Robin Ventura, Jimmy Carter

I saw a story about Robin Ventura in The Athletic today. It seems that the ex-manager of the White Sox is in his second year as a student coach at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. That’s right, student coach, which means Ventura is taking a full course load to meet NCAA requirements. In a word, Cool. Ventura was the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Sox hired him to replace Ozzie Guillen in 2012. Nobody cheered louder than I did when Ventura stepped down after five fitful seasons. But that doesn’t mean I wish the best-ever Sox third baseman ill. It takes guts to go back to college in your early fifties, and to move to Stillwater OK, no less. But Ventura has a love of the game that won’t go away. Maybe he can accomplish things at OSU that he failed to do with the Sox. In that way, he could be a little like Jimmy Carter, a bust of a president but a human dynamo the past forty-plus years out of office. Ventura was two years short of a degree when he started up again. Might I suggest a major in history? Just saying.