MAYBE IT IS JUST ME, BUT…

The way the Mets collapsed this year, the fact that they had a large lead with 17 games to go suggest to me that it is time for Mr. Randolph to go. There have been questionable decisions he has made throughout the course of his tenure, pitching changes that didn’t make sense, staying too long with them and other strange calls that defy explanation over the past three years. But that in itself should not warrant change.

Willie has a team that should have won at least the past two years, and maybe all three and it didn’t. Managers that are more successful have been fired for less. The charge that upper management is undercutting him is perhaps true and the best indication of the biggest problem. The fact that he stands in that dugout so stoically makes me want to slap him and say: “GET THEM MOVING, MAKE A DIFFERENCE, ALREADY!”

I suspect that there is very little respect for the man; this is not to say that he doesn’t deserve respect, but that because of the situation he is put in, the players feel they can go over his head with the interference of upper management.

Fact to the matter is: if Casey Stengel wins with a great team, and loses with a bad team, it would suggest that the manager is a small part of the overall picture. The GM, who I think is a genius, has an important part in that he builds the team, and make sure the chemistry is good. The manager has to be a motivator, has to move his X’s and O’s around that blackboard so to speak in order to win. There are a lot of good teams and good managers out there that would not have allowed a 7 game lead dissipate in a 17 game span without a little motivational destruction of the clubhouse and a good old fashioned benching of a player or two. Look at NY Mets history and go back to the first Championship year that the Mets had, 1969. The manager was Gil Hodges, and he walked out to left field to not just chew out his star ballplayer Cleon Jones, but removed him from the game on the spot for indifference in his play! Was it embarrassing for the player? Yes, but he needed to be embarrassed because he embarrassed the team and the manager, this is the same team that finished 9th the year before in a ten team league! The manager made a difference.

Surely, the players are to blame, there is no professionalism to the team, and part of the fault lies with multi-year guaranteed contracts. Many players play like they don’t care, and we as fans keep buying tickets to support their life-style and indifference.

Bring back the pride in baseball, throw them all out and start over again. The scandal of drugs and body enhancers, the asterisks all the nonsense has to go. Give the sport back to the fans, to the players that are truly fans themselves and who will play for motivation for a championship, and not the bucks.