Six weeks after he was fired by Florida, Girardi won the NL honor Wednesday for keeping the rookie-laden Marlins in contention nearly all season. Jim Leyland took the AL award after a quick turnaround with the Detroit Tigers.

A rookie skipper himself, Girardi beat out Willie Randolph of the New York Mets by a comfortable margin to become the first Manager of the Year with a losing record.

"I don't know if vindication is a good word, just because as a manager, you want to manage," Girardi said.

He received 18 of 32 first-place votes and totaled 111 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Randolph got eight first-place votes and 81 points.

"It's nice that people who watch the game every day understood what we accomplished," Girardi said, adding he wasn't particularly surprised to win. "We had a lot of good things happen."

Leyland turned around the long-moribund Tigers in his first year with the team, leading them to the World Series and their first winning season since 1993. He received 19 of 28 first-place votes and 118 points to top Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire, who was listed first on nine ballots and totaled 93 points.

"I knew that we had something here. I thought it would take longer than it did. This team started believing," Leyland said. "We had good players going into spring training, but we didn't have a very good team. We made ourselves a good team, and that's something I'm very proud of."

Funny how stupid the marlins manager was to fire the winner. Ego gonna make his team go down and him lose money.