FanHouse WallyJoyner

or, "On the Occasion of Jon Bois' Birthday." Happy birthday, friend, you're still way better at this than me.

Two bits of bad news for Wally Joyner. Firstly, he's been canned as the hitting coach for the San Diego Padres. Secondly, his original Dugout screen name of "WallyJoynerInHolyMatrimony" is slightly too long to be effective, so it's been retired. Thirdly, his good friend DJ A.M. was injured in a plane crash. Here's the footage!

(put YouTube link here)

Tonight's Dugout is for Jon, and features a bunch of things he likes. Try to find them all (Jon doesn't like Castlevania, that one was me)!

You know Batting Stance Guy? Of course you do. He's famous on YouTube for his hysterical (and eerily accurate) impersonations of batting stances of, well, everybody. Most of the time he films in his backyard, but recently he went to a Dodgers/Padres game where he showed off for actual big leaguers -- there he is above doing his best Nomar Garciaparra for Mr. Mia Hamm himself.

For the most part, the players seem to think BSG is hysterical. Wally Joyner had a somewhat muted reaction, but most of the Padres couldn't get enough of him, nor could the Angels at different game last week.

And by firing Rettenmund who had been the team's hitting coach since June of '06, they became the third team in the weak-hitting NL West to fire a hitting coach. The Dodgers fired coach Eddie Murray and replaced him with Bill Mueller, and the D-Backs canned Kevin Seitzer about three weeks ago, replacing him with Rick Schu. So once again, I'll bring up my question -- how much responsibility for the lack of hitter's performance should be assumed by the hitting coach? Seems like it's just the easiest way for the teams to address their problem.

Here's the thing: going into the year, it was common knowledge that the Padres didn't have much offense. The fact that they're last in the majors in batting average shouldn't be much of a shock. The team would be hard-pressed to do worse than .244, making Wally Joyner's job seem somewhat easy. The firing was also good timing by the Padres; they did it the same day as the trade deadline, possibly hoping all the deals would overshadow the firing. That's not the feeling in the Padres clubhouse -- some of the players knew they could have saved Rettenmund's job had they performed better.

Previously at FanHouse:
Dodgers Can Hitting Coach Eddie Murray
Do Hitting Coaches Impact the Game?