Welcome to Saturday Scorecard. Welcome to November. Welcome to the beginning of the Bucks' home season. And, if you happen to be reading this at 2 a.m., welcome to the end of Daylight Savings Time.

Do you think the Brewers will use the extra hour to negotiate with CC Sabathia?

At Scorecard headquarters, we're going to attempt to use the extra time to work out, clean the garage, play the guitar that has been gathering dust and ponder a week that reminds us that the sports world moves in mysterious ways.

Consider:

Macha man: Brewers general manager Doug Melvin wanted to hire Ken Macha to manage in Milwaukee in 2003, but Macha stayed with Oakland, where he moved from bench coach to manager.

Upon hiring Macha to manage the team for 2009 and 2010, Melvin told a story about his first day in professional baseball -- as a pitcher in the Yankees minor-league system in 1972. Melvin, who was from Canada, felt intimidated by his surroundings and the situation. He'd never thrown behind a protective pitching screen or to a batter in a cage. The first hitter he faced in a "live" situation was a burly catcher named Ken Macha.

"He was a few years older and a much better player than I was," said Melvin, who remembers thinking to himself "What if I hit this big donkey?"

Sympathy for Dale: Though he was initially devastated when Melvin didn't give him the managing job, Dale Sveum returns to the Brewers' coaching staff.

Sveum doesn't have a connection to Macha, other than mutual friend Terry Francona, who was a bench coach under Macha in Oakland before taking a managing job in Boston, where Sveum was his third base coach.

Like Sveum, Macha knows what it's like to defer the dream of managing in the majors. He was Art Howe's bench coach in Oakland in 2002 when Boston called and asked permission to interview Macha. Oakland GM Billy Beane denied the request.

When Macha spoke with Sveum, he called the experience a "tremendous test of my professionalism."

The next year, Macha was interviewed for five different managing jobs and ended up taking over the A's.

Nothing personal: When Macha was dismissed after four winning seasons, reports in the Bay Area cited a "disconnect" between him and his players. Macha and some of those players, including current Brewers catcher Jason Kendall, now say the reports were overblown, though they may have been a factor in Macha's two-year wait to get back in the dugout.

Macha answered several questions about the topic in his introductory press conference.

"If you look at it from a player's standpoint, my decisions on playing people and not playing people really have a direct impact on how much money they can make over the course of their career," Macha said. "So sometimes the players think it's personal and it really isn't.

"The bottom line is this: The manager is responsible for wins and losses. The amount of respect that you get from the players is showed by the intensity in which he played. Take a look at our teams we had in Oakland, they always played better as the season went on. We always won games in Oakland."

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Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by sandstorm on Nov. 3, 2008 at 9:47 a.m. (report)

not sure what 'ol WestSideWillie is talking about. "overrated story"? the milwaukee brewers hired a new manager! that's kind of a big deal. maddux is not coming back as well, so there will be a new manager, bench coach, hitting coach, pitching coach and who knows how many other changes. odd what people will complain about...

Posted by WestSideWillie on Nov. 1, 2008 at 11:27 p.m. (report)

Wow, still have Ned Yost's crew nearly intact sans Teddy and Hitting coach. Let's see how many games a manager is really worth. Nothing earth shattering and the most over-rated baseball story of the year is this hiring.