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Riggleman just did what any working stiff dreams of doing

Belated congratulations to Jim Riggleman.

The baseball lifer did what so many career workingmen and workingwomen consider doing before chickening out.

Riggleman told his boss what he could do with his job.

All of which makes it baffling that the public has demonized Riggleman. I don't know, maybe others are jealous of his freedom.

Seriously, Riggleman is just another guy in another workplace who became fed up with management.

Riggleman resigned last week as manager of the Washington Nationals with time left on his contract. Oh, like that never happens in sports?

It isn't like Riggleman demanded to keep being paid despite quitting. Still, as we speak groups likely are massing in D.C. to oppose the building of the Riggleman Monument on the National Mall.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is in emergency session to argue over whether Riggleman still is entitled to ever sit in a baseball dugout again after tainting the national pastime in the nation's capital.

My goodness, folks, this isn't the first time somebody in Washington quit his job controversially. At least Riggleman didn't surrender the presidency in disgrace or a Congressional seat in scandal.

In some ways it was worse because this wasn't as trivial as a government matter … it was something as compelling as SPORTS!!!

Riggleman resigned as manager of the Washington Nationals in midseason and has been the object of ridicule ever since.

Three words to everyone: Get over it.

Riggleman has been characterized as a quitter. My goodness, if he were he could have quit countless times while managing some awful Cubs teams during the 1990s.

Anyway, we tend to pretend the laws of life and economics don't apply to sports figures because of their inflated fame and fortune.

But Riggleman essentially was just another working stiff. His dispute with Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo isn't much different from that of a dockworker with a foreman, teacher with a principal or columnist with an editor.

Riggleman was just another employee having a grievance with an employer over money, security and respect and getting to the point he couldn't keep on keeping on.

Of course, most of us would agree to be disrespected for $600,000 a year, but money is relative and Riggleman was the major leagues' lowest-paid manager.

Heck, the football defensive coordinator at the University of Tennessee is scheduled to make $700,000 next season.

Riggleman felt he deserved more respect after guiding the Nationals from abysmal to respectable. Specifically, he wanted the Nationals to pick up his option for 2012.

The worst thing Riggleman could have done in the meantime was be distracted by his frayed emotions, be unable to commit totally to the Nationals and continue drawing a paycheck regardless.

Instead, Riggleman couldn't take it any longer and saw no recourse but to resign. Rizzo saw no recourse but to accept the resignation.

To paraphrase the Dave Mason lyric: “There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy, there's only employer and employee, and we just disagree.”

Jim Riggleman did what a lot of workers would like to do and Mike Rizzo did what a lot of bosses have to do.

Come to think of it, congratulations to both of them.