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Richard Justice has the first draft of history:

Cecil Cooper deserved to be fired. To argue otherwise is to refuse to deal in reality.

Yes, the Astros are a mess of a baseball team. Yes, changing managers is nothing more than a step in the right direction.

As Tal Smith acknowledged, "We have a talent problem.”

The Astros are near the bottom of the National League in almost everything, and hanging every problem on Cooper is unfair.

--snip--

The first thing a successful major league manager must do is establish trust in the clubhouse. His players have to know that he's honest with them, that he has their back and will always be there for them. Cooper burned some bridges last year when his veterans became convinced he lied to them during a team meeting.

He lost a few players that day, then finished the job this season with two incidents. Two veterans say that on the day Aaron Boone tearfully told his teammates he was to undergo heart surgery, Cooper used the moment to get on his guys for not playing harder. To say his timing was bad would be an understatement.

And when Pudge Rodriguez broke the all-time record for games caught, Cooper didn't offer congratulations until the next day.

--snip--

Cecil Cooper isn't the only reason the Astros are 10 games under .500, but he was a problem.

"I do think something has to change,” Berkman said. "The environment is not good.”

This firing won't fix everything that's wrong with the Astros, but it's a large, necessary step in the right direction.

When a manager loses his players, you've got a couple of options. You can get rid of the manager, or you can get rid of the players. Well, you're not getting rid of Roy Oswalt or Lance Berkman, not to mention Hunter Pence, Carlos Lee, Michael Bourn, and Wandy Rodriguez. So you get rid of the manager, made all the easier because this particular manager (according to Justice) did odd things and couldn't begin to explain why he did them.

You can alienate your players and make unorthodox moves and frustrate the writers if you're winning. If you're losing, you can't. It's always been that way, and always will be.