A manager pours his soul into his team, revels in the wins, chews on the losses, absorbs everything, takes it all so personally. Then one day he is fired and it all stops. The overarching loyalty to an organization, which keeps on going without him, is severed just like that.
This is how it was for Mets Manager Terry Collins, twice, and both times his old team soon played on the stage he could not reach. The Astros — runners-up in their division in all three of Collins’s seasons — finished in first place as soon as he left Houston.