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Keller @ Large: What's Up With The Excessive Impatience?

BOSTON (CBS) - When the Red Sox fired John Farrell, I didn't approve, but I understood. Even though he won a World Series and won the division twice in a row, overcoming player injuries and beating cancer in the process, Farrell made his share of mistakes and the team was perceived as underperforming.

But Joe Girardi, canned as manager of the Yankees?

Are you kidding me?

During his decade in arguably the toughest managerial job in baseball, Girardi won a title and made it to the postseason six times, winning the division three times. This year he superbly handled a young team, mixed in new players halfway through, and took the Yankees to within a game of the World Series.

Plus, he's always struck me as a class act, and that's high praise from someone who hates the Yankees and everything they stand for.

I get it, this is how it works in sports, and maybe there was stuff going on with both Farrell and Girardi that we didn't know about.

But I wonder if these firings are part of a long running cultural trend toward excessive impatience and perverse fascination with the greener grass on the other side of the fence?

Think about presidential politics, where four of the last six presidents have been relatively untested newcomers elected by voters mostly just wanting something new, regardless of how worthwhile that something might be.

Think of high-tech consumer products, the endless hunger for the newest app, video game, or smartphone.

Think of the divorce rate.

Is this obsession with change and the new validated by outcomes?

Ask me next fall when we see if Farrell and Girardi's replacements did any better.

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