A blue and orange clown car pulled into Anaheim last night. One by one, the clowns spilled out as a calliope played madly in the background. Rollicking, it was.
Then one of the clowns went mad and fired Willie Randolph.
That’s what it feels like as Jerry Manuel takes over the Good Ship Mediocrity. That’s what it feels like to be a Mets fan this morning waking up from having fallen asleep to an incidental Mets victory and seeing on the crawl across the bottom of the screen that Willie Randolph is no longer manager of the New York Mets.
Wait, you groggily ask yourself, didn’t the Mets win last night? More to the point, didn’t the Mets fly across the country with their manager in tow and let him manage on a Monday night? Didn’t he manage all nine innings?
You mean they fired him after that? After a win? On the West Coast, after midnight on the East Coast?
That they did. Those are the New York Mets. Clown college is, as ever, in session.
It never ends. It truly never ends. For two decades this organization has run with that calliope blaring at full blast. How many managers and general managers have been shot out of cannons now?
Everything that has been prelude to Willie Randolph’s tenure comes rushing back in your mind. Everything since the Mets were kings of baseball. Every bizarre backstabbing, every oil & water disaster of front office intrigue. Every painful press conference. Every firing.
Davey Johnson wins the World Series but Cashen angles endlessly to replace him. Buddy Harrelson’s a hometown hero but they can’t wait one lousy week to show him the door. Somebody believes Al Harazin and Jeff Torborg are answers. Somebody sets Dallas Green and Joe McIlvaine against each other in a chess game of disastrous creative tension. Somebody dismisses McIlvaine in the midst of the first successful season in seven because of nebulous skill-set concerns. Bobby Valentine’s coaches are used for skeet shooting. Steve Phillips’ horrible team shrivels and Bobby V, the only manager to actually win anything around here in more than a decade, takes the fall. Art Howe lights up a room. Jim Duquette preaches youth and athleticism and lowballs Vladimir Guerrero. Howe, nice man, can’t manage a meat market and is dismissed without actually being dismissed. No one takes responsibility for the worst trade of a prospect in a generation. Duquette told to take a hike because his team, with an ownership-approved right field platoon of Karim Garcia and Shane Spencer, without Scott Kazmir, with Kaz Matsui elbowing aside Jose Reyes, with Jose Reyes practically kicked in the hamstrings by his own team trainers, with David Wright in only his first season, wasn’t ready to contend even though the public position of his employers was let’s get some youth and athleticism in here and see what happens. Let’s replace Duquette with the guy we wouldn’t give the job to in the first place, Omar Minaya.
Then let’s usher in the hundredth new era in Mets history by giving Minaya the GM job and hiring Randolph as manager and breaking out the checkbook and signing Martinez and signing Beltran and resisting the temptation to trade Reyes and Wright and let’s improve by leaps one year and let’s break out the checkbook some more and let’s sign or trade for more big-money guys and let’s watch a great start, a phenomenal start, a fabulous start and let’s all congratulate each other for the renaissance in Queens. This is improving by bounds as well as leaps: a new day, a new era, a new dawning. The Mets now, after twenty years of thumbs finding the deep ends of asses, know what they’re doing.
And that lasts for not quite one season. And its remnants dissipate the next season. And before that season is out, it becomes mightily apparent that the checks cleared but the players bounced. That the mighty accomplishments of Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner and Paul Lo Duca came with an expiration date. That Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez and Moises Alou were marked fragile. That nobody much liked each other, which wouldn’t matter, except nobody fired each other up with their dislike either. That Beltran was both worth the money and is ridiculously overpaid. That Reyes will never quite grow up. That Wright has been shoehorned into a faux-leadership position by an organization that realized it had nowhere to turn except to a 25-year-old who’s broken out everywhere except at the plate. That it would have been nice to have had some youth and athleticism in place for when all the senior citizens did what senior citizens will do and slowed down with age. That the big-market New York Mets would sign the best pitcher in the game but rely more on the Pagans, the Figueroas, the Evanses, the Tatises and the Cancels for their biggest moments. That Ryan Church’s head was to be treated like carry-on luggage.
Remember Captain Red-Ass and the Marauding Mets or whatever it was we allegedly were on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Remember the feelgood story of 2006? Remember how everything Minaya touched turned to gold? That Julio Franco was a godsend? That Willie Randolph’s calm and soothing patience were just the lubricants for this finely tuned machine?
Did it really all go to hell in a cab in Miami? Was Duaner Sanchez really the linchpin of this operation? Did one dopey trade after another have to be made to get to October only to have October crumble while the bats went cold and unswung? Couldn’t anybody get anybody to run to first? To give a damn?
Did Willie Randolph, who was never anything but Willie Randolph when he was hired, when he was maintained and when he was fired, really have to be kept hanging on after the worst September performance anybody’d seen since Poland’s in 1939? Was it necessary to parade Willie to a microphone in early October 2007 to confirm that a man with a contract was still employed? Did it have to be top priority for the New York Mets to look like they knew what they were doing instead of actually knowing what they were doing?
It’s all a blur of incompetence now, and I don’t mean Willie’s. I don’t want to martyr him. He wasn’t the best manager they ever had, he wasn’t the worst. He was, in the vernacular of hopelessness, what he was. But they knew this last year. They knew this last September. They knew it after September and they knew it in May when they didn’t like an interview he gave. So they gave the man who had a contract one, no two, no three more games…or series to prove himself worthy of their confidence. And it worked. Then it didn’t. Then it was the same old team finding brilliant new ways to lose.
Then they packed him and Peterson and Nieto on a plane only to fire them after their fourth trip west in a matter of weeks, after they won a game, before anybody could get a night’s sleep to think, hey, maybe this is no way to run an organization.
I light no candles for Willie Randolph. He’ll get paid. He did, I’m sure, what he could. He led us to a division title and a division series victory. He led us to within one game of a league championship. In 2006, he could do no wrong. In 2006, Omar Minaya could do no wrong. In 2006, the Mets as an organization, for perhaps the only time since 1986, could do no wrong. I believed that. I’m a fan. I’m supposed to believe that. Those who own the team also believed the personnel they’d assembled could do no wrong, that all their drafting was spot on, that all their confusing intramural maneuvers were healthy, that whatever got them to this point was good for business. That they themselves could do no wrong.
They’re supposed to know better. But when in the last twenty years has that ever been the case?
This is what it looks like when a no-brainer move is made by an organization with no brains.
It's definitely a party clown college
I feel sick today. I was no fan, but for some reason this feels wrong. Why fly him out west to fire him?
Ugly. Stupid. Necessary. Overdue. Bungled. Embarassing. Typical.
The only organization that could make you feel saddened about a move you, at least in principle, agree with.
The New York Mets: screwing up one-car funerals since 1962.
Greg,
Agree with you and all the others – this was a classless act by an organization which is as classless as the one in the Bronx.
It's a sad day for I don't think any of us can feel good for Willie, the person. Yes, he might have brought this on himself by (IMHO) not being tougher on his players by not taking them out of the lineup after snoozing it on the field. But to keep him hanging, to wait till we were all asleep, that was, as you said, a no brainer by those without brains or compassion.
I doubt managment orchestrated it this way in a hope this would expose players to the ultimate shock treatment and wake them up.
I have a classless comment on a classless day for a classless organization:
The Mets could fuck up a wet dream.
That being said, here's Willie Randolph in a nutshell:
He's got a Gold Glove CF.
He's got a 1B who can still hit a little, but can't field.
So who did he DH last night…?
…. and he also had a left fielder who had still has trouble running after returning from the DL.
amen to all these comments. as bad a handling of a dismissal as i can recall — way worse than how the skanks ran torre out of town. actually makes me embarrassed for wanting randolph gone.
here's a quarter, mets. buy a clue.
The Wilpons fucked it up again, but to play devil's advocate, some thoughts:
1. If in October 2007 we were all told, “Willie will keep his job, continue to stink, and continue to harbor mediocrity until mid-June 2008, when the Mets will fire him right after he flies to the west coast following a double-header at Shea and in the middle of a semi-winning streak,” most of us would laugh and say, “good!”
2. If they fired him on Sunday, the media would still spin this as a dick move. “They fired him on Father's Day! The nerve!” Bottom line: he should have been fired at 5p on September 30th 2007.
3. Geographical circumstances aside, this was the right move. With Willie at the helm, we were sure to lose 3 of our next 4.
4. The Mets trying to make a change for the better is more important than Willie, Peterson, and Nieto's feelings.
5. Of course the Wilpons are detached morons. We knew that. We're Met fans, it's part of the deal. It's not the first time we've wanted to slap them upside the head, and it certainly wont be the last.
6. At least the Wilpons aren't crying that a pitcher shouldn't have to learn how to run.
I too was apalled at hearing that Willie had been fired overnight. Why not wait till breakfast? Why not do it Sunday night?
Whatevs, just another way that the Mets can mess up something that had to be done.
On another note–can we assume David Wright's drinks are on Hojo this week?
Little Jeffy's efforts to morph this team into a little less expensive version of the soul-less, classless organization in the Bronx is complete . . . this franchise will continue down the path of ineptitude as long as Fredo and his idiot son remain the owners . . . I hope Fredo enjoys his sh*ttyfield wet dream tribute to his beloved Bums while he continues to destroy the Mets . . . absolutely disgraceful . . . only Fredo and Jeffy could manage to make a martyr out of the equally inept Willie . . . and WTF could Tom Nieto have possibly done to deserve firing??? . . . maybe they felt they needed a sacrificial Latino to cover themselves on the hiring of a Latino manager . . . and even that gets botched, as Sandy Alomar should have been the logical candidate for fired Latino coach
i figure they'll say that there was no time to do it sunday — they had to catch that flight out of laguardia.
(and while i was at the doubleheader, fans were jokingly wondering if he'd get fired between games. that wouldn't have been worse than this.)
so if you want him gone — and i did — by not getting it done on this homestand, the wilpons/minaya crew botched the deal. the right thing to do would have been to swallow and wait for the mets to come home from this road trip. do it at home, in the middle of the day, for god's sake.
instead, they have given the mets a new dimension i never associated with the team: sleazy.
I would have been kinder to leave Willie and his bags at Shea as the team bus pulled away. This middle of the night nonsense was ridiculous.
The other thing is, they really didn't play well in their win last night. The hitting aside, they displayed a lot of the malaise-like, head-up-the-ass problems we've seen since last September: Throwing to the wrong bases, dropping would-be outs, failing to cover bases.
I think what made this difficult is the idea that Willie isn't a bad guy. He's a good guy who just lost control of his team. I think the All-Star selection complicated things, as did Father's Day. Indeed, once he was named to the All-Star team, the only “good” time to fire him would have been after that game — in other words, too late for this season.
As always Greg, spot on. I do however have a theory about how and more importantly, why this went down this way. And since we haven't heard any comments from Randolph and when we do they likely won't be that revealing, this is what I think actually happened in the wee hours this morning.
From what I understand, and from what Matt Cerrone understood over at MetsBlog, the Wilpons had apparently decided to fire Willie, win or lose, on the off day between the Angels and Rockies series' later this week. I think we all knew that Minaya was traveling with the team for this purpose. However, I think that instead of waiting for Thursday to meet with Willie, Minaya met with him after the game last night, so between 1:30am – 3:30am ET and 10:30pm – 12:30am PT. It was at this time that Minaya informed Willie that no matter what, after the Angels' series he would be let go and the team would go on to Colorado with new management. I think that it was at this time that Willie decided that enough was enough, and told Minaya he'd save him the trouble of firing him Thursday by leaving immediately. I think Minaya was attempting to be civil and give Willie a heads-up as to what was about to happen, and I think Willie, being like anyone else in the world in this situation, decided that sooner would be better than later. That's why this was released at approx. 4:30/5:00am ET, to get it right out there and to spin it that Willie had been dismissed according to some plan. Not to mention that now Oberkfell, Warthen and Aguayo had to hop on a flight 2 days earlier than expected and to Anaheim not Denver. I think we can all see the logic in this, and the lesson; Never tell someone you intend to fire them, only not right now. They'll just leave and force your hand.
The timing irks me. If pressure from the Wilponzies influenced the timing, Minaya has lost his autonomy and may be the next shoe to drop.
I imagine the Wilpons would have loved if Willie had said adios on his own accord. They owe him money, lots of it. He quits, they wouldn't. They fired him, they do.
The time to do this was Sunday, if not last September 30 at 5:00 pm as Kevin noted. Who were they kidding by sending their hitman to California and having him grimly reap for three days if the “plan” was the offday in Colorado?
The saddest part about this is that there is a simple analogy here… one which makes the Mets' future seem more depressing.
This is a move that Jim Dolan/Isiah Thomas would have made. (Think Chaney, Herb Williams, Brown, etc)
Did Willie Randolph, who was never anything but Willie Randolph when he was hired, when he was maintained and when he was fired, really have to be kept hanging on after the worst September performance anybody'd seen since Poland's in 1939?
Good one.
I'm beginning to feel the Wilpons resemble the Dolans a little more than I'd like.
Jeff's resembling Jim a bit more than Fred's resembling Charlie. Jim's got a bit of a head start on Jeff. The Mets are not quite Jeff's sandbox yet.
Minaya was there to fire him in the case of a 10-0 Angels' blowout Monday night, which would've provided the proverbial straw to break Randolph's back. But the combination of a win that counts as 3 out of the last 4 and the timing of almost 4:00am in NY, as almost everyone in the blogosphere this morning has agreed, is both surprising and perturbing. We all knew Willie was going to take this fall, but I know I wasn't expecting to receive a text message at 3:45am informing me of the fact. I think he asked Omar to fire him now, and to save him from having to drudge out the next 2 games. I didn't mean to insinuate that he would quit, because that would be silly of him. But I think he asked Minaya to more or less, “Ease His Pain”, only this wouldn't involve Moonlight Graham or a cornfield in Iowa. Either that, or I think the front office decided to act now before say, a series sweep of the Angels. And then what're you going to do? Fire him after they've won 5 of the last 6 and appear to possibly be turning this around heading into Colorado? I think not. They acted when they did because either Randolph implored them to give him a quick death or the possibility that the Mets might be getting on track, in which case they'd be inclined to keep him, was increasing. Or possibly the Wilpons took the race comments to be very offensive and decided to act vindictively by firing him after he flew across the country again. No matter which is the actual case, I doubt we'll ever know.
Well, I wouldn't have thought it wrong if they fired him after September, but taht was mainly the bullpen's fault and not Willies. That said, once you keep him, you pretty much are saying that it wasn't his fault, so why you evaluate him now, you really shouldn't be looking at last year.
However, this isn't a 'change for the better'. This is a change for public opinion if anything else. The biggest issue is the offense, HoJo is still here. If Willie is part of the problem, then so is Manuel. If we had promoted the AAA guy, then fine. But maybe they're thinking that this change isn't going to make the team succeed, and they want the door open for him next year, but if they don't htink it'll work, why fire Willie?
Not Sunday, but Friday. After they were 1 for the last 8 or whatever, instead of 4/6 and 3/4.
Unless..this was their last 'olive branch' to Willie. Figuring now if the Mets win going forward, he can point and say 'we were turning it around anyway' and get another job, and not look like the guy that destroyed a great team. Or who knows, maybe they just flipped a coin.
Think anybody's still studying Marlon Anderson's “I B4 WE” flowchart to the playoffs now?
A spot on piece, Greg. Not much more to add to the other comments other than to say that I'm totally embarrassed by this organization right now.
you never associated “sleazy” with this team?! What year did you start watching?!
Big fan of the Poland analogy, gave me a much needed laugh after this debacle.
-sjg$
The timing of the whole thing stinks but Willie deserved to be canned. Maybe even caned. The thing that makes no sense to me here is why is Manuel the new manager? You have to assume they saw this coming a long way away and the best replacement they could get is Manuel? You need to have someone come in and drop the hammer on the old way of doing things. Manuel was part of the old way so the hammer ain’t coming. When does the Manuel watch begin?
2 more quick notes, on the lighter side:
1. A big positive to the overnight aspect of the firing is that it got me out of bed on time at 6am this morning.
2. This should be the 32nd comment on this post after it's been up for just 3.5 hours. Gets me to wondering, what's the all-time FAFIF comments-posted record?
95…care to guess the occasion? (Hint: You referenced it yourself earlier.)
After game 7?
That was my guess, actually. If Jason gets held up in posting his take on this, then I think we could have a new record.
Try Game 162.
I can help us break a record by being lazy? That's a win-win!
What we really need is for someone to mention that Benitez wasn't a choke artist at all. Then we could break all kinds of records.
I'm pretty sure Jason's followup to the same event is third all-time with 53 or thereabouts. Throw in various and sundry comments attached to existing pre-Gl@v!ne posts, and more than 150 expressions of dismay were registered on or just after September 30, 2007.
Mysteriously, second place (I think) is held by a pre-Opening Day 2007 rant on Keith Hernandez planning to participate in Cardinal flag-raising ceremonies. But you have to take tangents into account.
the mets will regret this move.
so will we.
My take is that the Wilponzies won't let Omar bring on a manager for beyond this season. That's because Omar's job is in jeopardy. A new GM will want to hire his own manager.. The only other possible choice is Ken-Obi. Manuel knows the team better.
1967.
granted, there have been any number of headbanging moments — chief among them the seaver trade by m. donald grant, and the assemblage of that grotesque crew in the early 90's.
i should have been more specific — i didn't associate this current management as being sleazy. more fool me.
The way the Mets handled this in typical moronic fashion (haven't these guys been in New York, like, their whole lives..don't they GET IT?) makes the way the yankees got rid of Torre look sentimental.
That's not the word I'm looking for, but you get my point. jesus, this franchise just shoots itself in the foot EVERY TIME!!!!!
They do this after Sept, no one bats an eye, do it after the 4 straight to the Pods, no one bats an eye. But this….they've martyred Willie. If he remains a coach in the All Star Game (which I figured if they hadn't done it after the Pods series, they'd do it after he got his standing O in the Bronx), he'll be the prodigal son returns and all the announcers will be talking about how shitty the Mets were to fire him NOT on what a shitty job Willie did.
You didn't hear? Hank Steinbrenner has ordered Terry Francona to take Willie as a coach and then graciously step aside and let him manage the A.L. for the first three innings.
The rotted carcass of Miller Huggins will handle the last six.
nothing would surprise me from an org'n that fired Billy Martin and then announced his rehiring on Old Timer's Day.
I say Hank puts Willie in his old No. 30 and trots him out there as an AL coach.
On the upside for Willie, it's now just a short drive over to Chavez Ravine to be hired by Torre so that Willie can appear at the All-Star game as an NL coach resplendent in Fred's beloved Dodger Blue
GREAT CALL
Greg, whatever they pay you to blog, it ain't enough.
Well said.
It's just a terrible day to be a proud, lifelong Met fan. Er, hold the “proud” for now.
ceebee
Rickrolling, you say? The Mets top brass are the fucking anti-rickroll.
Always gonna give you up
Always gonna let you down
Always gonna run around and desert you
Always gonna make you cry
Always gonna say goodbye
Always gonna tell a lie and hurt you
::does a backflip off the bar counter::