(AP Photo. Pre-Segway Era Jim Bowden at Spring Training with Stan Kasten back in 2007. ) "If you are a baseball person, you know that it's going to happen with the new GM coming up and them wanting to clean house. They knew I was close to Jim. I have nothing but positive things to say. The Lerner family treated me well."(Jose Cardenal, via Nationals dot com, 10/8/2009) Operation De-Bowdenization continues. Mike Rizzo fires "special assistant to the GM" Jose Cardenal, hired by Jim Bowden in 2005. Turns out Cardenal was special to Jimbo, but not so special to Rizzo. In case you're wondering, although Cardenal never played for the Reds, he served as first base coach for the team in the early 2000's. That makes two Bowden guys given the axe by Rizzo since the beginning of September (Rizzo fired director of player development Bobby Williams on September 5th). Bob Boone, next? Befriend The Nationals Enquirer on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.