dwindle. Win or lose Saturday, the humans who have cared for the great horse know they won't be back this way again.