Here’s something you don’t see a lot of in sports, particularly big-time sports, particularly big-money sports: quitting.

How miserable must Ryne Sandberg and Jerry Dipoto have been?

Two good men, reasonably capable at their jobs, with duties to perform and paychecks still coming and professional loyalties to attend to, they resigned – surrendered – within a few days of each other and with a baseball season only half done. This is a thing now?

View photos Little went right for Ryne Sandberg the manager. (AP Photo) More

As a result, Sandberg, 55, might have managed his last big-league game. For that gig, he’d tamped notions of Hall of Fame privilege and re-logged thousands of minor-league miles, then freely signed up for short-term hopelessness, because he wished to be a major league manager and was willing to work for it. All that for 278 games, a cardboard box and a “Leave your ID badge at the security desk, please.”

Dipoto, 47, had turned a respectable playing career – 390 relief appearances over eight seasons – into an upwardly mobile front-office career, it gaining traction through Boston, then Colorado, then Arizona, then Anaheim. By his mid-40s he was general manager of a team that spent on payroll, put people in the ballpark, commanded big television deals and had its very own dancing rally monkey. He left in a huff one night.

Sandberg’s decision was generally lauded, perhaps because it merely hastened the inevitable outcome. It didn’t look like he was part of whatever was next in Philly anyway. The season probably would only get worse, given Cole Hamels and Jonathan Papelbon were likely to be gone in a month. And there’s the other part, the uncomfortable part, that Sandberg maybe wasn’t very good at this, which is a helluva thing to discover at 55, and an awful thing to come to terms with at 55, assuming he has.

Eh, what’s another 80-something games? He went home.

Nobody took much issue with Dipoto, either. Arte Moreno’s a tyrant, so they say, and Mike Scioscia’s a freakin’ Game of Thrones character, and who can work in that environment? Who’s the boss here anyway? Maybe Scioscia was winning too many of the little battles because Moreno was always the arbiter, and that meant the game was rigged and the big power play failed. There’s the other part, that being the Angels would appear to have more of a talent problem than a strategy problem, and Dipoto was in charge of the talent procurement department. It’s an important time of year for talent procurers. The trading deadline is four weeks away. The Angels could use a bat or two. Four times in the past week Scioscia’s best option to protect Albert Pujols was Erick Aybar. Just the other night Aybar hit his third home run of the calendar year. The latest leadoff hitter is Johnny Giavotella, whose career on-base percentage is .294.

This required attention. Dipoto went home.

Their prerogatives, of course. You’re certainly allowed to quit. It’s just, I don’t know, strange? Impulsive?

“The thing about quitting,” one baseball lifer was saying as the Dipoto saga played out, “you have to explain why you did it every time you walk into a new room.”

Didn’t seem to slow anybody down.

View photos In the end, Angels manager Mike Scioscia, left, stayed put as Jerry Dipoto walked away. (AP) More

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