Only Craig comes up with stuff that's before even my time. It is a good tale, but it would take a cyber-bloodhound to verify, or access to Cinci papers on microfiche. So I'll hijack the thread, which did mention managerial predictions...

I take Tosca's confident forecast of an 85-77 season to mean he expects to win at least 90 games. No way you make an optimistic statement for the media to carve on your tombstone; you also don't want to end up on Boston's clubhouse bulletin board. Inside the room, he's talking about winning the division.

The Blue Jays will give up significantly fewer runs this year: 172 in April? 466 in the first half? There will be no Brandon Lyon debacles in 2003, no injured Chris Carpenter letting his selfish boyhood dream affect his team and his career, no deer-in-the-headlights Justin Miller, no Mike Smith ducking from line drives through the box. No -- thank heaven -- Esteban Loaiza, and in case you've blocked it from memory, even Scott Eyre made three starts. This, my statistically-inclined friends, is addition by subtraction. So I'm subtracting 25 runs a month in April, May and June, and allowing for the traditional second-half Cory Lidle surge, 10 per month thereafter. Instead of 828 opponent runs, it comes to 723 -- not quite Oakland or Seattle, but not bad.

They scored 813 runs last year, with black holes Cruz (.305 OBP in the first half of 2002), Mondesi (.314) and Felipe Lopez (.294) in the order, and semi-regular Joey Lawrence chewing up 150 AB at a .180/.262/.247 clip. Those spots will be capably filled by Catalanotto, Phelps, Woodward and Hudson this time around. Fill in the blank: The Jays will score __ more runs in each of April, May and June than they did last year. I'm guessing 20. Since Cruz-Cat is the only significant change from the second-half lineup, I'll say +2 runs a month in July, August and September; your mileage may vary. That would be 879-723 instead of 813-828.

Applying Bill James and Pythagoras -- Runs squared, divided by (Runs squared + Runs Allowed squared) -- came within two games of predicting Toronto's actual 2002 W-L record. If the Jays improve to my reasonable (OK, somewhat rosy) expectations, the numbers say they will win about 96 games. Of course, math isn't my strong suit, and some may prefer to use the power of 1.83 instead of 2, so this should be considered a very rough estimate.

Previously, relying on my gut, I said 87 wins, allowing for youth, inexperience and the brutal early schedule. Since I try to split the difference between "worst case" (82 in my opinion) and "best case" (formerly 92, but why argue with 96?) Effective immediately, I'm raising my official prediction to 89, and my hopes even higher.

On the search for the Cinci manager, it's hard to verify which of these it would be, but narrowing it down to the years the Reds finished 7th and had a different manager than the previous year, there aren't many options:

1966 - Dick Sisler managed in '65, Don Heffner and Dave Bristol managed to a 7th place finish in '66

1930 - Jack Hendricks managed in '29, Dan Howley led to a 7th in '30

There are a couple of other options prior to WWI but it's unlikely that Scott has a friend who would remember 1913.

Using a well refined Google search, I've learned that Dick Sisler was fired Oct. 4, 1965 so you can cross him off of the list (the man was fired after 89 wins, only to have the team finish 7th the previous year...ahhhh, the 60's).

I can't find a date for Hendricks' termination but he's really the only option. Now, that's assuming the story is even correct...we all know how stories can change over time.