Column: Peter Gammon & Cody Decker on why people love Pat Murphy

When Bud Black was fired as manager of the San Diego Padres Monday, the reaction through the game was that took the fall for a one year ownership relevance plan. Which is probably true, but when one is 3000 miles away, it is hard to know what the franchise needs to do to grow revenues in a market with the ocean on one side, Mexico on another, Mountains on another and the Dodgers to the North.

It will be interesting to see who the “interim successor” is, as deemed by general manager A.J. Preller. A leading candidate may well be Pat Murphy, who had such an impact on Craig Counsell at Notre Dame that when Counsell got the Brewers managerial job, he wanted Murph as his bench coach. Murphy was Dustin Pedroia’s mentor at Arizona State. He’s been a very successful manager in the Padres system.

And understand this: people love him.

Consider these thoughts from one of his El Paso players, the very bright, creative and imaginative Cody Decker:

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