Johnson has been vested with the responsibility of returning Team USA to the Summer Games after last year’s absence. The 2008 Olympics at Bejing, China, may be the final summer event to include baseball since the International Olympic Committee voted earlier this year to drop the sport from the 2012 London games.
“No doubt about it,” the 62-year-old Johnson told MLB.com when reached by phone on Wednesday at his home in Florida. “One of the reasons I took this job is the opportunity for us to make it back to the Olympics. We’ve always had very solid Olympic baseball teams. We’ll have a good team this time and it’s very important for us to qualify.”
wasn’t he managing in the Netherlands? I think he might have managed their last olympic team, untill they decided to ditch olympic baseball…
I looked this up a while back. I’d been thinking for some time that Johnson was too old to be seriously considered for another major league managerial job; but if Davey were, somehow, to become the Mets manager tomorrow, he would become the second YOUNGEST manager in the NL Eastern Division. Cox, Robinson, McKeon are all older; only Charlie Manuel is younger, and him only by about one year. But Johnson seems ancient because we’ve known him for so long.
He woulda taken the 2005 Mets deep into October — which used to be what mattered. The same goes for Valentine.
Agreed.