Mets Rolling, Randolph Was The Devil

It took the Mets exactly one month to erase a 6.5 game deficit and climb into a first place tie with Philadelphia after Willie Randolph was fired. Randolph got the axe on June 17 and on July 17th, the Mets had a spectacular come from behind win to pull even with the idle Phillies.

I have never really been one to blame Randolph for how poorly they'd played for the last year-and-a-half. I think managers get far too much blame and too much credit. The players are the ones not hitting the ball, or not pitching well, or not making heads-up plays on defense or on the bases. But you can't fire 25 players and start over, so you fire the manager and hope it shocks some life into the team. I think the manager can be blamed for attitude, not striking out. But attitude does seem to have been a problem (as well as striking out).

Thus far, the experiment has been successful with the Mets. Jerry Manuel is 18-9 in his first month as the Mets' manager, but more importantly the team is playing like they care. While I don't think Randolph is entirely responsible for their bad play and lax attitude, and it is unfair to blame his calm demeanor for their lack of heart, he certainly didn't seem to do much to change it.

Manuel is not doing anything drastically differently from the way Randolph did, he is just getting a lot more bang for his buck. And I suppose if all other things are the same except the guy filling out the lineup card, then maybe the guy filling out the lineup card is the difference.

The funny thing is that I know one of those alarmist, insane fans who wanted Randolph fired the moment he was hired because he was a Yankee. Then the Mets played well and Randolph was a genius - his aura of calm was a Godsend. Then came the collapse and to this guy, everything Randolph did was the dumbest move in baseball history. It was like when you are with someone you can't stand and the fact that you can hear them breathe drives you nuts, like they are doing something wrong.

So Manuel got hired and for the first few games, not much seemed all that different. My friend cursed the Mets for hiring a chump and blamed it all on G.M. Omar Minaya. I spoke with my friend last week after the Mets had won nine in-a-row (now 10), and he was singing the praises of all of these once-chumps.

So the moral of the story is the same old thing: in sports all that matters is what have you done for me lately (unless you are Andruw Jones, apparently). For now, Manuel's relaxed clubhouse is exactly what the Mets needed all along...until they lose three-in-a-row.

Erosion Wears Down Mediate And Randolph

Last week, Rick Reilly wrote a typically inspired column in which he urged fans to root for Phil Mickelson to beat Tiger Woods. Essentially his point was that it is too easy to root for Tiger because he wins all the time. "It's like rooting for erosion," he wrote. It's just gonna happen whether you want it to or not. Watching Rocco Mediate try to beat Tiger in the U.S. Open playoff was a perfect example of a guy getting worn down by erosion. Mediate played beautifully, and of course the run he put on to go up by a stroke through 17 was incredible, but he had to be perfect on every shot in order to be close.

Mediate gained over 100 spots in the world rankings and is now in the 50's. Tiger hasn't played in two months and is firmly planted as #1. So you knew going in that it was going to take a miracle. They battled back and forth all day but the final two holes were a microcosm of this entire playoff.

Tiger teed off on the par five 18 and landed about a mile-and-a-half down in the fairway. Mediate teed off and came up well short of Tiger and in some trouble. Mediate's second shot put him back into the fairway, one shot from the green and in front of Tiger's ball. The trouble is, no matter what Mediate did on his drive, it was going to take him three shots to get to the green. It was a par five, so that is appropriate. But it was only going to take Tiger two shots to get there.

So now they were both hitting onto the green, Tiger from a little over 200 out, Mediate from around 140, with Mediate's one-stroke lead essentially gone already. If those two guys play that hole 100 more times, Tiger gets there in two 90 times and Mediate wouldn't get there in two once. It is like the guy plays on a different course. It is like watching two guys play one-on-one basketball, only one guy is shooting at an 8-foot hoop.

Granted, Mediate is not the biggest hitter in the world, and lots of other guys would be able to do just what Tiger did. But the thing with Tiger is that he doesn't miss shots. His putt on 18 wasn't great - he left himself a tough 6-footer to finish with, but the first one was from about 40 feet!

So like erosion, Tiger just did what he always did and steadily continued along until his opponent couldn't match him anymore. The difference this time was that his opponent never really crumbled, he just was playing on a different course at the end.

Speaking of golf, it looks like Willie Randolph will have some time on his hands to pick up the sticks. I like Randolph. He seems like a good guy. And the expectations placed upon him were impossible to fulfill. But the team stinks and he simply makes no changes to fix things. They can't score runs and he doesn't change the line-up to shake things up. The pitchers struggle and he just keeps running the same relievers in the same scenarios out there until it's too late. The team has no energy and while he may get a bad rap for seeming to be calm when in reality he may be much more fiery, it is his job to get them to wake up, and whatever he has been doing isn't doing it.

It is not necessarily the manager's fault when a team struggles, but you can't fire 25 players so someone has to go, and when the biggest problem with a team is that their attitude stinks, that is the manager's fault. But really, has there been any doubt this was coming?

That said, Omar Minaya had better work some magic very soon because he must be on a very, very short leash. The way Randolph was fired was cowardly and few of the big moves Minaya has made have benefited the Mets in the long run at all. He's been give the money to "win now" for four years in-a-row and they have nothing but an NLCS loss and a monumental, historical collapse to show for it.

Milton Bradley Lost It, The Sun Set, And Other News This Week

It has been over a week since I have written anything sports related because this page was not loading properly and I couldn't post to it anyway. To say the least, it has been an eventful week, so today will be just a quick recap of the biggest sports stories of the week in my world:

Everyone is piling onto Mets' manager Willie Randolph because the team stinks. For a long while I thought this was mostly unfounded, but the more they lose the more you realize that something needs to change. I wonder though, why is Omar Minaya's job so safe. After all, he is the person who spent all the money and equipped Randolph's clubhouse with all of these chumps. So Carlos Delgado seems to be hitting again, but the Mets' regular bench consists of Damion Easley, Endy Chavez, Marlon Anderson, Fernando Tatis. Granted, there have been a lot of injuries and the team has had to dig deeper into the bench than Minaya could have expected, but these guys combine for a .209 batting average, with 32 runs, 27 RBI, 16 extra base hits, 15 walks and 49 strikeouts in the equivalent of about 90 games played.

Granted: if Pedro Martinez, El Duque, Ryan Church, Moises Alou, Angel Pagan, and Luis Castillo hadn't all been on the DL for extended periods this season, they could easily have accounted for the 6.5 games that the team trails the Phillies, but every team gets injuries. This team fills holes with old, slow, injured, has-beens with no minor league prospects to be found. When do we start blaming Minaya?

It is hard to give any credence to what Tim Donaghy says about games being fixed in the playoffs because Donaghy is a crook who could likely just be throwing blame around, but the guys sure picked interesting games to mention. And not that I think we should go around believing every scrumbags conspiracy theories, but didn't the world react the same way to Jose Canseco's wild claims until they turned out to be almost 100% true? And David Stern is not doing the league any favors by being a smug, arrogant prick that almost makes you root for the other scumbag to bring him down.

Soon I will research the worst current contracts in baseball. The Dodgers' announcers were ripping the Mets last week for having this crazy payroll and I have a feeling they would not be happy with that I discover (I am looking at you Esteban Loaiza, Andruw Jones and Jason Schmidt).

The Orioles sent Steve Trachsel to the minors the other day. Since he has been gone, the league-wide average game time has dropped by 11 minutes.

Kevin Garnett did a commercial for ABC's Finals coverage in which he makes sweet love to the Finals Trophy. I don't like players holding a trophy they haven't won and talking about how good it feels to hold it. You don't touch it until you deserve to touch it.

Through three games, the Lakers' fans are proving what everyone things about L.A. sports fans: lazy, unintelligent and uncreative. They don't cheer unless the scoreboard tells them to, and the best chants they came up with were "Boston Sucks," and "MVP." Really? OK, so "beat L.A." is not much better than "Boston sucks," but it is better somehow. But Laker fans cannot compete with a Boston crowd that chants "No means no" at Kobe Bryant on the free throw line. Absolutely classic.

ABC pulled the most shameless in a long line of shameless promotional plugs in Game 3. They actually had a 3-D cardboard Wall-E ad in the seats for the game. This makes Fox look tasteful and dignified. Well, not dignified...actually, just forget I wrote that.

Chris Simms has asked to be released from his contract because he says he doesn't see himself fitting into their QB plans and wants to play somewhere. I have two thoughts here: the Giants should sign him and win Super Bowls with father and son (son on the bench of course), and why did Simms feel no hope for playing time in Tampa? San Diego Torero Josh Johnson, baby!

Michael Strahan pulled a John Elway and retired at the pinnacle of his career. Thank you Michael!

Dontrelle Willis was sent to the Minors because he was struggling. Not big news there. Except that he wasn't just struggling: his ERA was 10.32, and he had 5 strikeouts and 21 walks in 4 starts. And he wasn't just sent to the Minors, he was sent to Class A! Ya think his $29 million contract will be on my list?

Kobe Bryant got a technical foul in Game 2 and another in Game 3 for whining for calls on the only two plays that there probably was no actual contact. He hasn't punched anyone yet though, so thus far his behavior has been well above standard, except the pouting, screaming at teammates to stop shooting and give him the ball, whining, posing and almost total avoidance of the team's actual offensive strategy.

The Celtics are not as bad as everyone thought they would be and the Lakers are not as good. It is very likely that Kobe will not pass the ball once for the rest of the series (1 assists in the "must-win" Game 3). And as long as I watch the games with my friend Justin (who went to Gonzaga but I am the forgiving sort), the Celtics will win if the pattern holds.

5 points goes to any reader who can remember the first and last name of Big Brown's trainer without looking it up. Post it in a comment to this post. It has only been 5 days and already no one cares. But hey, at least everyone thought he was a complete ass during the duration of his 15 minutes.

It is weird to think that I have played golf on the course on which the U.S. Open is being played today/this weekend. That almost makes me a pro. I want free clubs. When I played at Torrey Pines, it was the week after the Buick Invitational in 2000. The course was tough and long, the rough was deep and the empty grandstands and T.V. towers were very intimidating. This week, the course is playing a lot tougher and a lot longer, the rough is probably 2 inches deeper and the grandstands and T.V. towers will be full. I am starting to think that professional golfers might be better than I am.

Milton Bradley blew up and tried to kill someone yesterday. Not news, I know, but it is a funny story: the Royals announcer said that Bradley would be well served to own up to his mistakes and move past them like Josh Hamilton has done. Bradley went nuts when he heard the comments, stormed through the clubhouse and had to be restrained from going into the booth to apparently take the guy's life, thus proving the guy right. He then was dragged back to the clubhouse and began sobbing about how no one thinks he's changed and gotten over his anger problems.

Maybe it was the scouting report on the Diamondbacks, but on Tuesday John Maine threw 104 pitches. 80 of them were fastballs. How about mixing in an off-speed pitch once in a while (that said, he struck out seven and was in line for a win before the bullpen blew another lead and the offense feel asleep in the last half of the game again).

Milton Bradley just screamed at me from the street. He's coming upstairs...I have to go.

There's Something (Weird) About A Man In Uniform

Watching the Dodgers-Marlins game yesterday, I saw a few shots of the Dodgers' coaching staff in the dugout and two thoughts kept popping into my head: these men need to eat better, and these men need to wear less tight-fitting pants.

Why do baseball coaches wear uniforms? No other sport does this. NBA and NHL coaches wear suits. College coaches are the same. In some sports, you will see coaches in polo shirts. At the most casual is the NFL coach, who wears whatever he wants as long as it is branded with the NFL logo - this generally equates to team warm-ups, jackets or sweatshirts, and Bill Belichick certainly tests the "whatever he wants" portion of this rule. But none of them wear a uniform!

So why baseball coaches? They are not players on the teams. So why do these fat, droopy men all wear unis? There are the Ozzie Guillen/Willie Randolph types who look like they could still play; there is Dusty Baker and his wrist bands who looks like he thinks he does still play, but then there are the Tommy Lasorda/Don Zimmer types who really need to just put on some slacks and a sweater and save us all from looking at things that would be cruel and unusual even at Guantanamo.

Baseball prides itself on being glacially slow to change so it must root back into the game's past. Perhaps it is from the turn of the 20th century when the team captain was essentially the manager, so they obviously would need uniforms on. Later, when teams started hiring non-player managers and coaches, those guys were likely former ballplayers and likely had a hard time giving up the game...so they wore the uniform.

That is perfectly reasonable, but don't coaches in every sport probably still want to play? Why doesn't Byron Scott hang desperately onto his playing days and wear sneakers, short shorts and a jersey? Football coaches in pads and hockey coaches in sweaters and skates would be a little silly, so it makes sense that those coaches wear something else.

So over 100 years later, Tony LaRussa still wears a jersey because some former ballplayer in 1908 had a midlife crisis? Connie Mack thumbed his nose at tradition and wore a suit. Why did others not follow his lead? Are the cleats, long socks, tightish pants and jersey that comfortable?

I get that it is tradition and I get where is originated from, but Major League Baseball eventually went so far as to make a rule that coaches on the field must be in uniform. No other sport invites coaches onto the field during a game, so maybe that is why other sports never adopted a similar rule. But again, why did baseball?

Would a coach waving a runner home from the box behind third tarnish the game if he was in a suit? Last August, MLB executive Bob Watson approached Red Sox manager Terry Francona before a game and reminded him that it was a league rule that he wear a jersey at games, and that a team jacket was not sufficient. Then during the game that day, Watson sent a security official to check under Francona's jacket to make sure he was wearing it...during an inning when the Yankees had a runner on base, not in between!

I get the desire to keep to tradition, but this is all a little bit weird. These are grown (often overgrown) men, and they look almost as silly as Josh Childress trying to pull off Buckwheat's afro (Josh, it's 2008 and you are not a teenager anymore, plus Ben Wallace already pulled this off far better). What does the bench coach need cleats for? Managers choosing to follow a tradition is nice and quaint and as baseball-ish as pitchers jumping over the foul line. But the league mandating tradition takes all the tradition out of it!